Women, Population and Development: Stakes and Strategies for Cairo

THIS PAPER IS the report of a seminar held in preparation for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that took place in Cairo in September 1994. The seminar was organized by the francophone African Association of Professional Women Journalists (APAC) together with Yeewu Yewwi, a Senegalese feminist organization, to agree strategies on how to approach the impending summit in Cairo. The first day of the three-day seminar was devoted to presentations covering demographic problems and political solutions, gender relations, reproductive rights, health and morbidity, technology, the NGO sector and other developmental issues. The topics reviewed form the basis of the IPCD programme of action addressed throughout the seminar. On the second day, the participants split into working groups to exchange experiences and to pursue structured in-depth discussions on the presentation topics. These workshops presented strategies to be adopted by NGOs in the field. The final day of the seminar focused on a prepared text that was discussed paragraph by paragraph by the participants and which was adopted as the Declaration of Dakar. This is reproduced in full and sets agendas calling for wider involvement of women in political and developmental processes. Reproductive rights and health are identified as major themes both for research and practical action.