Cairo Conference reaches consensus on plan to stabilize world growth by 2015.

• Position: International Conference on Population and Development - Includes related article on United Nations' studies on urbanization

Against a backdrop streaked with controversy and under the intense spotlight of unprecedented world media attention, the international Conference on Population and Development reached consensus--despite some widely divergent viewpoints--on a worldwide strategy to curb global population growth over the next 20 years and achieve sustained economic growth and sustainable development.

At the heart of the work of the Conference--the fifth UN global meeting on population issues--was, in the words of UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the "search for an equilibrium between humanity and its environment and, ultimately, the means to sustain life on earth". in that light, he felt the widespread public attention to controversial issues debated at the Conference was "essentially encouraging", since it helped raise consciousness of important issues and mobilize public opinion significant action. Such critical matters could not be considered "without causing ripples and even some storms", he said.

Convened in Cairo, Egypt from 5 to 13 September, the Conference adopted without a vote a 16-chapter Programme of Action, calling for action to stabilize world population growth at below estimates of 7.5 billion by the year 2015 in the context of sustainable development.

In its preamble, the Programme states that the Conference represented "the last opportunity" in the twentieth century to collectively address the critical challenges and interrelationships between population and development. The Programme of Action, according to Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Conference Secretary-General, had the potential "to change the world".

Delegations from more than 180 countries, which included a number of Heads of State or Government, were joined at the Conference by thousands of participants from non-governmental and other grass-roots organizations, intergovernmental bodies and the media--an indication of the importance attached by the people of the world to a meeting convened for the people of the world.

Four previous UN population conferences have been convened at the global level: Rome (1954); Belgrade (1965); Bucharest (1974) and Mexico City (1984). The first World Population Plan of Action was adopted in 1974 and was reviewed and supplemented at the 1984 Conference by a set of recommendations for its further implementation.

Mindful of the need to continue to consider population issues at a high level, the UN...