[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, last month over 160 countries debated and 
signed a powerful and far-reaching document that will direct global 
efforts to curtail population growth and overconsumption problems for 
the next 20 years. This document was the outgrowth of the International 
Conference on Population and Development [ICPD] which I believe was one 
of the most successful U.N. conferences in recent history.
  As the chairman of the Senate delegation, I was pleased to join 
Senator Alan Simpson and other Members of Congress and the U.S. 
delegation--which included administration officials and a wide array of 
nongovernment organization representatives--in attending the Cairo 
conference. I would like to take a few minutes to share my thoughts on 
this important and historic gathering that I believe will make a 
significant contribution toward addressing the critical population and 
development issues into the 21st century.
  First, let me say that the United States was very well represented by 
its delegation led by Vice President Al Gore. I particularly want to 
thank Under Secretary of State Tim Wirth, who did an outstanding job of 
consensus-building and helping to deliver a final product that I 
believe will prove enormously valuable as time progresses. I worked 
closely with Under Secretary Wirth during the time I was in Cairo and I 
know that he and his staff and the United States delegation members 
worked extremely long hours, often under trying circumstances, to 
maneuver through the labyrinth of diverse interests, and to bring the 
vast majority of parties to agreement. In addition, I want to commend 
President Mubarak and the Egyptian people for their warm hospitality 
that was evident everywhere and for the great effort that they invested 
to host such a successful conference.
  Today, the world's population is over 5.5 billion people. In just 1 
year's time, that number will grow by over 90 million people--the 
equivalent of adding the populations of California, New York, New 
Jersey, Texas, and Florida combined. Reliable projections estimate that 
the world's population will double by the middle of the next century. 
While these figures are staggering in and of themselves, they are even 
more sobering when one takes into account that this growth is occurring 
after a two-decade effort to promote family planning worldwide.
  Most of the increase in population will occur in less-developed 
countries in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Latin 
America--those areas which are least prepared to accommodate such 
growth and whose governments currently have trouble meeting the basic 
needs of their citizens today. In many of these areas population 
problems are exacerbated by institutional and cultural factors that 
inhibit the equality of women. For instance, in some countries it is 
illegal for men to have vasectomies and women need the written 
permission of their husbands to have medical procedures producing 
sterilization. Another area of grave concern is the proliferation of 
the traditional practice of female genital mutilation which poses 
enormous psychological and public health dangers. There are more than 
100 million women and girls alive today who have been affected by this 
harmful medical procedure, the vast majority in Africa. Without 
increased education and awareness, an additional 2 million girls will 
be subjected to this inhumane custom each year. In addition, deaths of 
women from pregnancy complications and from unsafe abortions now total 
hundreds of thousands per year.

  Of equally significant concern are the U.N. projections that, while 
the global population is increasing, the world's natural resources base 
is on a steady decline. The U.N. food and agriculture organization 
predicts that by the year 2010 the world will be subjected to a double 
digit net loss per capita--ranging from 10 to 30 percent--in renewable 
resources, including fish catch, irrigated land, cropland, rangelands 
and pastures, and forests. In addition, 26 countries currently have 
insufficient renewable water supplies within their own territories to 
meet the needs of a moderately developed society at their current 
population size, much less after further growth.
  Unchecked human-induced environmental degradation will lead to 
environmental decline which will bring about additional widespread 
flooding and erosion caused by deforestation and overgrazing; worsened 
drought and crop losses from desertification; as well as pervasive 
marine pollution and fisheries losses from wetlands destruction and 
overfishing. Ultimately these disasters will lead to massive problems 
of famine, disease and other human hardships.
  With these looming global crises, the United Nations in 1991 called 
for a conference to address the critical problems of overconsumption 
and overpopulation. For the past 3\1/2\ years, delegates from around 
the world have been meeting to develop an all-encompassing program of 
action to present to participants at the Cairo meeting. In the interim 
the United Nations also held a global sustainable development 
conference--often called the Earth Summit--in Rio de Janeiro in June, 
1992. The Rio conference, while focusing on sustainable development, 
did not specifically address the growing population crisis but 
acknowledged that population issues were a critical component of 
sustainability and would be addressed through the global forum in 
Cairo.
  The final preparatory committee meeting, prior to the Cairo 
conference, was held last April and succeeded in producing a draft 
document of which 92-percent received unanimous agreement--a major 
accomplishment given a text of 16 chapters and over 115 pages with 
issues ranging from migration to environment to adolescent education.

