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UN / POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
STORY: UN / POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
TRT: 02:45
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 01 APRIL 2019, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
RECENT - NEW YORK CITY
1. Tilt up, exterior, UN Headquarters
01 APRIL 2019, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, dais
3. Med shot, delegates
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Ashley Judd, Goodwill Ambassador, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA):
“As soon as women’s bodies become an ideological battleground, women suffer and we all lose. The political symbolism of the issues at stake, rather than the concrete reality of the lives that are affected is trumping the rights of women and girls to simple things like family planning that they are actually entitled to by law. And it pains me to see that here at home, at the UN, these divisions seem to have encroached in recent years and prevented the UN Commission on Population and Development from finding its natural consensus for the past three of the four years.”
5. Wide shot, audience applauding
6. Med shot, Courtenay Rattray, Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations and Chair of the 52nd session of the Commission on Population and Development
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Global women’s demand for family planning is increasingly being met by the use of modern contraceptive methods. Yet, in 44 countries, less than half this demand is being met, and in many countries, sadly, we are seeing past gains eroded by a push back on women’s rights. It is time for the world to show greater ambition and urgency around SDG implementation that is fully aligned with the Cairo Programme of Action.”
8. Wide shot, dais
9. Wide shot, press conference
10. Close up, photographer
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Natalia Kanem, Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA):
“We greatly regret the withdrawal of funding for life-saving sexual and reproductive health services by the United States and other member states who have adhered to the so-called global gag rule. It’s very important to understand that when we speak of comprehensive sexual, universal access to sexual and reproductive health, and also to comprehensive sex education for young people to be able to understand the life-cycle and the human relationships which may lead you to procreate or may lead you to decide to delay pregnancy. That the inhibition of funding for really vital services, including in humanitarian settings, has hampered the delivery of quality services in the locations and in the areas where women vitally need them most.”
12. Med shot, journalists
13. Wide shot, end of presser
Speaking at the opening of the 52nd session of the Commission on Population and Development, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Goodwill Ambassador Ashley Judd, said she was “pained” at the lack of consensus in the Commission and said that “as soon as women’s bodies become an ideological battleground, women suffer and we all lose.”
Judd said, “the political symbolism of the issues at stake, rather than the concrete reality of the lives that are affected is trumping the rights of women and girls to simple things like family planning that they are actually entitled to by law.”
In her address to the Session, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said, “global women’s demand for family planning is increasingly being met by the use of modern contraceptive methods”, but “in 44 countries, less than half this demand is being met.”
In many countries, she said, “we are seeing past gains eroded by a push back on women’s rights” and stressed it was time “for the world to show greater ambition and urgency around SDG implementation that is fully aligned with the Cairo Programme of Action.”
This year’s Commission is an opportunity to take stock and review progress made since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which took place 25 years ago in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The 1994 event resulted in a Programme of Action, based on the idea that investing in individual human rights, capabilities and dignity, is the foundation of all sustainable development.
At a latter press encounter, UNFPA’s Executive Director Natalia Kanem said, “we greatly regret the withdrawal of funding for life-saving sexual and reproductive health services by the United States and other member states who have adhered to the so-called global gag rule.”
Kanem said, “the inhibition of funding for really vital services, including in humanitarian settings, has hampered the delivery of quality services in the locations and in the areas where women vitally need them most.”
Data from the UN shows that progress has been made in many population-related areas, but that there is a significant regional disparity. In all regions, for example, people are living longer, with average global life expectancy rising from 65 to 72 years, but there is a 15-year gap in that figure, between citizens of the most and least-developed countries.
Child mortality is also moving in the right direction, having fallen by half in the last quarter-century but, here again, there is a marked regional disparity. Child mortality levels in Sub-Saharan Africa have dropped from 180 to 78 deaths per 1,000 births, but the child mortality rate in the region is still 15 times higher than that of children born in developed regions.
As for family planning needs, 78 per cent of women who are married, or living with a partner, have access to modern methods of contraception - up from 72 per cent in 1994 - but that figure drops to less than 50 per cent in 44 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and the southern Pacific island nations.
90 per cent of urban growth is projected to take place in Africa and Asia over the next two decades, and the share of the world’s population living in urban areas is expected to rise from 56 per cent now, to 68 per cent by 2050.
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