The new challenge: translating Cairo success into meaningful activities.

The newly-named Commission on Population and Development, at its 199 5 session (New York, 21 February-2 March), stated it should have the primary responsibility for reviewing the follow-up and implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in September 1994.

"The Progrmnme of Action adopted in Cairo clearly recognized the need to empower women both as an important end in itself and as a key to improving families, communities and countries", Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told the 26-member body. It also broke new ground with regard to reproductive rights, moving away from a narrow focus on family planning and fertility in favour of a comprehensive approach to reproductive health. "With success comes challenge", she continued. And the current challenge was to translate the Programme of Action into meaningful activities, she went on.

A new name

The Commission--a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council--also decided that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the implementation of the Programme of Action, set up by the Secretary-General, be established on a permanent basis and be accountable through the Commission for systemwide coordination.

To emphasize the Programme's new and comprehensive approach to population and development, the Population Commission was renamed the Commission on Population and Development by the General AssembLy. The Commission, to meet annually beginning in 1996, will review population trends and policies, and follow up recommendations of the Population Conference.

Dramatic changes on the horizon

Underlining the many complex and politically controversial issues to be faced by the Commission in the coming years, Joseph Chamie, Director of the Population Division of the Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, said there had been dramatic population changes in recent decades, including unprecedented growth rates, increasing urbanization. rapid changes in fertility levels and the use of contraceptives, and improvements in mortality, as well the rise of HIV/AIDS.

In debate, some countries reviewed their national experiences in population matters, stressing how the Programme of Action would influence their policies. The need for increased resources for national population-related activities was also emphasized.

An uneven picture of population trends emerged from some Commission discussions. While China's representative described a near-crisis situation marked by a net increase in population of 14 million per year in her country, the representative of the Russian Federation expressed concern over the decrease in Russia's population, which had gone down by half a million over the past year.

86 million more last year

At mid-1994, world population stood at 5.63 billion persons, a report on world population trends and policies revealed (E/CN.9/1995/2). During the preceding 12 months, population had grown by 86 million and was expected to grow by an additional 87 million during the next 12 months. Currently, 4.47 billion persons--79 per cent of the world population--lived in less developed regions. The total population size in the more developed regions was 1.16 billion.

Between 1990 and 1994, world population had grown at 1.57 per cent per annum, significantly below the 1.73 per lent per annum at which population had been growing for the past decade and a half. The current growth rate was the lowest recorded since the Second World War and marked the resumption of the trends of declining growth rates that had prevailed from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the report stated.

UN medium-fertility-variant projections indicated that the population growth rate would continue declining, to 1.33 per cent per annum between 2000 and 2010: 1.15 per cent in 2010-2020: 0.95 per cent in 2020-2030; 0.72 per cent in 2030-2040; and 0.54 per cent in 2040-2050. Consequently, the world population was projected to reach 7.5 billion by 2015 and 9.8billion by 2050.

More aid given

The UN system had continued to strengthen the substantive content of its programmes and increase the volume of financial assistance to developing countries, according to a report on monitoring of multilateral population assistance (E/CN.9/1995/3). Assistance for population programmes had increased from $220 million in 1988 to $305 million in 1992, the bulk of which came from UNFPA.

Family planning, integrated with reproductive health and carried out through a primary health-care system, continued to receive the bulk of multilateral resources, the report added. There had been a decrease in allocations for basic data collection and analysis and population-dynamics research in the past two years.

Women's concerns were increasingly being mainstreamed into substantive areas of population assistance, especially in reproductive health and family planning, basic data collection, population dynamics and the formulation and implementation of policies.

At the same time, projects to improve the status of women, such as education for girls, leadership training, literacy programmes, and projects designed to increase the income of women and their families were being supported by multilateral agencies.

The effort to broaden the scope of the UNFPA programme to encompass a more comprehensive reproductive health-care approach was a notable feature of the Fund's work in 1993 and 1994, it was reported on 20 January (E/CN. 9/1995/4). That had been accompanied by efforts to satisfy unmet needs and to contribute to the empowerment of women. UNFPA had also sought to strengthen and refine its programme process, focusing on strategic programming and its requisite policy and technical assistance.

An update on global contraceptive requirements from 1994 to 2005 estimated that some 55.7 billion condoms would be needed for contraception, and an additional 14.6 billion for the prevention of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The total cost of contraceptive commodities for the 12-year period was estimated to be $7.7 billion.

Population Award shared

The 19951iN Population Award will be shared by Dr. Halfdan Mahler, Secretary-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children.

Dr. Mahler has served as Secretary-General of the Federation since 1989 and was Director-General of the World Health Organization from 1973 to 1988. He was nominated for his distinguished career in public health, including his strong leadership in the areas of reproductive health, family planning and worldwide population issues.

The Inter-African Committee is a regional non-governmental organization founded in 1S84 to fight traditional practices harmful to the health of women and children, especially female genital mutilation.

RELATED ARTICLE: The World's largest city

Tokyo is currently the world's largest urban agglomeration, with 26.5 million residents in 1994, more than one-and-a-half times as large as New York--the second largest--which has 16.3 million.

Other large urban agglomerations are: Sao Paolo (16.1 million); Mexico City (15.5 million); Shanghai (14.7 million): Bombay (14.4 million); Los Angeles (12.2 million); and Beijing (12.0 million).

UN statistics also reveal that 45 per cent of the world's population are urban dwellers. By 2025, more than three fifths of the world's population should be urban.

The urban growth rate in the less developed regions reached 3.5 per cent per annum during 1990-1995, compared with only 0.8 per cent in more developed regions. One third of Africans and Asians live in urban areas, in contrast to 7 of 10 people in Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania.