PROGRAMME OF ACTION OF THE UN ICPD
Actions
12.21. Governments, funding agencies and research organizations should encourage and promote socio-cultural and economic research on relevant population and development policies and programmes, including indigenous practices, especially with regard to interlinkages between population, poverty alleviation, environment, sustained economic growth and sustainable development.
12.22. Socio-cultural and economic research should be built into population and development programmes and strategies in order to provide guidance for programme managers on ways and means of reaching underserved clients and responding to their needs. To this end, programmes should provide for operations research, evaluation research and other applied social science research. This research should be participatory in character. Mechanisms should be established with a view to ensuring that research findings are incorporated into the decision-making process.
12.23. Policy-oriented research, at the national and international levels, should be undertaken on areas beset by population pressures, poverty, over- consumption patterns, destruction of ecosystems and degradation of resources, giving particular attention to the interactions between those factors. Research should also be done on development and improvement of methods with regard to sustainable food production and crop and livestock systems in both developed and developing countries.
12.24. Governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations concerned, funding agencies and research organizations are urged to give priority to research on the linkages between women's roles and status and demographic and development processes. Among the vital areas for research are changing family structures; family well-being; the interactions between women's and men's diverse roles, including their time use, access to power and decision-making and control over resources; associated norms, laws, values and beliefs; and the economic and demographic outcomes of gender inequality. Women should be involved at all stages of gender research planning, and efforts should be made to recruit and train more female researchers.
12.25. Given the changing nature and extent of the spatial mobility of population, research to improve the understanding of the causes and consequences of migration and mobility, whether internal or international, is urgently needed. To provide a sound foundation for such research, special efforts need to be made to improve the quality, timeliness and accessibility of data on internal and international migration levels, trends and policies.
12.26. In the light of the persistence of significant mortality and morbidity differentials between population subgroups within countries, it is urgent to step up efforts to investigate the factors underlying such differentials, in order to devise more effective policies and programmes for their reduction. Of special importance are the causes of differentials, including gender differentials, in mortality and morbidity, particularly at younger and older ages. Increased attention should also be paid to the relative importance of various socio- economic and environmental factors in determining mortality differentials by region or socio-economic and ethnic group. Causes and trends in maternal, perinatal and infant morbidity and mortality also need further investigation.