Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the Rafael Salas Memorial Lecture, Economic and Social Council Chamber

[Delivered at the General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York, November 26, 1997]

Globalization and
population policy

IT IS MOVING to speak in memory of Rafael Salas, whom I knew as a classmate in high school, then as a friend and later on as a colleague in the Philippine Government. To say he was an exceptional human being, a dedicated public servant and a visionary international statesman may not do justice to this compleat citizen of the world.

Dr. Salas has left the indelible stamp of his philosophy and personality on the United Nations Population Fund, an organization to which he devoted the best and most productive years of his life.

Let me also salute the incumbent Executive Director, Dr. Nafis Sadik, who now bears the legacy of Dr. Salas and who, supported by the dedication and expertise of her coworker, has made the UNFPA exert a great and positive difference in world population affairs.

It is only fitting that I also acknowledge the support that the United Nations Secretary-General, His Excellency Kofi Annan, has given to the UNFPA activities and to its work. The Secretary-General, I am confident, will continue to accord our sustainable development approach to population policy and its infinite ramifications the priority and urgency they deserve.

Since the seventies, more and more countries have accepted market-oriented reforms that have opened up their economies, unleashed their productive capacities and integrated them into world markets.

The massive economic energy liberated by globalization has brought real human benefit.

The benefits for global welfare

The United Nations Development Program’s 1997 Human Development Report sounds an encouraging note in that, during the past half-century, worldwide poverty has declined more than that of the previous 500 years and has been reduced in almost all countries.

The UNDP report notes that since 1960—a little more than a generation ago—developing countries have halved their infant mortality rates, cut malnutrition rates by almost a third, and reduced the proportion of children out of primary school from some 50 percent to less than 25 percent. China and 14 other states with populations that add up to 1.6 billion have halved the proportion of their people living below national poverty lines in barely two decades.

By the end of the 20th century, 3 billion to 4 billion people will have experienced substantial improvements in their standards of living, and about 4 billion to 5 billion will have easier access to basic education and health care.

The 1997 UNDP report estimates that the effects of the Uruguay Round alone will more than double global income from $212 billion to $510 billion between 1995 and the year 2001.

These figures show some of the bright areas and the overall improvements that have marked the upliftment of human welfare for the past 25 years. While statistics and numbers may seem uninteresting, I mention them because they are critical to any intelligent approach to population policy.

First, because population policy, whether national or global, must be viewed realistically in the context of the sweeping world trends that shape the quality of modern human existence.

The big-picture reality

Second, because, like it or not, economic globalization and advances in science and technology constitute the most important big-picture reality of the dimensions of our lives today.

Third, because it is in the pursuit of sustainable development, fueled by economic globalization, where lie the seeds of humankind’s continued survival as a species on this earth.

And fourth, because we hope to raise the morale of the large community of population workers, which may sometimes flag when we see the magnitude of the tasks that lie ahead. Those tasks, despite 50 years of hard labor and hard-earned progress, continue to appear as Olympian challenges.

The UNDP 1997 Human Development Report paints a still grim picture of human deprivation.

• More than a quarter of the developing world lives in poverty.
• About one-third of the population in developing countries, 1.3 billion human beings, lives on incomes of less than $1 a day.
• Some 160 million children are malnourished.
• Some 110 million children are out of school.
• Nearly a billion people are illiterate.
• Some 840 million people go hungry daily or face food insecurity.
• Some 500,000 women die yearly at childbirth in developing nations—at rates 10 to 100 times higher than those in developed countries.

The costs of globalization

UNDP and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report the unevenness of the benefits of globalization:

• Two-thirds of all foreign direct investment has gone to only eight developing countries, and only 20 developing countries were considered credit-worthy in 1996.
• Developing countries lose $60 billion a year from trade barriers in industrial nations.
• High unemployment continues in many countries.

Developing countries have also had to shoulder often unaffordable social costs required by structural adjustments necessitated by globalization.

