• Public health vs rights based approaches

Public health vs rights based approaches

In the year 2000, a set of goals to improve the lives of the poorest people in the world (afterwards called the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs) were adopted at the historic Millennium Summit at the United Nations. Produced by the UNFPA, this document shows how the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)'s Programme of Action can contribute to the realisation of the MDGs. The ICPD consensus advocates universal access to education and health care, including reproductive health, and pays specific attention to the empowerment of women in relation to these issues.

This paper is divided into four parts, the first part discussing the various Millennium Development Goals and the second and third parts presenting the ICPD and the ICPD+5 goals, a new set of benchmarks based on the progress made towards achieving the ICPD goals five years later. The last section highlights the direct link between ICPD and the MDGs.

The paper starts by listing the MDGs and then shows how the ICPD Programme of Action contributes to the goals. In particular, the MDGs were concerned with:

• the number of people living in extreme poverty, universal access to primary education and the promotion of gender equality
• a number of health issues such as maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases
• ensuring environmental sustainability by integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and building a global partnership for development
• reinforcing the ICPD consensus on population and development which focuses on the same rights of universal access to education and health care, including sexual and reproductive health
• making connections between the ICPD goal of empowering women and the MDG of alleviating poverty, as a woman with access to education, health care and work outside the home will be better equipped to combat poverty for herself and her family.

The ICPD and ICPD+5 goals were more specifically concerned with issues of education, maternal and infant mortality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, with a focus on women’s empowerment in each of these areas. The paper shows how achieving these goals will go a long way to reaching the broader MDGs:

• Universal access to voluntary reproductive health care and family planning will help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, thereby freeing essential resources for the poorest families. It will also help reduce child mortality and improve maternal health
• Universal access to education and reproductive health care is crucial in the fight against HIV/AIDS in particular but also against other diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis. Better education will provide better information to prevent transmission of the diseases, and access to health care will also help disseminate information and improve treatment of those infected
• The strain on the environment is crucially related to population growth; it could be significantly reduced if people are better informed about sustainable ways of living.

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