  In light of the enormous success of the preparatory meetings, it was 
indeed regrettable that so little press coverage of the Cairo 
conference focused on the areas of unanimous agreement and so many 
stories focused exclusively on one contentious issue--abortion. This is 
particularly true since the United States position was quite clear: the 
United States does not view abortion as a component of family planning. 
It is true that the press did not have to go far to find critics who 
were willing to air their views, because the conference's message--
increasing womens' individual freedoms and economic opportunities--was 
not welcome in many male-dominated nations and within the hierarchy of 
the Roman Catholic Church.
  Unfortunately, by focusing so exclusively on one narrow aspect of the 
crosscutting document, I fear the press wasted an important opportunity 
to enlighten citizens about the global issues or sustainable 
development, adolescent education of boys and girls, child health and 
infant mortality, and refugees that impact the population debate. I 
find it amazing and distressing that in reporting about such a sweeping 
document with such widespread support through an open, conciliatory 
process the media would focus so much of their coverage on only one 
controversial facet.
  Ultimately, after much dialogue and debate, a compromise was reached 
which was supported my many countries with predominantly Muslim and 
Catholic populations, including Brazil with the world's largest 
Catholic population and Pakistan, a Muslim country which played a key 
role in advancing the negotiations. In fact, the Vatican ultimately 
endorsed major portions of the Cairo document that included sections 
on, for lack of a more descriptive term, the empowerment of women--the 
first time the Vatican has ever supported such an international 
statement on this topic. Empowering women refers to increasing 
opportunities for women to become better educated and to increase their 
decision-making and economic opportunities and means. This is critical 
to reducing population growth since studies have shown a direct 
correlation between education and lower birth rates.
  So, what is in this global consensus document and why is it important 
for countries to fulfill the commitments made in Cairo?
  In my view, the international conference on population and 
development made enormous strides in focusing the world's attention on 
the urgency of the population crisis and in establishing a global 
framework within which to address our world's population problems.
  The final document embraces a new approach which couples a continuing 
emphasis on family planning and other health services with the 
previously undervalued but important roles of education and empowerment 
of women--areas that will enable women to take more responsibility for 
their own lives. This is a major step forward from past population 
conferences.

  At the 1974 population conference in Bucharest, when many countries 
were wary of any effort to address such issues, the agenda focused 
primarily on promoting family planning services.
  In 1984 the United Nations gathering was held in Mexico City. Under 
the control of the Reagan-Bush administration, the United States 
delegation split from the majority of nations which called for global 
efforts to address population problems and withheld its support for 
many international family planning initiatives.
  However, in 1994, the United States played a key role in advancing 
the new emphasis of empowering women and winning over many of the more 
conservative countries that initially had withheld support for some of 
the key provisions in the document. Among the factors in this outcome 
was the expertise of the U.S. delegation's nongovernmental organization 
representatives, whose participation was critical.
  The final program of action is an all-encompassing document that goes 
far beyond previous efforts. In addition to providing universal access 
to family planning programs, it stresses the need for increased efforts 
in maternal and child health care. It has been demonstrated many times 
that when families believe their children will live to adulthood, they 
will take steps to ensure they will have fewer children.
  This conference, following up on the call at the Earth summit in Rio 
to address the need to link population and consumption issues with 
environmental concerns, focused on the need for sustainable 
development. Expanding on the efforts of the Rio summit, the Cairo 
document states that, to achieve sustainable development and a higher 
quality of life for all people, countries should reduce and eliminate 
unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. Also, countries 
are urged to promote appropriate population-related policies and to 
work to eradicate poverty as an indispensable requirement for 
sustainable development.
  Several chapters of the Cairo document are focused on the need for 
universal access to health-care services, including those related to 
reproductive health care and family planning. Included in this measure 
is a call to address the issue of unsafe abortion in the 172 countries 
that allow some form of legal abortions. Much time at the conference 
was spent grappling with language about unsafe abortions, and the final 
document acknowledged each country should establish practices for safe 
abortions that are consistent with its own national laws. Successfully 
addressing this problem would have a significant impact on the 200,000 
women who die each year from unsafe abortion. In addition, there was a 
call to reduce the demand for abortion by providing universal access to 
other critical health care and family planning services. This also 
would help to reduce the 500,000 deaths per year due to complications 
from pregnancies. The Cairo document recommends making family planning 
and other reproductive health services more widely available and 
broadening accessibility to underserved groups such as teenage youth, 
including young men, and indigenous peoples.

  Another important aspect of the document is its assessment of 
existing resources and specific resource needs for family planning, 
reproductive health services, sexually-transmitted disease prevention 
including HIV-AIDS, and biomedical and social science research.
  So, the pertinent question, now that this conference has concluded 
successfully, is where do we go from here? What follow-up steps should 
the United States be taking to fulfill our Cario commitments? The 
Federal Government must significantly expand its efforts to work with 
the private sector as well as to reach out to the bilateral 
organizations and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank to 
encourage them to make population a significant consideration in their 
work. In addition, we must seek ways to enhance the effectiveness of 
our ongoing efforts and to improve our coordination with and outreach 
and technical assistance to southern countries. And we must better 
educate the American people concerning the importance to all Americans 
of the U.S. investment in this global effort to meet the goals set 
forth in the Cairo action plan, which are expected to cost $17 billion 
per year by the turn of the century.
  This is an daunting challenge, but if each country accepts an 
appropriate share of the responsibility, we can realize enormous 
benefits for the quality of life of all humankind. I believe the United 
States can and must continue to provide strong leadership to accomplish 
these objectives. I hope that the Senate, in the months ahead, will 
join me in helping us achieve this new world vision.

                          ____________________