April/May 1995, Pages 67, 100-101

Issues in Islam

Cairo Population Conference Still Controversial

By Greg Noakes

The United Nations' International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo last September provoked widespread and probably overdue debate in the Muslim world. Heated discussion among delegates over the wording of the conference's final action plan—particularly concern by Muslim nations and the Vatican over statements on abortion, homosexuality and sex outside marriage—paled beside the fiery debate carried on in the court of public opinion. One Egyptian observer called it the biggest debate in the Arab and Muslim world since the Gulf war. Seven months later the rhetoric has cooled and the ICPD post-mortem is being conducted dispassionately, yet the disagreements between advocates and opponents of the conference remain red hot.

According to sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim of Cairo's Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, planning for the conference began in early 1994. Demographers and family planning advocates immersed themselves in the logistics of a conference involving 3,500 delegates from 189 nations, holding 32 preliminary conferences to arrange the venue and set the agenda before the actual Cairo meeting, notes University of Maryland professor, physician and demographer Abdel Rahim Omran. As the organizers drew up plans, public opposition to the ICPD was building.

In April of last year conference officials began to pick up "vibes of what was coming—an attack on the concept of the conference and on the conference itself," Ibrahim told a recent seminar at Washington, DC's Population Reference Bureau. The attacks on the conference "snowballed" by summer, he says. Islamists were the first to voice their opposition, followed by other religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, and finally various parties opposed to the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations and other international organizations. "The ICPD was portrayed to the public by the Islamists, and then others, as a conference to propagate abortion, homosexuality, adultery, permissive sex and general immorality," Ibrahim asserts. "The word 'development' in the conference title was overlooked" by conference opponents, he says.

Longstanding Fears

Omran believes the conference fell victim to longstanding fears about Western intentions in the Muslim world. "For the last 30 years we have been fighting a conspiracy theory that the West wants to reduce the number of Muslims," Omran told an audience at the Middle East Institute in Washington. The debate moved from one of demographics to a battle over cultural values. Omran, who is an adviser on population issues to Egypt's Al-Azhar University, notes that contraception is discussed in a number of medieval Islamic medical texts and "if anything, family planning was taken from the Muslims, not imposed on them." The shift over the last several centuries in the balance of power between Islam and the West, though, has led many Muslims to see family planning as a Western innovation designed to weaken the Muslim world, Omran explains.

On the other hand, Imad ad-Dean Ahmad, a Harvard-educated astronomer and president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a Muslim think tank in Bethesda, MD, believes preservation of Western hegemony was the starting point for ICPD organizers. "The significance of the conference was the revival of colonial and imperial ambitions, not through direct military occupation or overt control via a puppet regime, but through the use of a world body like the United Nations," Ahmad told the Washington Report. "The U.N. is ostensibly dedicated to world peace, but it also seeks to establish a uniform international policy on certain issues." These policies reflect the interests of the "first world" at the expense of developing societies, according to Ahmad.

It was such fears that galvanized popular reaction in the Middle East against the conference. Saad Eddin Ibrahim compares the "highly concerted and coordinated" campaign against the ICPD to the mudslinging tactics of an American political race. "All weapons of mass destruction were used against the conference, its organizers, its hosts and anyone attending the conference," the sociologist declares. The Ibn Khaldoun Center looked at over 800 articles on the ICPD published in seven Arab countries and found that some 600 opposed the Cairo conference.

As criticism of the meeting mounted, Muslim governments became "paralyzed, fragmented and defensive," according to Ibrahim. Of the Muslim world's leaders, only Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—the conference's host—and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto attended the ICPD. The decision by other government leaders to cut their public opinion losses was not limited to the Muslim world. According to Ibrahim, of the 64 heads of state who originally committed themselves to attend the ICPD, only 28 actually appeared.

Mixed Results

The results of the conference discussion itself were mixed. While the ICPD was known as "the Cairo conference," Omran points out that it was actually three conferences: the official plenary conference, a meeting of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with population issues, and a third session which brought together parliamentarians from various countries. The official conference, which drafted the final action plan, was limited to official government delegations and quickly bogged down over controversial cultural and moral questions. Six days of the nine-day conference were devoted solely to the issue of abortion, Omran notes, leaving more pressing problems on the margins. He points to "an obsession" among conference organizers with achieving consensus in the meeting. "They wanted to have a consensus on everything. Even on abortion they wanted a consensus," Omran says.

Conference critic Imad ad-Dean Ahmad agrees. "The conference itself wasn't engaged in debate; everything in the conference agenda was set beforehand," he says. "The debates which did occur, like that over abortion, were largely symbolic." Issues like democratization, economic reform, the role of civil society and equitable distribution of resources "should have been confronted at the conference and they were not," according to Ahmad.

"If the aim of the conference organizers was to deal with development-related population issues," he says, "they should have confined the discussion to the most important aspects of the debate and opened it up to points of view other than those of the developed world." Ahmad believes that room for constructive exchange exists, pointing to the treatment of women in the developed world as instructive for the Third World while arguing the West could learn from traditional societies' emphasis on the family as a social and economic support network and the tendency toward early marriages as a preventive measure against premarital sex, unwed mothers and the breakdown of the family unit.

