Landmark events. We have them in our personal and family lives. We can identify them in our work lives. And they appear in the lives of all communities, whether local, regional, national, or even international. These landmark events are the stuff of which novels and plays, biographical and social histories, studies and analyses are made.
One such event was the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held under United Nations sponsorship in Cairo, Egypt. Though some theorists refuse to concede that there is a problem, many continue to believe that stabilizing world population is critical for global well being. A shift in the paradigm determining the politics of world population is indeed a landmark event. And, as we report in this issue of the Bulletin, just such a shift occurred at Cairo.
The ICPD made recommendations about fundamental human issues, about health, particularly reproductive and sexual health, but also about the broader meanings of individual and public health. It considered the question of choices for women, particularly around the spacing and timing of their children. It considered what is required to make reproductive freedom meaningful: empowerment, education, access, opportunity. And it considered the connections among sexuality, population, economic development, and the environment.
The ICPD, as a landmark event, has created both consensus and conflict, and in this issue of the Bulletin we will look at the major themes that underlie that conflict. From David Sinacore-Guinn's piece on female circumcision to William LaFleur's article on the privileging of "fecundism" by most world religions, the Bulletin provides perspective on the controversies that fueled Cairo. Jose Barzelatto provides the background perspective of a Cairo participant, and David Devlin-Foltz reports on the difficult religious terrain that was charted by Cairo.
The Park Ridge Center was involved before, during, and after the ICPD proceedings. We held preliminary meetings on the way diverse religious traditions of the world approached the issues to be debated in Cairo; we provided material on those approaches to delegates and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at Cairo; we had staff members present at the historic conference; and we are now working on two research projects (Religion and Civil Discourse and Religion, Sexuality, and Public Policy) that grew directly out of the ICPD, in keeping with our ongoing quest to relate key dimensions of faith to key issues of human life, in this instance, religion and sexuality.
Whether the ICPD continues to be seen as a landmark event in the decades to come cannot yet be determined. But we are confident that the age-old themes of religion and sexuality will continue to command the attention of us all, just as they make for lively and thought-provoking reading in this issue of the Bulletin.
