While the past decades have seen a foreign aid field dominated by the world's wealthy countries who are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), a new form a donorship has emerged, or more accurately, re-emerged. Aid funding from prosperous, yet still developing countries to other developing countries has drawn international attention, much of it from a critical perspective. A 2007 article in Foreign Policy labeled aid from China, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia as both “generous” and “toxic,” while a recent cover of the Economist labeled China “The New Colonialists.” However, an increase in global aid to the poorest countries, delivered with fresh perspectives and an intensified spirit of South-South cooperation has many potential benefits.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provides international leadership on population issues and is a key source of financial assistance for family planning and reproductive health programs in poor countries. Restoring U.S. funding for UNFPA programs is crucial to improving the health and lives of women and their families and to addressing demographic trends and promoting sustainable development.

Money matters and policies count. Ten years ago, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the international community endorsed an approach to improving reproductive health based on meeting individual needs and respecting human rights. The 179 nations present agreed on a plan for achieving universal access to basic reproductive health care by 2015-and on the financial resources needed to make it a reality. They pledged to share the costs, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005, and donor nations committed to providing one-third of that total.

Since 2001, the U.S. Congress has encouraged the U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID, the agency that dispenses foreign development assistance – to implement family planning and related reproductive health programs in areas where biological diversity is threatened and where species are endangered. Congress has never specified a funding level for these activities, which are supported by funds appropriated for international family planning programs, amounting to more than US$400 million annually in recent years. Over the past few years the agency has allocated between $1 million and $2 million annually to fund such projects and to explore the implications of the population-environment linkage as it applies to the conservation of critical ecosystems and the biodiversity they shelter.

With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria's political and economic developments reverberate across the continent. Nigeria chairs the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and is the eighth largest oil exporting country in the world. More than 40 percent of the region's gross domestic product is accounted for by Nigeria's economy, and the petroleum industry is responsible for about two-thirds of national revenue and a great deal of international interest in the country. Yet the government maintains a delicate hold on democracy, and the country has recently experienced political instability. Throughout 2006, militant rebels angry about the distribution of oil revenue have conducted a series of attacks against the industry, including kidnapping foreign workers, which resulted in the country's petroleum output dropping by 25 percent.

New foreign assistance strategies that aim to encourage ownership by recipients while still effectively reducing poverty are laudable. They offer the hope of increased financial support to overall global development-a bigger pie-but they also pose significant challenges to the family planning field: Will it be able to keep a slice of that pie?

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, 179 nations endorsed an approach to improving reproductive health based on meeting individual needs and respecting human rights. They pledged to share the costs needed to make basic reproductive health care available to all who need it by 2015. Today, however, most donor and developing countries still fall short of paying their “fair share.”

At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, the international community pledged to share the costs of reproductive health care in developing countries, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005. Donor nations committed to provide one-third of this total, or $6.1 billion. Donors still fall far short of this pledge, once inflation is taken into account, and actual resource needs are dramatically higher today.

The Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 establishes the right of men and women to be informed about their reproductive choices and health, and to have access to the information and services that make good health possible. The Programme of Action mandates access to a range of reproductive health care services, including health education, information and counseling on sexuality and reproductive health issues-including parenting, family planning, prenatal care, delivery, and postpartum care, abortion (where not against the law) and post-abortion care-and the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases and infertility.