These should be seen against other disturbing global economic trends and imbalances, as noted in the 1997 report of the UNCTAD:

• The global economy continues to grow slowly. Since the beginning of the nineties, world output growth has averaged 2 percent, compared with roughly 3 percent in the eighties.
• North-South income gaps continue to widen. In 1965 the average per capita income of the G7 countries was 20 times that of the world’s poorest seven nations. Today it is 39 times as much.
• Only in East Asia have some countries been able to close the income gap with the North. In some East Asian economies, per capita income has surpassed that of the more affluent and mature economies.

Some 80 million more people yearly

And, as a final note, the 1997 report on the world social situation indicates that although current world population growth rates have been the lowest since the Second World War, and will continue to decline, about 80 million people will be added every year to the world’s population from now until the year 2025.

World population will grow from about 5.8 billion today to more than 6 billion by the year 1999—only two years from now.

This is the same general environment that the Philippines faced when my Administration came into office in mid-1992. At the very start, we decided that the Ramos Presidency would be guided by three major imperatives, all of which would condition our population policy.

First, that we had to empower ordinary people to give them back control of their lives and destinies. The Philippines had suffered two decades of dictatorial rule and oligarchic mismanagement, and we were determined to overcome this sorry legacy.

Second, that we would emphasize our democratic system and national development of a sustainable kind at one and the same time. Democratic government and political freedom were restored to the Philippines through the People Power Revolution of February 1986. For Filipinos, there is no other way but democratic development. This has been our consistent national purpose since our revolutionary forebears sparked, 100 years ago, the battle cry of independence and national sovereignty.

Government by consensus

Third, that in the Ramos Administration, we would adopt the practice of government by consensus. From the beginning, we would govern by confidence-consultation and consensus building from the grassroots on up to the national leadership. Using these principles, we worked hard to get the basic programs right—to establish the conditions most conducive to steady growth, equitable development and rational population policy.

Our shared vision of “Philippines 2000,” operationalized by the Medium-Term Development Plan for 1993-98, provided the blueprint that has enabled us to engineer our recovery and restart our growth. Early on, we determined that national economic revitalization would build on an empowered people who would depend on market forces, be competitive in an integrated globalized market.

So, we opened our country to greater economic reform and completion. We have achieved so far the biggest surge in the country’s exports in recent years at an average growth rate of 16 percent to 18 percent over the first four years, and an unprecedented 25 percent growth valued at $25 billion for the first 10 months of 1997. We mounted the most sustained effort in the Philippine experience to modernize national infrastructure.

Simultaneously, we launched a comprehensive Social Reform Agenda, to attack the root problems of poverty and inequity head on. Our Agenda targets our country’s poorest regions, the most marginalized groups and the most disadvantaged sectors. Poverty alleviation, social and health services, and livelihood programs have not only been organized but made to focus and converge on these priority areas. Special regard is given to our indigenous peoples, the urban poor, out-of-school youths and women.

Philippine Agenda 21 was our response to the nexus of poverty-environment-population development. Environment considerations were introduced into socioeconomic planning at all levels. The Philippines was the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to establish a National Council on Sustainable Development.

The birth of a tiger economy

The combined result of these major strategic thrusts toward national well-being has been gratifying.

The UNDP recently ranked the Philippines 19th out of 78 developing nations in terms of its human poverty index, and placed poverty in the Philippines at around 17 percent. This ranking suggests that, considering our 1992 baseline income, we have done relatively well in poverty reduction.

The Philippine population policy is anchored on the conviction that an enlightened population program is essential to the achievement of our national development goals in a highly competitive globalized economy.

Placing people at the center of development

Population policy is at the core of our national vision far into the 21st century, in consonance with our people’s aspirations to a better life under a democratic system. This we hope to achieve by placing people at the center of development.

Population management will ever be an important factor in sustaining the economic gains and the social reform I have already cited.

For these reasons, I revitalized the Philippine Commission on Population, which was created in 1971, but whose roles had gradually diminished for lack of a clear national consensus on policy, and because of a long period of strongman rule.

