The UN report called for promoting “demographic resilience”. (Representative)
Geneva, Switzerland:
Instead of focusing on the impact of an aging world population, the world should look to women’s reproductive rights to increase “demographic resilience”, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – the sexual and reproductive health agency of the United Nations – acknowledged that there was widespread concern about the size of the world’s population, which is expected to peak during the 2080s at around 10.4 billion.
But the UNFPA said the focus should be on giving women more power to control when and how they have children.
UNFPA head Natalia Kanem said, “The question is: ‘Can everyone exercise their fundamental human right to choose the number and spacing of their children?’
She noted that “44 percent, nearly half of women, are unable to exercise bodily autonomy. Access to contraception, health care, and choice about having sex or with whom. And globally, nearly half of pregnancies are unintended.”
He said that countries with the highest fertility rates contribute the least to global warming and suffer the most from its effects.
In its flagship annual “State of World Population” report, the UNFPA found that the world’s population is huge.
But it said crossing the eight billion mark “should be a cause for celebration. It is a milestone representing historic progress for humanity in medicine, science, health, agriculture and education”.
“It is time to shed fear, away from population targets and towards demographic flexibility – the ability to adapt to fluctuations in population growth and fertility rates,” it said.
India is overtaking China
“The world’s population is rapidly rearranging itself,” Kaname told a news conference.
While the population is the largest it has ever been, “the global average fertility rate is the lowest in living memory”.
Kanem said the ranking of the world’s most populous countries will change significantly over the next 25 years, with India overtaking China currently at the top.
Eight countries will account for half of the projected increase in global population by 2050: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania.
Two-thirds of people are living in countries with low fertility, the report said.
“This is the first time in human history that not every country is getting bigger,” Kaname said.
The countries with the highest fertility rates were all in Africa: Niger (6.7), Chad (6.1), DR Congo (6.1) Somalia (6.1) and Mali and the Central African Republic (5.8).
The regions with the lowest birth rates were Hong Kong (0.8), South Korea (0.9), Singapore (1.0), Macau and San Marino (1.1) and Aruba and China (1.2).
Europe is the only region projected to experience an overall population decline between now and 2050.
The report said that the world fertility rate per woman was currently 2.3. Life expectancy is 71 for males and 76 for females.
“All populations are aging largely because we are living longer. Average life expectancy has increased by about a decade since 1990,” Kanam said.
Twenty-five percent of the world’s population is 14 or younger; 65 percent are aged 15-64 and 10 percent are 65 and older.
The report found that concerned governments are increasingly adopting policies aimed at increasing, reducing or maintaining the fertility rate. However, such efforts are often ineffective.
Kanem said, “There are half a million births between girls ages 10-14 each year … Girls too young to consent to sex, are married off, abused, or Both.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)