On behalf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), it is my great pleasur
e to welcome you today to the 13th Asian Parliamentarians' Meeting on Populatio
n and De-velopment, with a special focus on population, water resources and dev
elopment. Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA, regrets that she is una
ble to attend this im-portant meeting, but has asked me to assure you that UNFP
A is honored to be part of the deliberations over the next two days and looks f
orward to the meeting'sresults. Allow me flrst to express my sincere appreciati
on to the organizers of this meeting Mr. Fu-kusaburo Maeda and the Asian Popula
tion and Development Association (APDA), and Mr. Shin Sakurai and the Asian For
um of Parliamentarians on Population and Develop-ment (AFPPD). I would also lik
e to thank the Mayor of Kobe, Mr. Kazutoshi Sasayama, and members of the nation
al preparatory committee for their support and hospitality.
The theme for this meeting is especially relevant, as it complements both parli
amentarian and Heads-of-State agreements reached prior to and at the November 1
996 U.N. World Food Summit in Rome. At that meeting, world leaders recognized t
hat ensuring food security for the future would largely depend on the eradicati
on of poverty, the elimination of unsustainable patterns of consumption and pro
duction, particularly in industrialized countries, and better management of bot
h soil and water resources. In highlighting these priorities, they called for b
roader socio-economic development policies and affirmed the need to fully integ
rate population and environmental concerns into development strate-gies. Specif
ically, world leaders recognized that the responsibility for food security must
be shared between women and men. To achieve this goal, governments agreed to pr
omote policies which facilitate the productive and reproductive roles of women
and men through better access to education, credit, technology, and basic healt
h care, includ-ing reproductive health care and family planning.
For their part, parliamentarians at the AFPPD-organized International Meeting o
f Parlia-mentarians on Food Security, Population and Development, held just pri
or to the Rome
