Wealthy countries must donate billions more dollars to ensure women's reproductive rights and cut population growth, a U.N. report said.

If nations fail to keep their pledges, plans to balance the world's people with its resources and improve the status of women by 2015 may not be met, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) "State of the World Population 2004" report.

More girls in poor nations are being educated and more countries have policies to ensure their rights since the goals were set a decade ago at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.

But over half a million women still die from pregnancy-related complications each year and the global population is growing, the report said.

"Even as the needs continue to mount, the response of the international community has been -- to put it plainly -- woefully inadequate," UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid told reporters.

Donor countries have given only about half the $6.1 billion a year pledged by 2005 and lack of funding is impeding progress.

"Quite a bit of progress has been made in the past 10 years but it is not as we had hoped it would be. We still have quite a way to go to reach the targets set for 2015," Obaid told Reuters.

HALFWAY POINT TO 2015

The UNFPA report marks the halfway point to the deadline set at the Cairo meeting.

"It is a call for governments to invest in the education, health and human rights of women and young people to ensure a more equitable and sustainable world," said Obaid.

The report is a summary of surveys done in 160 countries to gauge their progress since the Cairo meeting. It shows many nations have enacted laws or policies to guarantee women access to family planning and protect them from domestic or sexual violence.

"Policies have been adopted but implementation is not as fast or as widespread as we would like it to be," said Obaid.

Three-quarters of countries have national strategies to deal with HIV/AIDS and the use of contraception has increased from 55 percent in 1994 to 61 percent today.

But there are about 200 million poor women in developing countries who still do not have access to effective birth control and huge gaps exist in the availability and quality of healthcare between rich and poor.

"World population will rise from 6.4 billion today to 8.9 by 2050," Obaid said.

"Although families are getting smaller in many regions, the 50 poorest countries will triple in size, to 1.7 billion people."

She believes that the fact that a woman dies every minute from a pregnancy-related complication is the most glaring indicator of the rich/poor health divide.

Reference Source 89
September 16, 2004

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