JANE
ROBERTS: MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS & 34
MILLION FRIENDS OF UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND (UNFPA): 20/09/2008
(MaximsNewsNetwork)
UNITED
NATIONS - / MaximsNewsNetwork / 20
September 2008 -- Listen to Secretary General of the United
Nations Ban Ki-moon: "In women the world has the most significant but
untapped potential for development and peace.
"
Yet,
there has been no concerted worldwide push to move potential to reality.
Indeed
only minimal progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which tilt
somewhat toward women, have been forthcoming.
Achieving
Goal One of halving the number of people living on less than one dollar
per day would be of great benefit to women and children as they constitute
almost two thirds of the people in this category.
Achieving
Goal Two of universal primary education would also benefit girls. The U.N.
specifically states “boys and girls” in the language. Of the
illiterate people on the planet today, about two thirds are women.
Every
single piece of research says that when a girl can read, and especially if she
goes to secondary school, she marries later, better, has fewer children whom she
educates and cares for, earns income during her life, and participates in the
life of her community. Empowerment par excellence.
In
certain regions of the world there are wide disparities in school attendance
between boys and girls. In many regions, the need for girls to be educated is
not recognized.
Promote
Gender Equality and Empower Women is MDG Three. Achievement of this goal would
mean equality for women at all levels of education. This would lead inexorably
to equality in economic, social, and political realms. One cannot overemphasize
the need for governments to put resources into quality education for girls and
boys, for women and men.
One
of the impediments to Goal Three is a worldwide shortage of teachers and the
resources to pay them properly. And surging population in many areas exacerbates
the short-fall.
Millennium
Goal Four calls for reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015. The number
of children under 5 dying every year stands at 9.2 million down from 10 million
in recent years. Under-nutrition is estimated to be an underlying cause in more
than one third of all these deaths.
But
notice that thirty-seven percent of these children die in their first month. The
ill health, the poor diet, the multiple pregnancies fast upon each other of the
mothers are the underlying causes. These tiny things slip in and out of life. I
cry for their mothers.
Millennium
Goal Five is Reduce Maternal Mortality by three fourths. Over 500,000 women die
every year as a complication of pregnancy or childbirth. To call upon the world
to reduce this number was the purpose of the Women Deliver worldwide conference
in London last October. The video “Dead Mums Don’t Cry” left me in tears.
I must mention again that the United States, at first a co-sponsor, dropped its
sponsorship when the United Nations Population Fund became a prominent player.
On the first morning, UNFPA’s Executive Director Thoraya Obaid stated that
women’s rights are human rights. Surely surviving childbirth should be a human
right. A simple c-section would save huge numbers of these lives.
Do
you remember the International Conference on Population and Development in
Cairo, Egypt in 1994? No?Well most of the world has forgotten it too. One
hundred seventy-nine countries promised by 2015 universal access to the highest
standard of reproductive health including family planning. Surviving childbirth,
controlling fertility, and freedom from sexually transmitted diseases are
certainly three aspects of the highest standard of reproductive health. What
does it say about the world’s commitment to women when there is a worldwide
shortage of family planning commodities including condoms which play a dual
role?
Goal
Six calls for halting, then reversing, the advance of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and
other diseases. Tens if not hundreds of billions are being spent. I want to play
a little devil’s advocate here and wonder out loud if perhaps investing
worldwide in enough food, clean water, and sanitation wouldn’t bring a bigger
return on investment. But then again, it is all a question of priorities.
Reducing the trillions spent on arms would allow for food, water, sanitation,
and disease fighting. Incidentally, in Africa, married women are the most at
risk population for contracting AIDS.
Let’s
talk about population, family planning, and the “A” word, abortion.
World
population stands now at between 6.7 and 6.8 billion people. The U.N. predicts
between 9.0 and 9.2 billion of us by 2050. Absolutely nothing good can come of
this for human beings, the environment, and peace and stability. The United
Nations will become nothing but a crisis response, crisis management entity.There will be no resources left for long term peace building.
There
are between 76 and 80 million births over deaths every year. According to the
World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute there are 210 million
pregnancies in the world every year, twenty percent ending in abortion, i.e. 42
million, more than half of which are illegal, unsafe causing untold misery and
death.A major cause of this
astronomical number of abortions is the lack of adequate reproductive health
care and a lack of access to family planning. To me this borders on the
criminal.
That
is where my dedication to 34 Million Friends of the UN Population Fund comes
from. UNFPA offers the pro-life family planning that we in the developed world
take for granted. UNFPA, supported by 180 countries last year but not by the
United States of America, does not perform abortions but offers the family
planning that saves both women’s and children’s lives.
I
spoke earlier about a worldwide shortage of teachers. The shortage is just as
acute for health workers. UNFPA has attempted to bring to the world’s
attention this dearth, particularly in Africa, of doctors, midwives, nurses,
technicians. I met dedicated professionals when I was a guest of UNFPA in Mali
and Senegal in 2003 but I could see how the numbers needing care were far
outpacing the carrying capacity of staff.
Africa
now has a total population of 945 million people rising to 1.937 billion by 2050
with a present total fertility rate of 4.71 children per woman.Let’s be honest. Africa, with these figures, has no chance of meeting
the needs of its inhabitants.
Asia
has a population now of 3.995 billion people rising to 5.217 billion by 2050.
They will all want food, water, energy and economic “growth.”This will place a huge strainon
their and on the world’s resources. The total fertility rate in Asia is 2.36
children per woman.
The
Arab states total 335 million people, a fertility rate of 3.40 children per
woman and a population rising to 598.5 million by 2050. Many Arab states are
suffering from political instability, gender inequality being at least in part a
contributing cause.
Reread
what Ban Ki-moon said at the top of this essay.Ponder the words of Stephen Lewis former U.N ambassador to Africa for
AIDS: “I challenge you to enter the fray against gender inequality. There is
no more honorable or productive calling.There
is nothing of greater import in this world. All roads lead from women to social
change.”
Listen
to Allan Rosenfield, Dean Emeritus of the Mailman School of Public Health at
Columbia University who 20 years ago wrote the groundbreaking paper “Where is
the M in MCH? (Where is the “maternal” in the field of maternal and child
health?) “It is not enough to know for the sake of knowing. We have the
responsibility to act on what we know.Acting
on knowledge is an imperative.And
that imperative we can truly delight in.”
We
need people to act on what they know for the women of the world, for their
equality, education, health, and human rights. And secondarily, we need 34
million Americans who will delight in becoming one of 34 Million Friends of the
United Nations Population Fund.
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