The Philippines’ population now stands at about 70 million. The United Nations projects that the Philippines will move from being the 17th most populous country in the world in 1985 to the 13th most populous by 2000.

Like all developing nations, the Philippines faces increasing demographic pressure on its resources, living space, arable land, clean air and fresh water. All components of our terrestrial and marine environment have felt the weight of a growing population. Urban pressures are also growing. The U.N. Center for Human Settlements’ 1996 global report listed our capital city, Manila, and its environs as the 20th largest city in the world in 1990. This ranking may rise in the next century.

Although, we may have done well nationally in easing employment pressures, unemployment and underemployment in the rural areas remain a serious national concern. Because of these realities, the need for a rational program for population management to balance population and resources remains to be a local and national imperative.

In carrying out population policy in the Philippines, however, we have scrupulously respected and protected basic human rights. We believe population policy must begin with the individual. To borrow a popular metaphor: the individual is our ground zero for all population management and family planning.

The right to choose

But individuals do not exist by themselves—they are knit closely together by family ways, community traditions, peer pressures, social norms, religious beliefs imperatives, and legal and civic responsibilities. In short, human beings live and act on the basis of values.

It is impractical to assume that the individual can be extricated from this complex web of connections and be forced to suddenly accept a technocratic presentation of the rationale and processes of population management.

My Administration, therefore, has restored the national consensus for population policy through patient work at the ground level, using broad-based consultation, while respecting, at every step, the values of our people and political sensitivity.

A critical component of our development philosophy and of our population policy has been—and has to be—the right of individuals to choose the kind of family life they believe is best for them.

This emanates from the guarantee enshrined in our Constitution of freedom of conscience, and the role of the family as the basic unit of Philippine society.

Our Constitution provides that the State is to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood. It protects equally the life of the mother and that of the unborn child from the moment of conception; this is why abortion is a crime in my country.

As a consequence, our population policy is both pro-life and pro-choice; noncoercive but value-laden; family-centered yet socially responsible.

The family’s freedom of conscience

Our population policy seeks to guide the family in exercising its freedom of conscience, by providing the full range of public information and health services, not just for all nonabortive forms of family planning, including artificial contraception, but also for what is needed to care for healthy, self-sufficient and happy families.

Our population policy also mandates the education of the individual, both male and female, about sexuality and reproduction, and lifts the knowledge of these perfectly normal and wonderfully sublime human traits and functions from ignorance, prejudice and fanaticism.

To consolidate the legal framework for our population policy, my Administration has proposed a new Philippine population bill, which is now being discussed in Congress. The bill seeks to establish the proper national setting for a holistic environment, to integrate the population dimension into all key aspects of national planning, and to deepen the sense of personal and national responsibility in family planning and responsible parenthood.

Goals and gains

We have set out population goals that we feel are attainable with the enabling environment that I have described. Under our population management program, which we initiated in 1992, we aim to achieve the following goals by the end of 1998:

• Reduce our population growth rate to 2.2 percent. Our present growth rate is 2.32 percent.
• Attain a total fertility rate of 3.5 children per woman. Our current total fertility rate is 3.8.
• Reduce our crude birthrate to 27.6 per 1,000 population. Our current crude birthrate is at 29.7.
• Reduce our crude deathrate to 6.2 deaths per 1,000 population. Our current crude deathrate is 6.6.

Already, we have made advances in our population program and are confident of further progress:

• Our average family size has fallen from about six children in the 1970s to an average of 3.8 in the 1990s.
• Our life expectancy has increased from 68.7 years in 1995 to 69.7 years in 1998.
• The number of users of family-planning methods has been rising—and reached 3.1 million in 1994.

We shall continue to strengthen the institutionalization of HIV-AIDS prevention, care and control.

We shall also pursue programs in the strategic areas of reproductive health, gender equality and women empowerment, adolescent health and youth development, and migration and urbanization.

International cooperative action

Ladies and gentlemen:

I have endeavored to illustrate how we of the Philippines have responded to the impact of global trends on our own population. While action must be national, and local, rational population planning for the global community as a whole also demands our attention.

