The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) organized a meeting of SADC officials to review ICPD at 20, in Maputo, Mozambique from 25-28 March, in preparation of the forthcoming SADC Ministerial conference.
With the theme ICPD Beyond 2014: Creating a more equal and sustainable future for the 258 million people who live in the SADC region, this participatory and inclusive meeting was attended by officials from 10 SADC countries as well as representatives of civil society organizations, the youth and UNFPA in Mozambique.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Planning and Development, Salimo Valá, said that the objective of the 2010-2015 Mozambique development plan was to guarantee a better life for all in their respective countries by addressing population issues and other development challenges.
Bettina Maas, UNFPA representative inMozambique, thanked the regional community and the Government of Mozambique as chair of the SADC for their initiative in monitoring implementation of the ICPD agenda in the region and producing the sub-regional report in accordance with the Ministerial commitment made in Maputo in 2004. She reminded delegates that the SADC Officials Meeting on ICPD comes a month after Mozambique hosted another regional event on women and gender in preparation for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
“Since the world approved the global agenda on population and development issues in Cairo in 1994, evaluation meetings on its implementation and redefinition of strategies have been taking place every five years,” she said.
“We remember with great satisfaction that the SADC region has always maintained this tradition and sought to systematize jointly, advances and challenges for the region, firstly with the aim of being included in the African Union reports and secondly, to make sure that population issues be given special attention in the development plans of each member country.”
It was her conviction that the regional strategy on ICPD @20, which would systematize common aspects that countries would like to feed the ICPD agenda after 2014, would only be effective if it was considered as an integral part of the priorities that would set the future agenda of global development in post 2015.
“This can only happen if we emphasize that without the effective integration of population and development issues such as sexual health and reproductive rights, gender, girls’ education, HIV and AIDS, migration and rapid urbanization, we cannot achieve the Millennium Development Goals.”
The SADC has engaged the services of a consultant to review countries’ ICPD beyond 2014 reports and to use the outcome of the Maputo meeting to produce a final draft recommendation for the SADC ministerial conference to be held on 27 June in Maputo.
The meeting was supported technically and financially at the Country and Regional Office levels by Population & Development (P&D) Technical Adviser Mady Biaye and P&D Programme Adviser Richmond Tiemoko, from UNFPA's East and Southern Africa Regional Office.
The following draft recommendations were made at the meeting:
- Recognize the role of population dynamics and structure as key determinants of development and engage these to realize social, economic and sustainable development outcomes;
- With the support of partners and stakeholders, implement appropriate policies and laws aimed at managing population growth, achieving demographic transition and the realization of the ‘demographic dividend’ through support to voluntary family planning;
- Increase universal access to quality, affordable, comprehensive and integrated maternal health, sexual reproductive health and rights services, including voluntary family planning;
- Increase community social mobilization to create demand and uptake of reproductive health services especially to the underserved groups, including people with disabilities.
