'Women will make their own choices'

Dr Babatunde Osotimehin

Dr Babatunde Osotimehin

Published Jun 8, 2015

Share

Cape Town - If you give them the chance, women will make choices that work best for their own lives.

And those choices will include having babies when they want them, and not when nature dictates.

This is a central theme of the work of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and a key driver for the fund's executive director Babatunde Osotimehin.

Dr Osotimehin is also Under-Secretary-General of the UN - and was in Cape Town last week to attend the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015.

I met him in bright winter sunshine at the Cullinan Hotel, fresh from a round of talking to the private sector. “It's not about corporate social responsibilities, we are talking about the private sector as a development partner - so it sees itself as part of the development of a country.”

Osotimehin cites the example of Siemens in Germany, which is involved with education and vocational training at school level. “Management training and internships must be in the DNA of the private sector so they don't have to wait for young people to finish school and then complain that they don't have the skills... this is even to the point where you work with government ministries of education and youth to define curricula.”

Nigerian by birth, and a doctor by training, Osotimehin is passionate about the empowerment of women - something he says goes back to the example of his mother. “My mother was a great example... I saw that with my father there was no competition, it was co-operation. My father went off to teach in the school, my mother had a business, she sometimes actually earned more that my father but that's not the issue. The issue was that they were together in a union, and respected that union and they also respected the fact that they had responsibilities to the children.”

The themes of development and women and family come up often in the interview - not surprising given the UNFPA's slogan: “Delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.”

The fund's latest campaign is around something called the “demographic dividend” - the idea being that there's a window of opportunity when a country's population has proportionally more working adults than non-working dependents, creating a substantial economic payoff. The UN estimates that one-quarter to one-third of the growth experienced by the East Asian 'tiger” economies was due solely to this dividend.

For Africa, this could be an idea whose time has come. The UN reckons sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to reap an annual dividend of $500 billion for up to 30 years - but there is work to do.

South Africa is sitting in what the UN calls “early transition” with reducing mortality but high fertility. Osotimehin says the country is poised to reap the benefits - if four key areas are addressed:

* Good quality education that does not focus on numeracy and literacy alone but also looks at vocational training (which is where the private sector comes in). Crucial here are teacher education, accountability and inclusivity. “I... want to insist there should be parity between boys and girls . You have to have a programme that takes young people beyond 18 years... you eliminate early and forced marriage, you eliminate teen pregnancies so girls stay in school and they mature and they come to an age where they can begin to take decisions about themselves.”

* Health:“Access to sexual reproductive health services, including contraception is important - once you can access contraception you then have the number of children which you want to have, which you can afford to have, not the number that occur by chance so it is choice, choice, choice.” He says that the UN is providing the South African government with technical support in this area.

* Access to credit:“We want to insist that people have access to credit. The ability to think and to think large is what would happen, so that start-ups would thrive. You need a new business model which is allowing young people to go out there and do what they want to do.”

* Governance and accountability:“You have to have education and health policies, policies around private sector partnerships, around access to credit - and then government must be forward looking. For most governments in the world, not just in Africa, what you see is that they are only thinking of the next elections so they don't have a long-term vision of where they want to see their countries be in 20 years from now.”

I ask Osotimehin about the difficulty involved in policy-making around issues of fertility and contraception, when outside agencies are working in an area which is intimate and private, and governed by religious and cultural imperatives.

This is an issue, he acknowledges, but his answer is clear: “The best possible strategy is information and access.”

He cites loveLife (www.lovelife.org.za), a place where “ young people can ask for information, advice. It is peer to peer so they don't feel they are being judged, they don't feel intimidated by the providers. It works very well - that is where it should go.

“Religion sometimes plays a part but women make the best choices for their lives, just give them a chance.

“Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world, but the use of family planning is very high... because Brazil liberalised access so you can get it, there is no legislation about it. it is not as if they are pushing it but what they have done is make sure that if you want it, you get it.

“Of course there are still areas of the world where we need to work - and we do as the UNFPA. But I think the biggest challenge we have is providing information and access - if you can do that, people will look after themselves.”

For girls, it's sometimes the small things that make a difference. I ask him about the issue of menstruation, which can be a cause of girls dropping out of school.

“I was in Nairobi the other day, talking to the minister and they actually have a line for it in their education budget. So the girls go to school and stay in school.”

Asked what other areas South Africa needed to be working on, he didn't hesitate: “Gender-based violence. We have to educate boys and girls at same time, so that boys learn to respect girls, accept them as partners, they see them in a gender neutral light, so that the power structure that society always puts in place where women are seen as inferior to men... that recedes a little.

“Society, government also needs to put in place police and a judicial system that actually punishes the perpetrators because the impunity that goes with this is what perpetuates it... a husband has no business beating the woman, there is no place for it!”

I put to him that platitude that SA is very angry. He disagrees: the whole world is angry he says. “Worldwide, one in three adult women is abused in their lifetime - a lot! That's a global thing.”

Our time is up, and I have one last question: if he could do one thing for the girls of Africa, what would it be?

“Educate them, that's what I would do - take them to school, they stay in school until they mature, give them the same opportunities as boys... you will amazed at what will happen.”

IOL

 

STATISTICS

* The East and Southern Africa region has around 169 million young people aged 10 to 24 years, representing 31 per cent of the total population (2015)

* In East and Southern Africa, 27 percent of women have given birth by age 18 - and the majority of these births occur within marriage.

* Death in childbirth and HIV-related diseases are the two main causes of mortality among young women in sub-Saharan Africa.

* Complications from pregnancy and childbearing are the number one cause of death for girls aged 15-19 years. Child brides have limited access to and use of contraception,sexual and reproductive health services and information. Only 15 percent of married adolescent girls aged 15-19 years old are currently using contraception.

* Girls aged 15-19 years are twice as likely to die during childbirth as women 20 years and above.

Source: www.esaro.unfpa.org/topics/adolescent-pregnancy

Related Topics: