A delegation from the Higher Population Council, headed by the Council's Secretary-General and President of the Arab Council for Population and Development, Dr. Abla Amawi, participates in Experts Advisory Committee’s first meeting of the Arab Council for Population and Development events, held today in Egyptian capital Cairo, Organized by the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States/Social Affairs sector.
Dr. Amawi stressed during the meeting the importance of unifying the Arab efforts in confronting the population issues and challenges that affect the progress of achieving sustainable development in the Arab world through implementing the initiatives and programs supporting this field, and exchanging Arab experiences to reach the best ways and methods to achieve desired objectives. Which serves the implementation of Arab Council for Population and Development action plan that recently launched in Jordan.
Dr. Amawi emphasized the importance of establishing a frame of reference for the Arab States in the field of population and development, through developing a vision for the Arab region and challenges and population dynamics; development of operational plans and national strategies for population; linking the population dimension to all sustainable development axes and mechanisms in line with international and regional developments in response. This requires the building new population policies to cater to the needs of the Arab States and to the population challenges they face in the areas of population growth, population shifts, forced asylum and migration, reproductive health, and the empowerment of women and youth, with a view to achieving the well-being of the Arab peoples, especially in the difficult circumstances of the region.
The Consultative Committee, chaired by Dr. Abla Amawi in her capacity as Chairperson of the ACPD, with representatives of the Arab National Population Councils and Committees, as well as the members of the Jordanian delegation, discussed during the meeting a series of topics related to the work program of the ACPD at its first session. The most prominent of which is the arrangements for holding the ACPD Executive Office second meeting, which comes in implementation of one of the first ACPD regular session decisions on the implementation of the Council's regional action program for the years (2020-2019) under population priorities.
The meeting also discussed the necessity of formulating and elaborating an Arab strategy for population, that serves the future aspirations in the field of confronting the population issues, and the harmony of these issues with the sustainable development agenda. Best practices have been reviewed and technical experiences have been exchanged in the application of population policies in strategies, Initiatives, projects, partnerships, ways of cooperating among the various actors, administrative systems implemented by States at the national level that have had a positive impact on the situation of the population, population trends along with the quality of services provided; aimed at providing a framework for approaches to population policies, the participation of States with successful experiences in population policies and the proposal of specific strategies to achieve their policy objectives; In addition to providing participants with knowledge and experience from the international and regional experiences of leading countries and methodologies in this field, and encouraging participating countries to apply recommendations of successful models within their context, in particular those emanating from socially and geographically similar countries.
The Arab participation in the 53rd session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, to be held this year, was also discussed and the theme "Population, food security, nutrition and sustainable development", in which connection the Higher Population Council/Jordan prepared the national questionnaire on this subject. The Arab League, in turn, circulated it to all Arab countries to mobilize it and then based on its results to prepare the Arab position paper. In addition to discussing arrangements for holding an expert-level meeting on demographic change resulting from population movements and migration in Arab countries, which is one of the initiatives of the regional program of action of the Arab Council for Population and Development for the years 2020-2019, as migration, asylum and population mobility are among the most important demographic challenges in Arab countries which witnessed conflicts and wars that resulted in many population movements, human crises and large-scale mixed migration currents, The Arab world is considered the first hosting of forced immigrants, who directly affected the demographic in the region and posed a great challenge to development, and it is expected that the meeting will produce a series of recommendations in this regard that guide the Arab countries in formulating their immigration policies.
