J Swanson-Jacobs: General Assembly of African Population Commission of
African Union

16 July 2007

Chairperson
Commissioner of Social Affairs of the AU, Advocate Gawanas
Senior representatives of the United Nations (UN) Population Fund
UN Economic Commission for Africa
African Development Bank
World Health Organisation (WHO)
International Planned Parenthood Federation
Distinguished delegates of African countries, including ambassadors and high
commissioners
Representatives of regional development communities
Representatives of other governments and bi and multilateral organisations and
development partners
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen

Welcome to South Africa. In welcoming you allow me to convey the apologies
of Dr Zola Skweyiya, South Africa's Minister of Social Development, for not
having been able to personally address this ceremony. Minister Skweyiya is the
President of the Intergovernmental Council of the Management of Social
Transformations programme of United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). He is presiding over a meeting of the council
today and tomorrow in Paris, France and requested me to officially open the
general assembly on his behalf.

We are indeed very honoured to host this important meeting of one of the
African Union's vital commissions, the African Population Commission. This
general assembly of the commission takes place at a critical juncture in
Africa's development trajectory, as we are approaching the halfway mark towards
the target date that our leaders set in 2000 for the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. It also takes place two years
after this commission was re-vitalised by agreeing on a new set of rules of
procedure which provided for much more enhanced participation in its
intercessional work by member countries.

We wish to thank the AU's Department of Social Affairs and the outgoing
bureau of this commission for having produced the State of the African
Population Report 2006, which reflects on the implications of population
dynamics for achieving the MDGs. This report on which our deliberations will
centre today and tomorrow, makes a very important point namely that,
"Development is about people, it is about population, men, women and children,
their health, their education, their development potential, their human rights
and their effective participation in the political, social and economic
development of their countries. Population is the most important asset and
resource for any country. Consequently, Africa must strive to ensure it has a
quality population in order to reap the demographic dividend of its large
youthful population by investing in their development and empowerment."

Whilst this point may be common sense to most development activists like
ourselves, it is made about a continent where 88 out of every 1 000 children
born still die before their first birthday and 60% because of malnutrition. In
our continent, women on average still bear more than five children during their
reproductive years and less than a quarter of married women use modern
contraception. According to the AU's Department of Social Affairs, the low
contraceptive use in Africa is often related to difficulties in obtaining
services, women's lack of autonomy in choosing their number of children and low
levels of women's education. These and other statistics on reproductive health
are certainly not unrelated to the fact that most of the world's maternal
deaths occur in Africa. In many parts of Africa, HIV and AIDS have undermined
our quest to improve maternal health.

Chairperson and distinguished delegates, reflecting on the state of Africa's
population, as we will do today and tomorrow, can and must fill us with a sense
of extreme urgency. Soon in fact by the next ordinary session of this general
assembly, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population
and Development (ICPD) will be 15 years old. We, as the continent's leaders in
population and development, will then have to account extensively for the
progress that has been achieved through the programme. Let's not wait until
2009 to respond to the challenges that we're already aware of today.

What is very clear in the State of the African Population Report 2006 is
that "all the eight MDGs relate directly or indirectly to gender equality and
the empowerment of women and almost all the population and development
challenges identified in the report have a gender dimension".

The 2004 African Regional Ministerial Review Conference on ICPD at 10
produced a comprehensive set of recommendations on how to address the
constraints faced to achieve the ICPD objectives on the continent and newly
emerging issues. You will also recall that the review identified a number of
areas in which good progress has been made. Particularly noteworthy was the
finding that all 43 African countries that participated in United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa's (UNECA) survey at the time, "have taken
actions to ensure gender equality and the empowerment of women". These actions
included:
* the promotion of women's full and equal participation in the economy
* improvement in the collection, dissemination and utilisation of
gender-disaggregated data in all sectors
* ensuring that educational institutions provide equal access to women
* the protection of the girl child against harmful practices
* tailoring extension and technical services to women producers
* focussing research efforts on division of labour and control over resources
within the household
* measures to protect the rights of girls and women as well as to address
gender based violence.

Distinguished delegates, before we hasten to congratulate ourselves, let's
also remember that Africa's greatest development challenges' namely poverty,
unemployment, poor health and malnutrition are still predominantly faced by
women. In the 2004 review, our Ministers already identified the need to ensure
that legal mechanisms to promote gender equality be implemented. They also
found amongst others "difficulties with the efforts being made to change socio
cultural attitudes towards gender issues".

This observation reminds us that effective change will not come about merely
by deliberating on population and development challenges in boardrooms and
conference halls. Our agreements have to resonate in community based actions.
Socio cultural attitudes can only be changed by the ordinary men and women who
live in our villages, towns and cities and who find themselves in all walks of
life. In order to effectively advocate population issues particularly gender
equality, we have to understand the needs, fears and aspirations of our people.
Such an understanding will enable us to shift from a paradigm of advocating to
people to one of advocating with people.

I believe that this realisation has increasingly made its way into our
meeting rooms. Clearly, the work of the AU and this commission has become even
more reflective of a realisation that our programmes can only succeed and
remain sustainable if it is based on the will of the people of our countries
and regions.

Many member countries of the African Population Commission have in the past
year collaborated to elaborate our arsenal of plans to address persistent
gender inequality by agreeing on the Maputo Plan of Action on Sexual and
Reproductive Health and Rights (2006), the Accra Communiqué on Safe Motherhood
in West Africa (2006) and the Mafikeng declaration on population and
development in Africa: research and policy dialogue for action (2007).

In the Mafikeng declaration, participants from across Africa have
collectively and individually committed themselves to:
1. collaboration in capacity building and training, to better integrate
population factors into development planning specifically with regards to
gender mainstreaming.
2. use population research as evidence base for policy and programme
development, monitoring and evaluation in partnership with communities and the
men and women who live in them.
3. rigorously dialogue on, discuss and debate population and development
research findings with the involvement of political leaders, government
officials, academics, the private sector, non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), civic society and trade unions.
4. enhance people's access to knowledge and quality information, to empower
everybody, especially women to benefit from development programmes and public
services.
5. support and strengthen our regional and continental intergovernmental
organisations to create conditions that are conducive to sustainable human
development in Africa.

Chairperson and distinguished delegates, to conclude over the past two years
the African Population Commission (APC) has developed a number of mandates,
some of which I have mentioned, through which to act on the sense of extreme
urgency that I referred to earlier. I also mentioned that this general assembly
takes place at a very important point in time for our continent. The State of
Africa's Population Report 2006 leaves no doubt about what our challenges
are.

I want to call on all the delegates and development partners present at this
general assembly to use these mandates to invigorate our re-vitalised APC. Let
us use today and tomorrow to agree on taking the knowledge that we will gain on
the state of Africa's population back to our regions, our countries and most
importantly to our cities, towns and villages to irrevocably change the
development status of our continent and to irreversibly empower our women.

Thank you!

Issued by: Department of Social Development
16 July 2007