Opening address to the Sixth Ordinary Session of the General Assembly of the African Population Commission of the African Union (AU), by Dr Jean Swanson-Jacobs, Deputy Minister of Social Development, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa

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