THE CAIRO CONFERENCE: FEMINISTS VS. THE POPE
- Lindsey Grant
- July 1, 1994
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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THE CAIRO CONFERENCE: FEMINISTS VS. THE POPE
An NPG Forum Paper
by Lindsey Grant
July 1994
The UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) is scheduled for September 5-13 in Cairo. It will try to agree on a “Programme of Action” to guide UN and (theoretically) national and local population activities for the next 20 years. A draft of the Programme now exists, and it appears that efforts to stop world population growth will be seriously diluted as groups with different objectives press their agendas.
The writer is an erstwhile Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population Affairs.
The final preparatory conference for the Cairo meeting (“PrepCom III”) was held in New York City in April. A New York Times headline characterized the lineup as “Vatican Fights Plan to Bolster Role of Women”, and that pretty well summarizes what happened at the conference) Many delegations (including the U.S.) sought a sweeping declaration of the rights and needs of women, coupling it only very loosely to the issue of world population growth. The Vatican, mobilizing a few responsive governments, fought back in an unusually blunt effort to weaken the language concerning women’s rights and to delete references to family planning, “reproductive health” and, above all, abortion. It succeeded only in getting such references “bracketed” (marked for final decision in the September conference.)
In the process, very little was heard about the population issue.
The population community has learned not to expect help from the Vatican. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that improvements in the status of women will help to bring human fertility down. To some considerable degree, the interests of the population community should parallel those of the feminists.
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Lindsey Grant is a retired Foreign Service Officer; he was a China specialist and served as Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs, National Security Council staff member, and Department of State policy Planning staff member. As Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs, he was Department of State coordinator for the Global 2000 Report to the President, Chairman of the interagency committee on Int’l Environmental Committee and US member of the UN ECE Committee of Experts on the Environment. His books include: Too Many People, Juggernaut, The Horseman and the Bureaucrat, Elephants in Volkswagen, How Many Americans?