FOREWORD

Population is a central component of development. When the predecessor of today’s United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific was established more than a half century ago, population growth in the region was beginning to accelerate rapidly. This phenomenon was the result of the rapid progress that was being made in combating diseases, thus improving the survival chances of the population, at a time when fertility remained high. The post-war era quickly became characterized by large average family size and an increased dependency burden for households and society. [View more]

Non-governmental organizations working in the field of health were among the first to recognize the implications of this trend for the health of women and children and began to promote and advocate family planning. Existing and newly independent States, which were beginning to plan for their own future, also began to recognize the implications of the rapidly expanding population for meeting the basic needs of their people and improving their access to basic services. This led to the emergence of national family planning programmes in many countries of the Asian and Pacific region. Concurrently, modern methods of family planning were beginning to be developed and introduced. At the same time, the countries and territories were also beginning to feel the need for adequate and reliable data on population trends for research on the nexus of population, development and poverty, and for building national capacities to deal with the emerging issue of rapid population growth.

It was in this context that the Commission in its early years decided to convene a decennial population conference as a statutory organ of the Commission to review the status of the population and development situation in the region and recommend specific actions. Since the first conference at Delhi in 1963, four more such decennial conferences have been convened, the most recent being the one held at Bangkok during the period 11-17 December 2002. Recognizing the importance of population in the development process, the United Nations decided to establish what is now called the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 1969. ESCAP and UNFPA have remained at the forefront all those years in helping the countries to understand and address the issues of population and development, build their capacities and exchange information and knowledge among each other. They have worked closely together
in rendering support to population programmes in member countries, and have collaborated in organizing the decennial population conferences, which have been so important that they set the tone for the deliberations at the global gatherings that soon followed the regional conferences. As a result, and owing to the sustained commitment of its countries and territories, the Asian and Pacific region has made remarkable progress in the attainment of social and economic
development. However, progress has not been uniform across the region, as countries pursued different policies and programmes. As a result, the region is very diverse demographically and economically. The issues of population, development and poverty, therefore, vary among the countries of the region, and have also evolved over time.

The Fourth Asian and Pacific Population Conference, which was held in Bali, Indonesia, in 1992, highlighted the inextricable link between population dynamics and sustainable development; it demonstrated that population issues are much broader than just family planning. Around that time there were fundamental shifts in the way population issues were being viewed. The most notable shift occurred during the International Conference on Population and Development, held at Cairo in 1994. The Programme of Action adopted at that Conference called upon countries to move away from target-driven family planning programmes to a rights-based reproductive health approach that meets the needs of couples and individuals.

While the people of the region have benefited in general from the fruits of progress, millions of people in the region still remain in abject poverty. Therefore, the main theme of the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference, held at Bangkok in 2002, was “Population and poverty in Asia and the Pacific”. The Conference also identified emerging issues, and the links among those issues and development and poverty.

The present publication brings together a collection of papers prepared by the secretariat, UNFPA and invited experts that were presented at the Conference. It is our hope that, together with the Plan of Action on Population and Poverty adopted at the Conference, this collection of papers will provide a valuable resource and fresh vision for all those interested in population and development issues. This publication makes it abundantly clear that addressing population issues is integral to national efforts to alleviate poverty and accelerate socio-economic development.