PROGRAMME OF ACTION OF THE UN ICPD
B. Towards a new commitment to funding population and development
Basis for action
14.8. There is a strong consensus on the need to mobilize significant additional financial resources from both the international community and within developing countries and countries with economies in transition for national population programmes in support of sustainable development. The Amsterdam Declaration on a Better Life for Future Generations, adopted at the International Forum on Population in the Twenty-first Century, held at Amsterdam in 1989, called upon Governments to double the total global expenditures in population programmes and donors to increase substantially their contribution in order to meet the needs of millions of people in developing countries in the fields of family planning and other population activities by the year 2000. However, since then, international resources for population activities have come under severe pressure, owing to the prolonged economic recession in traditional donor countries. Also, developing countries face increasing difficulties in allocating sufficient funds for their population and related programmes. Additional resources are urgently required to better identify and satisfy unmet needs in issues related to population and development, such as reproductive health care, including family-planning and sexual health information and services, as well as to respond to future increases in demand, to keep pace with the growing demands that need to be served, and to improve the scope and quality of programmes.
14.9. To assist the implementation of population and reproductive health care, including family- planning and sexual health programmes, financial and technical assistance from bilateral and multilateral agencies have been provided to the national and subnational agencies involved. As some of these began to be successful, it became desirable for countries to learn from one another's experiences, through a number of different modalities (e.g., long- and short-term training programmes, observation study tours, consultant services).