Population conference opens in Bangkok
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Bangkok
The Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference (APPC) opened here on Wednesday with a dispute between the United States and the other 60 countries over the preamble of the draft document of the conference's Plan of Action.
The draft Plan of Action is scheduled to be endorsed by heads of state at the conference's Ministerial Meeting on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17. Once endorsed, the document will be used as a basis for the endorsing countries' national action programs for population and poverty eradication.
Whereas all the other 60 member countries of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) agreed to reaffirm the commitments from previous population conferences, the U.S. rejected the wording and insisted it would only "take note of", "acknowledge" or "recall" the commitments.
"Reaffirm means we must stand by it, replaced with any other language will dilute the meaning and the spirit of ICPD," a representative from India said during the drafting committee meeting.
Previous commitments mentioned include the Bali Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development from the fourth APPC meeting in Bali in 1992, the Program of Action adopted at the International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, five-year reports on the implementation of the Bali Declaration and the ICPD Program of Action, as well as the Millennium Declaration.
Some of the commitments mentioned include halving the proportion of the world's population whose income is less than US$1 a day by 2015, and to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely available and affordable to all who need them in developing countries.
At the call of Indonesia, Bangladesh and other members, the chairman of the drafting committee, Shahab Khawaja from Pakistan, finally ruled that the reaffirmation was formalized while allowing the U.S. delegation until Thursday morning to deliberate with Washington whether or not to go along with the consensus.
"If the U.S. still refuses the ruling then a footnote will be added indicating the U.S.'s position," Shahab said.
Earlier, Rita Kalibonso from Indonesian non-governmental organization (NGO) Yayasan Kesehatan Perempuan (Women's Health Foundation) said that without the countries' affirmation of the commitments already made in the ICPD and Bali Declaration, many countries, including Indonesia, would face major setbacks in their population programs, such as family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention and management.
"For those programs to work, cooperation between countries especially in the region is needed. To learn from each other's experiences and have support from more advanced countries as to medication for HIV/AIDS, for instance," she told The Jakarta Post here.
Until Dec. 14, senior officials from ESCAP members will deliberate 15 main agendas, including population and poverty in Asia and the Pacific; fertility levels and trends and their implication for policies and programs; mortality and morbidity trends and poverty reduction; migration, urbanization and poverty.
In her opening statement, ESCAP deputy executive secretary Keiko Okaido said that one of the main objectives of the conference was to make recommendations for future actions to further advance the Bali and ICPD agendas.
"Many governments in the region have taken determined action and launched ambitious population programs in the years since the first (APPC) Conference in 1963," she said.
She explained that since then the average population growth rate for Asia and the Pacific had decreased more than 50 percent to around 1.2 percent a year, total fertility rate was down to 2.4 children per woman today compared to 6 per woman in 1963, and the infant mortality rate had been reduced to 53 per 1,000 births from around 130 per 1,000 births.