Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Three weeks ago, in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, more than 400 members of parliament and ministers representing over 119 nations gathered together at a conference that was focusing on the ICPD+15. I know that is UN jargon; actually, what ICPD stands for is the International Conference on Population and Development.

Fifteen years ago in Cairo a very important conference was held, which was a real milestone in the history of population and development as well as in the history of women’s rights. At that conference a very strong group of men and women, who represented many countries, for the first time agreed that population issues are not just about numbers but really about people. That conference shed a new light on the linkages between reproductive health and rights, and other aspects of development. A real rights based consensus emerged, which laid the foundations for subsequent international forums and an international development planning process, including the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, which was held the year after, and then the whole process around the millennium summit and the development of the Millennium Development Goals.

The program of action determined that everyone everywhere should have access to sexual and reproductive health and family planning. This year, at the Cairo +15 conference we discussed just how we can improve on our implementation on the program of action and on the delivery of the extraordinarily important Millennium Development Goal No. 5, which is about improving maternal health. That is, indeed, the key to development.

We were very privileged at that conference to have great sponsorship from the Netherlands government, which is a real leader in this area, and also a focus by the UN community, which is again stating that the population development debate is key to our future and key to how we actually attain the Millennium Development Goals. We know, and we hear consistently through evidence and through reports to our nation, that there is one woman dying somewhere in the world every minute in childbirth or related complications or in the horrors of unsafe abortion. Clearly, Australia as a nation and the international community have to question our progress to date and what more we have to do.

I was there representing the Australian group on population and development as part of the ASEAN forum. I was not formally representing Australia because that was not the status of this conference, but I was very pleased to be able to give a report on what had been achieved in Australia. It was great to be able to report there, with politicians from more than 119 nations, the progress that Australia has made and the commitment that our government has made to maternal and child health through increases in our aid budget, and also in processes like the establishment of the population and development group, which was one of the first formed after the 1994 Cairo conference. We politicians—a group of brave politicians, and certainly I want to pay tribute to Senator Margaret Reynolds who was part of that group, and who was so important in developing these issues in Australia—formed a cross-party parliamentary group of politicians who shared interests and concern about international development and the process of population.

When we gave our report at the conference we were able to talk about a range of issues that Australia had prepared. One of them was the fact that finally, earlier this year, we were able to, through the government, have AusAID family planning guidelines changed, which were, until then, limiting the form of reproductive health that was available through our aid program internationally. At the same time as those guidelines operated to limit the access to a range of reproductive health across the world where we were providing aid, there was a drop in a Australia’s funding for family planning services over an 11-year period of over 84 per cent. The removal of the limitation in the guidelines does not mean that automatic change will have to happen. What it means is that there will be access to reproductive planning and reproductive health rights in countries that are part of our aid program.

Our Minister for Foreign Affairs, through his decision, has pledged that all women in countries where we provide funding should have the same rights as women in Australia, where those rights and services are permitted by their laws. Remember—and this is one of the horrific statistics—that more than 15 per cent of all maternal deaths in our region are due to unsafe abortions. Sadly, when women know that they cannot support, feed, educate or care for yet another child, they resort to any means they can. We know that no-one should promote abortion—it is not something we promote. We say that, where this process is legal, it should be ensured that services are safe and accessible.

We can proudly say that Australia is the largest provider of funds of development in the Pacific and an important provider of funds in all parts of Asia. In addition, our foreign minister has recently announced increased support in Africa, particularly in the area of maternal health. In Addis Ababa, listening to the comments and the statements made by parliamentarians representing other countries, we heard of the enormous struggle and the successes that have been achieved in fighting for sexual and reproductive rights in their own countries. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, there is still a refusal to face the fact that unmarried women can be sexually active and do deserve protection from unplanned pregnancy, from HIV and other sexually transmitted conditions. We also learned about the struggle in the Philippines, where there has been a struggle for over a decade to push a reproductive health bill through the parliament. Despite cultural, religious and economic differences, a thorough, passionate and a very strong statement was agreed upon and acclaimed by all the nation is in attendance. It stated:

Access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights and family planning for all women is a top priority. Investing in the health and rights of women and girls is smart economics for families, communities and nations.

