Written 8:03 PM Sep 9, 1994 by icpd:ngonetny in igc:icpd.general ---------- "Pakistan's Shahnaz Wazir Ali Speaks" ---------- Copyright, Women's Feature Service, All Rights Reserved Western Bias Mars Draft Pakistan's Shahnaz Wazir Ali Speaks Out By Jennifer Griffin Cairo, Sept. 8 (WFS) -- While the U.S. and others seem to be doing backflips to accommodate the Holy See, Muslim countries complain that their point of view has been ignored. "This conference and this draft plan of action has provoked controversy because it doesn't focus on the problems that face the Third World countries," said Pakistan's Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Benazir Bhutto's special assistant on the social sector. "A vision of the world which is predicated on a Western view of the world has been propagated. And since a large part of the world does not subscribe to a Western view of the world and the Islamic countries have an Islamic culture and system of life, we feel we should be able to talk about the issues that concern us. And these issues do not concern us," she said. In particular Pakistan strongly opposes language in the draft proposal that encourages sex education in schools. "Whereas sex education may be a requirement of certain societies because of the development of their society, we in Pakistan and in most of the Muslim countries feel very strongly that sex education should only be given at an age when a person is adult enough to understand it," Ali argued. With a population of 126 million growing at 2.9 percent a year, Pakistan has one of the highest growth rates in the world. Its population doubles every 25 years. Only China and India add more to the world's population on an annual basis. Each year there are another 3.5 million Pakistanis born, but so far no aggressive campaigns to promote family planning have taken off. "Our government is definitely in favour of population planning. But our problems with regard to population planning do not lie in the area of sex education and adolescent sexuality," Ali said. "They are more with respect to the delivery of services, the building of infrastructure that is effective." But Pakistan's problem is that married people are having more children than they can support. On average, every woman in this conservative Muslim country has 6.7 children in her lifetime. Most women get married in their early 20s, become pregnant in their first month of marriage, and remain that way for three-fourths of their childbearing years. "A lot of these are Western concepts," Ali countered. "We don't believe that the first child should be delayed. In our society if a woman does not produce a child in the first year of marriage, she gets divorced because her mother-in-law says she is barren." "We believe that there should be a first child," said Ali. "It is after this first child is born that we want this spacing. When the woman goes to the doctor for her first child, we want to catch her there." But only 55 percent of all Pakistanis, three-fourths of whom live in the rural areas, have access to a doctor or clinic. Only 35 percent of Pakistani women are attended to by a health worker when giving birth. Abortion exists, even though it is technically illegal. "We are opposed to abortion as a means of contraception and family planning. We only approve of abortion when the life of the mother is in imminent danger. In that situation we believe it is better to save the life of a mother than that of an unborn fetus." Pakistan is one of several countries, including Bangladesh and Iran, which compromised this week on their stand on section 8.25 of the draft programme, which deals with abortion. But they remain rigidly opposed to educating young people about contraception. "We certainly do not condone that contraception should be available to people outside of marriage. This is the absolutely clearcut policy of this government. It does not provide contraception to unmarried people," said Ali, who is leading Pakistan's delegation to the conference. The percent of married people who have access to contraception is under 30 percent. Unmet demand for contraceptives is 54 percent. Pakistan's most important strategy for attacking its galloping population includes an awareness campaign that advertises condoms in movie houses. But ads on television and in the newspapers are often said to be obscure. Few, if any, directly advocate the use of contraceptives. Instead these ads talk about infrastructure being strained if people have large families. No scare tactics are used and little urgency is felt in these messages. Bhutto's government has budgeted only Rs1.2 billion (or $40 million) to population programmes this year. She has tried to implement a programme which trains 30,000 female health workers in the rural areas, but the Asian Development Bank is funding salaries for only 12,000 workers and the project remains in a fledgling stage. Nonetheless, the concept of training women at the village level is a good one. "If you look at the traditional village scene, women are not going to leave their homes and walk one mile to a clinic that says 'Family Planning'," Ali explained. "Even educated women find it difficult to go into a family planning clinic." "If there is a woman who is trusted as a traditional birth attendant and people know that they can go to her house when their children are sick then the women will visit her. And when they visit her she will also tell them about family planning." Ali said that infrastructure, not ideology, is the problem faced by Pakistan. "Pakistan Muslim society is not retrogressive, and fundamentalist and reactionary, and not wanting to adopt family planning. People are ready to adopt contraception," Ali said. "I really feel that cultural differences have not been taken into account [at the conference]." "Our problem is not to give sex education in schools. It's not to talk about contraceptives for adolescent sexuality. It is not to say that gays and liberality and all that is permitted. It's not to say that abortion is the right thing. Our problem is that we want to make sure there are clinics that rural women can go to."