Since its founding, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has used its small field staff and its political clout at headquarters to build consensus, to encourage policy-makers to pay attention to population and push for action. When Nafis Sadik assumed control of UNFPA in 1987- the same year the organization changed its name to the United Nations Population Fund-the emphasis shifted from consensus building to action with women as the focus of attention. The shift came at a time when donor nations began demanding that the UN use their money for more nuts-and-bolts activities.
Sadik was uniquely qualified for the job. She had begun her career as a doctor and family planning educator in her native Pakistan, making a name for herself as someone who could win over both peasant women and their husbands and be politically savvy as well.
As she prepared for the third global population conference, the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, Sadik decided to make women's rights-largely sidestepped at Bucharest 20 years before-the centerpiece of the plan. Sadik's strategy was to give grassroots organizations a direct say in the Cairo document, thus addressing a problem that had dogged governments for all of UNFPA's 25 years: By trying to impose policy from the top, population programs often created resistance at the bottom.
Thus, in April 1994, as delegates gathered at UN headquarters to draft the conference documents, more than 4,000 representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)-overwhelmingly dominated by women's groups-were registering to attend their own conference, the NGO Forum. In earlier deliberations, in New York, they started pushing for freedom of choice in reproduction and child-rearing and for a far stronger emphasis on educating and improving the skills of women in the developing world. Their presence in Cairo in September 1994 ensured that the decision-making delegates at the summit across the street would be held accountable for years to come by a well-organized network of determined women.
"Governments are losing authority," observed Steven W. Sinding, director of population sciences at The Rockefeller Foundation. "That vacuum is being filled by NGOs, which are now defining the agenda. I don't think any future UN conference will be controlled by governments as past UN conferences were."
The 20-year plan that resulted from the Cairo conference was hugely ambitious, demanding primary education and literacy for everyone, better employment opportunities for women and universal access to basic health services. In all, it would take billions annually to implement. More than that, in many countries it would require a virtual revolution in thinking.
Although thousands of women flew to Cairo as delegates, most returned to countries, and homes, where almost all decisions are made by men. "We are in the minority of those making the laws," said Bene Madunagu, a family planning advocate from Lagos, at the NGO meeting in Cairo. "Men will have to have the will to change those laws."
Over the 26 years of its existence, UNFPA has made some real gains in spreading a family planning culture and the message that uncontrolled population growth can drain a nation's resources and devastate its environment. The UN may still be seen by some as a Western-dominated institution intruding on developing world sensitivities. Yet in many countries UN funding has resulted in new, national population policies and action plans, marking a break from past reluctance to tackle the issue at all.
Looking back over UNFPA's life, Sinding summed up: "The old argument that characterized the issue since 1974-development versus family planning-is over. Today we know we have to work on both."
By: Vivienne Walt, (excerpt from The Population Challenge), from: A Global Affair: An Inside Look at the United Nations, published by Jones & Janello, copyright 1995, all rights reserved.
