Reproductive health aid: a delicate balancing act

How have funding efforts to achieve the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) fared since 1994? And what lessons can be learnt from that experience? Data on financial contributions disbursed by governments and private foundations are used as collected by the Resource Flows project as initiated by UNFPA/NIDI. The main observation is that development assistance targeted at reproductive health is overwhelmingly concentrated on HIV/AIDS at the expense of family planning programs. The current allocation of aid does not accord well with the plans made in Cairo at the ICPD in 1994. Part of the explanation is that future health needs are difficult to predict, but it also shows how strong the influence of one donor, i.e. the United States, is. Developments in population assistance are highly volatile, brought about not only by political issues like the Global Gag Rule, but also by issues of collective action design. Assistance under the heading of the Millennium Development Goals crowds out family planning. A complicating factor is that development assistance for reproductive health is at some points ill-adjusted towards the needs of developing countries.