Population conference ends with renewed commitment to ICPD
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Bangkok, Thailand
The fifth Asia Pacific Population Conference (APPC) ended here on Tuesday with the reaffirmation of all participating countries, except the United States, to commitments made in the 1994 International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt and its five-year review known as ICPD+5.
The U.S.'s general reservation will be noted in the APPC's Plan of Action document and a statement of its interpretation would be inserted in part two of the APPC report of proceedings, part one of the proceedings being the Plan of Action document itself.
"In no case should the footnote in the Plan of Action document indicate a call for action," the rapporteur general of the ministerial segment, Siswanto Agus Wilopo from Indonesia, said in the assembly.
The Indian delegation also stressed that the reservations should never be referred to as a Plan of Action.
Although the Plan of Action adopted at the Bangkok conference will not be binding, it will be useful as a yardstick to assess the ICPD implementation in the next population meeting in 2004.
Deliberations over the draft Plan of Action have been intense during the seven-day conference due to the U.S.'s claim that the text was endorsing abortion and under-aged sex despite explanations from other delegations that the Cairo commitment was clear that "in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning."
Many, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), expressed regret that the U.S.'s tough stance on the subjects had taken away attention from other pressing issues on population and poverty alleviation such as migration and migrant workers.
As a result, two chapters concerning reproductive rights and reproductive health, and adolescent reproductive health went to a recorded vote, in which only the U.S. voted "no".
"The United States has failed in its attempts to water down the ICPD commitment, in this case it only succeeded in blocking consensus," councillor at the Permanent Mission of Indonesia to the United Nations in New York Salman Al-Farisi told The Jakarta Post.
He said the U.S.'s "no" vote for the two chapters would consequently mean that the country would have no moral obligation to support programs on reproductive rights and health in terms of financial or technical aid.
The U.S. general reservation stated, among other things, that in regards to "reproductive rights, reproductive health, reproductive health care and services, family planning services, and sexual health should not be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion or abortion- related services or the use of abortifacients."
Regardless of the U.S. reservations, the conference was deemed successful by participating countries.
Among other things, the conference acknowledged that the ESCAP region was still home to most of the world's poor, that population and reproductive health issues were inextricably linked to development and poverty, and that the twin challenges of population concerns and poverty alleviation required a broad approach, including the fostering of economic growth and social development, and sustainability as well as the establishment of safety-nets for the poor.
The conference also emphasized that people, including adolescents, had the right to make their own choices and decisions responsibly and on the basis of sound information. It placed high priority on reproductive health services and rights, noting that there was a clear link between these aspects and the achievement of the millennium development goals.
The goals include halving the proportion of the world's population whose income is less than US$1 a day by 2015, to reduce maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015 and under-five child mortality by 66 percent of their current rates, and by 2015 have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that afflict humanity.
Separately, the Indonesian delegation expressed regret that the UN-ESCAP secretariat was not more prepared for the kind of "sensitive" debate that the chapters on reproductive health had ensued, and failed to employ a legal council to sit at deliberations.
"The secretariat should have anticipated problems that could arise from these sorts of deliberations. It should have learned from the experience at Johannesburg where the chapter on reproductive health was the last to be adopted and then only when it was watered down," Salman said, referring to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in the South African capital ending Sept. 4.