UN Millennium Development Goals and Population Issues

The UN held a three-day conference in Geneva from 30 June to 2 July, 2003, to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced by Kofi Annan at the millennium. The goals concern the elimination of poverty (by 2015), education, maternal and child health, and environmental sustainability. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I was invited to a ministerial round-table breakfast at the conference to discuss population issues, MDGs, and rural development. The meeting was hosted by Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, and chaired by Jan Karlsson, Swedish Minister for Development Cooperation. Also present were Ministers or Ambassadors from Guatamala, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Uganda, Iran and Switzerland, and three other NGO representatives. Each participant was given 10 minutes to speak on rural poverty and reproductive health in his or her country. I was asked to comment on the presentations, adding any further thoughts. My comments are summarized below.

It is clear from all of the presentations that reproductive health is central to the achievement of the MDGs. There is a huge overlap between the MDGs and the aims of UNFPA. This should be more widely recognized. Integrated development programmes, involving female education, mother and child healthcare, skills training and micro-credit were all vital, as was cooperation between governments and civil society.

From the perspective of development NGOs in the west, there are two other issues that stand out: youth and resource mobilization. There is still widespread cultural opposition to teaching young people about sex, but it is today’s young people who are going to have tomorrow’s children. The World Population Foundation (WPF) has a number of youth projects (I mentioned Vietnam and Indonesia) where they are working with “the Dutch model”, an open approach to sexuality that has resulted in the Netherlands having the lowest unwanted pregnancy rates and abortion rates in Europe, if not the world. These programmes teach young people two things – the facts of reproduction and responsible behaviour (including safe sex practices for those who are already sexually active).

The other key issue we have identified is that of resources. Funding for population assistance has been falling steadily since 1995. It is vitally important to invest in programmes that really work and give value for money. In both WPF and the International Foundation for Population and Development (IFPD) we work exclusively with local partner NGOs. We listen carefully to the needs of our local partners and try to maximize the use of available resources. In Mumbai, for example, IFPD works with the Centre for the Study of Social Change on a programme that has been running for two years to provide primary health care, including reproductive health care, in the city’s slums. We are setting up 20 small clinics or dispensaries with a small hospital for referrals. Each clinic caters for the needs of about 1500 mothers and children and costs just $5000 p.a. to run. The hospital, once equipped, will cost under $100,000 p.a. The consumables, medicines and contraceptives are provided by government, and the doctors are young gynaecologists giving their afternoons free.

Roy Brown