His criticism of the official delegations' conference notwithstanding, Abdel Rahim Omran points to the NGO and parliamentarian meetings as examples of constructive discussion. Some 6,000 NGOs were in attendance in Cairo, according to Omran, and many of these are continuing to produce studies and documents sparked by the ICPD.

Omran believes the parliamentarians' sessions were even more productive, allowing experts to present their findings to members of the legislative bodies which, in many cases, formulate the population strategies in their countries. "These are the people who set policy and allocate resources for health programs, so they are very important," Omran says.

Three Themes

In his presentation to the parliamentarians in Cairo, Omran stressed three themes. First, he emphasized family planning as preventive medicine. "Even in countries where they think they don't need to curtail their populations, they still have to do child spacing to protect the health of the mothers and children," he says.

Second, models of population growth differ from society to society and don't always follow the example of the developed world, Omran notes. In many countries, population growth is sparked initially by a drop in mortality rates, with an adjustment in fertility rates coming later. Changes in disease patterns, such as a decline in communicable diseases and a concomitant rise in illnesses like heart disease, cancer and diabetes, result from changes in social and economic factors within society and also affect population growth.

Finally, Omran stressed the need for cultural sensitivity on the part of the parliamentarians. "A family in one culture may not be the same as in other cultures," he says. Family planning programs must be adapted to different populations with different social and cultural norms.

If the charged atmosphere around the conference hindered substantive discussion of population and development issues, would a more inclusive approach have been more productive? The Ibn Khaldoun Center's Saad Eddin Ibrahim says conference organizers should have tried to bring elements within the Islamist movement into the conference fold in the initial planning stages. He argues that Islamists are not monolithic in their attitudes toward family planning, pointing to the example of Iran, which sent a delegation to the ICPD. While the Iranian government opposed family planning immediately after the Islamic revolution, according to Ibrahim economic problems compounded by an exploding population led to a reversal of policy. Iran now actively encourages family planning among its citizens.

Imad ad-Dean Ahmad of the Minaret of Freedom Institute agrees on the need for broader participation, but is skeptical of the motives of the ICPD. "If the conference organizers had been sincere in trying to hold a kind of 'world town-meeting,' that is obviously what they should have done," Ahmad replied when asked about the ICPD reaching out to the Islamic movement. If, on the other hand, conference officials simply wanted Muslims' approval of a predetermined document rather than constructive input, hopes for Islamist participation would be "very unrealistic," according to Ahmad.

Deeper Divides

While some criticism of the conference revolves around issues of organization and participation, the disagreements also mirror deeper divisions on the issue of family planning itself. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Abdel Rahim Omran both point to the limited water resources of the Middle East as the most important factor in the need for population planning. "We are an arid region," Ibrahim told the audience at the Population Reference Bureau, "so the increase in population and demographic growth make population issues particularly important." The region's next round of conflicts will be "water wars," Ibrahim predicts.

Omran argues that "water is the new Malthusian check. The carrying capacity of water in a country will determine that country's population size." Omran points to disputes over the waters of the Nile, Euphrates and Ganges rivers, as well as the provisions on Jordan River water in the recent Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, to demonstrate the potential for either conflict or cooperation.

Imad ad-Dean Ahmad, by contrast, argues that other issues need to be considered when examining the question of population growth in the region. "What happened to the old 'population bomb' predictions?" he asks. "We have a whole different set of problems, which are better dealt with through reforms to political and economic systems, such as establishment of democracies and the right of private ownership...I don't think the problem is with population itself, but with the distribution of resources and the repressive systems in place in the region. The Muslim world can support much larger populations."

Ahmad says a different model of development should be applied. "Agricultural societies can effectively use large populations; family farms need large families." By contrast, Western industrial societies "need a lower rate of population growth. Industrial societies require small, mobile populations." In effect, the Middle East is being judged by an alien scale, Ahmad believes.

A Continuing Debate

In the future, according to Saad Eddin Ibrahim, supporters of family planning must identify their opponents and "prepare their battle well." In addition, "NGOs should not depend on governments for support. Forces in civil society should not wait for the government to do everything." As for strategy, Ibrahim has one message. "Gender will be the focus of all the battles for development and democratization. Women will be the focal point in our part of the world." He noted that the Islamist message of change appeals to many women, who are often the most illiterate, least employed and poorest segment of society. "The agenda for women has to take priority in every sense—morally, organizationally and financially," Ibrahim believes.

Omran calls the Cairo conference a "temporary setback," but argues that the initial opposition to family planning can be overcome. "If you know how to handle it, you can use it to your advantage. Confrontation will not get you anywhere," he says. Omran noted that international population conferences continue to be held, including an Al-Azhar seminar this spring to introduce Muslim theologians to demographic issues.

Conference critic Ahmad believes the emphasis on overarching governmental population efforts is misplaced, arguing that decisions about population growth are made by individuals. "There is a difference between family planning and population control," he says. "The Cairo conference dealt with population control. Family planning is a decision made by the husband and wife about the size of their family in light of their particular circumstances. It's not a product of global population goals."

Despite their differences over the methodology and merit of family planning and reduced population growth in the Middle East, there is one thing that most participants in the arguments over the Cairo conference can agree upon: the sun has yet to set on this debate.

Greg Noakes is the news editor of the Washington Report.