The declaration pledges to increase commitment, funding and access to reproductive rights and family planning services to necessarily engage with young people, to enhance health care systems, to empower women and to undertake legal reforms conducive to the protection and enhancement of reproductive rights and health. Our Prime Minister has committed our government to funding for development to reach at least 0.5 per cent GNI by 2015. We have continued to stick with this commitment, and restated it, despite the global financial crisis. In addition, we have specifically committed the government to maternal health and to MDG No. 5.

Our government has provided the initial financial support for a truly wonderful support program called SPRINT, which provides training to make sure that sexual and reproductive health is part of our humanitarian response for refugees and internally displaced people affected by natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes and floods. We know that women give birth regardless of the situations they face. We also know, too sadly, that women and girls are raped, and that rape is one of the most disastrous and dangerous weapons of war. Contraception is an urgent need and it is one of the first requests by women who are fleeing disasters. Members of our parliament have attended training, evaluation and information sessions on the SPRINT project and will be studying its implementation further during a tour in the Philippines in December in the wake of the recent disasters. I strongly commend my colleagues who are passionately keen to expand and promote this important project. The program will now be rolled out, with the assistance of our government, in east and west Africa. We know that the incidences of war and humanitarian crisis in these areas make great demands on all our services. After amazing consultation with people who work in these areas, we know that there must be a focus on the situation of women and girls, particularly those with the horrific stories that we know have been documented about the overt use of rape as a weapon of war.

While I was in Ethiopia, I was very pleased to be able to visit amazing clinics run by the Marie Stopes International organisation. At the time I visited, there were more than 30 women, some with their partners, lining up for examination, treatments and advice which included a simple but very safe clinic for childbirth. I could talk to mothers and fathers with their babies about how important it was that NGOs like Marie Stopes were able to operate there. To see the security and happiness of the families who were able to know that their births were safe and secure, and that they had strong support from the people who were professionally trained to provide that support, made all the theory that we talk about—all the MDGs talk about the needs—come to life. We must ensure, and consistently hear, that there is access for women to give birth in safety and security, and to have effective professional services.

This does not seem to be too much to ask in our modern world, but, in way too many countries that are focusing on working their way through poverty and more, this simple service is not provided. When you are lucky enough to see the families who do have access, you see the difference it makes. They are able to effectively plan their families, offer security to their children and build the basis of a strong family life.

In separate clinics, which have been operating in the area for many years, young women had the opportunity to learn about family planning issues and, if necessary, safe access to abortion. This was not focused specifically on the need to terminate; rather, again, it was to provide information and appropriate devices and opportunities for women and their partners to make choices effectively. That is particularly in a country like Ethiopia, which has faced so many problems, with its history of warfare and, now, horrific famine problems through drought. These areas are where we most need to concentrate on in providing support to families and to women.

We also visited, in the afternoon, a child and victim friendly court, which has been developed in Ethiopia’s legal system with the assistance of UNICEF and is based very clearly on the South African model. It is great to see Australian funding going towards these projects. We also have young Australian professionals working in the field. These courts are particularly focused on young offenders and victims. Tragically, the second most common charge against children in this area, after theft, is rape. This makes it most clear that we need to provide effective educational services and give real help and assistance to NGOs that are working in the field trying to make a difference in the area. So much is needed in education, information and health services.