This is a call for collective, concerted and conscientious action by us all. Common problems require burden sharing. For, like individuals, countries exist not in isolation, but in the international family of nations to which they owe certain obligations.

It is tragic that although global trade, investment and capital flows of all kinds have had historically unprecedented growth, global levels of official development assistance, or ODA, have fallen. While the Philippines appreciates the efforts of those developed nations, among them the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia and Spain, which have assisted our national population policy, we join all developing nations in calling for a reversal of the declining ODA trend worldwide.

We urge our friends in the developed world to meet the United Nations target of committing 0.7 percent of their GNP either to ODA or to the United Nations.

As it is, ODA as a percentage of the GNP of developed countries fell on average from 0.34 percent in 1992 to 0.27 percent in 1995. For global cooperation on population policy, our guide must be the program of action of the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

In light of the well-known needs of the global community, the results of the preliminary review of the objectives of the ICPD program of action submitted by the secretariat are disappointing and regrettable. We have not yet reached the midpoint of our agreed benchmark and already we are faltering.

Holistic approach to population issues

The program of action estimated that annual costs of a basic package of population and reproductive health programs and related policy development, research and data collection would be $17 billion up to the year 2000.

Considering the great human good that it will do, this is a low-cost budget. As noted in the UNFPA state of world population 1997, it is less than one week of world expenditure on armaments. Surely, if we pull together, in a world economy $25 trillion in size, we can pay this bill.

Beyond this, a holistic approach to population issues cannot be separated in reality from questions of the environment and of sustainable development—whether nationally or globally.

We must therefore mobilize the resources needed to meet the targets set by the 1992 Rio de Janeiro United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, and the 20:20 formula endorsed by the 1995 Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development.

As we do so, let us not forget to enlist the energies, talent and commitment of international civil society. A global civic action should be mobilized from among non-State actors, including the media, the academic community, business, non-Government organizations and local communities.

Correcting global imbalances

And, even further beyond, we must respond to those elemental global trends that shape population issues and problems. Globalization has to be molded so that it will be more equitable. Developing nations should be supported in carrying out policies that promote humane structural adjustment and the welfare of the poor.

Developed nations should not deprive developing countries of the benefits of globalization. The developed world should reduce trade barriers to the exports of developing nations and not impose new protectionist barriers in the form of subsidies or in the thinly veiled disguise of labor, social and human rights conditionalities.

There should be greater cooperation to upgrade human-resource development. We must heed one of the lessons of East Asia’s rapid economic progress—the critical importance of investment in education and human resource development for national development.

Modern technology—especially information technology—holds out the prospect of a better life for all our peoples, but only to the extent that they are educated and trained to make use of it.

In the Philippines, we have done our homework on population management, and we are trying to deal with it at the global level as well. Nationally and through the United Nations, we have staunchly advocate the empowerment of women—because they play an irreplaceable role in development, dealt within Chapter 10 of the ICPD program of action.

We urge all countries to accede to the international Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and we reiterate the willingness of the Philippines to host an international conference on migration and development.

The Philippines has led in promoting regional economic and technical cooperation, which covers employment and human-resource development, in the APEC context. Through ecotech cooperation, we hope to improve the capacity of developing APEC members to optimize their participation in the expanding Asia-Pacific regional economy.

Last year, during the Philippines’ chairmanship of APEC, we helped to introduce population as a priority for the first time in APEC.

The way to real progress

The United Nations has had its successes and its failures. In the population field, however, the guiding light of the United Nations, reflected in the United Nations Population Fund, has shown us the way to real progress through global action. Rafael M. Salas, in his lifetime, pioneered in this vital area of responsibility of the United Nations. We are proud that a distinguished Filipino paved the way for the international community.

In these times—when there is so much cynicism about the world body—this achievement should not go to waste. We should project the good work that has been done to revive faith in the original promise of the United Nations. It remains—today—the single greatest experiment undertaken in the cause of international understanding, cooperation and peace, and of human welfare.