SUNS4371 Wednesday 10 February 1999

Population: UN forum focuses on funds for progress

The Hague, Feb 9 (IPS/Farhan Haq) -- A week-long conference to evaluate progress on reproductive rights and health issues since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) has a
familiar focus: the need for funds to advance programmes in the South.

Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) - the organisers of the meeting here - threw down the gauntlet to donor countries Monday when she addressed a plenary session of the forum.

"The Netherlands government is living up to the commitments of the ICPD," she observed.

The Dutch government's aid guidelines ensured that "four percent of official developmental assistance will be devoted to population and reproductive health programmes around the world... I encourage all governments to do the same."

Dutch officials returned Sadik's compliments by urging richer nations to pay their share of aid for population and health programmes. "I am really disappointed and concerned about how little we have been able to implement (the ICPD Programme of Action established in Cairo), especially in terms of finances," said Eveline Herfkens, Minister of Development Cooperation for the Netherlands. "It is an embarrassment for donor countries that only a few, 'the usual suspects', provide assistance for population programmes."

Nana Rawlings, the wife of Ghanian leader Gerry Rawlings, noted that the United States, the largest UN contributor, had slashed funds for the UNFPA under pressure from the Republican-dominated Congress. The
cutback would have "a long and serious negative effect on reproductive health," she said.

U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration, however, has managed to avoid acute embarrassment despite the fact the lack of funds from Washington meant the loss of $25 million for the population agency.
Clinton has promised to reinstate the UNFPA funding by the next U.S. fiscal year, even though that effort would require winning over the same Republican representatives who blocked the UNFPA funds last year
- and recently voted to impeach him.

Clinton's credibility at the Hague Forum also has been bolstered by the appearance here of U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. She impressed delegates when she spoke at a forum of non-governmental
organisations and youth groups on Sunday before leaving to attend King Hussein's funeral in Jordan and isdue to return here to speak to the Forum on Tuesday.

The U.S. first lady "showed how much she really valued population issues" by arranging her schedule to visit The Hague twice this week to discuss reproductive rights, one UNFPA official said.

Ultimately, the Hague Forum is just as much an effort to attract funds as it is to review progress five years after the ICPD was held in Cairo. To that end, the five-day review is intended to push the industrialised world especially to triple their developmental assistance for population programmes.

This would raise funds from a current level of $5.2 billion to the ICPD target of $17 billion by next year.

Ironically, although contributions from Northern governments to population have declined slightly in recent years, the Hague Forum itself provided an example of how private interests in the North can contribute directly to population support. The forum is funded in part by the William H. Gates Foundation, a multi-billion dollar fund for population and health issues set up by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

This weekend, Gates announced that he would contribute $2.2 billion, the single-largest individual charitable contribution ever recorded, to the Gates Foundation to deal with population issues. UNFPA, among other
select organisations, has already been invited to submit proposals on how the money will be spent.

While the question of money loomed large at the Forum, delegates from more than 100 governments intended discussing progress since the Cairo conference and concrete measures to follow up on implementing the ICPD
Programme of Action. At least part of that effort, UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette emphasised Monday, would be to streamline collaboration among UN agencies to carry out better the Programme's tasks.

"By acting together as a team, we are having a greater impact and can develop more productive partnerships with governments and civil society," she said.

Still to be defined is the road ahead from the Cairo talks - Frechette urged governments to take more steps to combat the spread of AIDS while Sadik drew attention to the problems of teenage pregnancy.