In Ethiopia, more than half a million women are living with HIV. It is a standard situation. Again through the MDG process, we have focused on providing help for people who have HIV. More than half a million women have been diagnosed with HIV, but that does not take into account the number of women who have not been able to seek medical help and are suffering without support. It is estimated that 5.4 million children have been orphaned in that country. The numbers just roll out. More than 720 out of 100,000 women die in childbirth. That is a 60 per cent improvement on the year 2000, when 1,800 out of 100,000 women died in childbirth, in circumstances that women in this country could not even begin to understand. Certainly we cannot allow those figures to remain into the future. It is a challenge to all of us to meet that need. Thirty-nine percent of the population of Ethiopia live in absolute poverty—poverty that we cannot even begin to imagine. More than half do not have access to improved water sources, and very few women have the small fortune of a trained medical practitioner helping them through childbirth. Thousands of women die as a result.

These are figures and circumstances to which we, as part of the world community, have a responsibility to respond, and we can. There are real opportunities for us, through our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, to provide support to NGOs such as Marie Stopes International, UNICEF and various others that are working in the field to make a genuine difference in an area that is suffering real horror.

It is important to realise that most of the world’s poor live in our region, in Asia, where the most populous countries are. The birth rate in our neighbour Timor-Leste is one of the highest in the world, second in our region to Afghanistan. Timor-Leste, that tiny, fragile new nation, has a steep path to climb to development, and we have a chance to provide assistance.

We learnt at the meeting in Addis Ababa that, in the wake of the global financial crisis, 115 million more people will be pushed into chronic hunger and that, even with economic stimulus initiatives and an apparent turnaround, it will be at least three years before more jobs are created and before an increase in living standards is felt by the poor. Right now, more than one-sixth of the world’s population suffers chronic, extended, devastating hunger. Even the best economic and social practices will take several years to redress this situation, so there is no option: we must act now.

Our Parliamentary Group on Population and Development has been working with parliamentarians in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste to develop parliamentary groups on population and development in their own parliaments. We are not coming in from outside saying how it should be done; we are working with parliamentarians to develop their own options. In our region, in Papua New Guinea, the maternal mortality rate has doubled over the last decade. Timor-Leste, the newest nation in the world, has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and the second-highest in the region at just under seven live births per woman. An important task for our group will be to ensure that the Australian government and the community understand that MDG 5Aand 5B are vital for effective development and achieving all of the MDGs. MDG 5 is to improve maternal health. This has two elements. Part A is to reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio. Part B—which has now been accepted by the UN—is to achieve universal access to reproductive health.

As well, importantly, the essential links between climate and population need to be understood, without detracting too much from the all-too-scarce resources available to sexual and reproductive health rights. When the parliamentarians gathered in Cairo 15 years ago, the issue of climate and the destruction of our environment was not linked automatically into the discussion. One of the key changes that has happened in the 15 years since then has been that we now acknowledge that the issues around population and development are intrinsically linked to issues around the environment. We acknowledge that we need to work effectively to look at issues of population moving forward, how our environment must be protected and the all-too-real threats of climate change. These issues are not separate; they should not be competing. They are part of an overall challenge that we as an international community must confront.

Specific commitment to sexual and reproductive health is a key priority for our work in our region, and also for the various networks across the globe, and for meeting the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development for universal access to reproduction and sexual health. In addition, pressing to ensure the commitment of 0.5 per cent GNI to development funding and increasing funding to UN agencies working in this area will be high priorities.

It is incredibly valuable to work with parliamentarians from across the world who share the focus on these issues. That is one of the real strengths of the ICPD network. As we gather to look at Cairo plus 15 we could share the successes and also the difficulties that parliamentarians across the world are facing. However, it is incredibly empowering to know that we are part of an international network of people working together to look at these issues and to ensure that the real focus of the people who met in Cairo 15 years ago will be maintained into the future.

We know that the issues of population and development are linked to the issues of the future of our globe. We know that, as we were debating 14½ years ago now, the issues of women and men working together to face the challenges to our world can be maintained by all of us. With the real support of parliamentary colleagues in Australia—at the state level and also federally—and parliamentarians across the world, we will work together to make the ICPD program of action a reality, because, as we have said many times before, there is no way that any woman should die giving life.