UNFPA advocates for ‘right investment’ in people

Nov 28, 2011 News

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While the massive increase in the world’s population can be viewed in many ways as a success for humanity, not everyone has benefited from this achievement or a higher quality of life that such a development implies.  This assertion has been proposed by the 2011 United Nations Population Fund State of the World Report.  According to the report, great disparities remain within countries.  The report alludes to disparities in rights and opportunities that exist between men and women as well as girls and boys even as it highlights that “charting a path now to development that promotes equality, rather than exacerbates or reinforces inequalities, is more important than ever.”
The State of the World Report, according to UNFPA’s local Representative, Ms. Patrice La Fleur, addresses youth, a new global power; reshaping the world; security; economic strength and independence in old age; what influences fertility; the power and impact of migration; planning ahead for growth of cities; sharing and sustaining the earth’s resources and the way ahead finishing the Cairo Agenda, which speaks to the international conference on population and development which was held in 1994 and sought to move the issue of population from numbers to the quality of life of people.
La Fleur revealed too that the report also shares the experiences of nine countries – China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – as they address issues related to the aging population, high fertility rates, urbanization and the emergence of new generations of young people.
“As an organization, UNFPA sees the world at seven billion as an achievement since people are living longer, healthier lives and couples are choosing the number of children they would like to have,” La Fleur asserted.
Despite this phenomenon, there are still many issues to be addressed, the UNFPA Programme Officer noted. She pointed to the gap between the rich and the poor countries, which is still growing, thus more people are vulnerable to food security, water shortages and weather related disasters.
The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in its World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision (published in May 2011), foresees a global population of 9.3 billion people in 2050, and more than 10 billion by the end of this century. Much of this increase, it notes, is expected to come from high fertility countries, which comprise 39 in Africa, nine in Asia, six in Oceania and four in Latin America.
Asia, according to the United Nations, will remain the most populous major area in the world in the 21st century, but Africa will gain ground as its population more than triples, increasing from one billion in 2011 to 3.6 billion in 2100.
This year saw 60 per cent of the world’s population living in Asia and 15 per cent in Africa. But Africa’s population is growing about 2.3 per cent a year, a rate that more than doubles that of Asia (one per cent). Asia’s population, which is currently 4.2 billion, is expected to peak around the middle of the century (5.2 billion in 2052) and to start a slow decline thereafter.
The populations of all other major areas combined (the Americas, Europe and Oceania) amounted to 1.7 billion this year and are projected to rise to nearly two billion by 2060 and then decline very slowly, remaining still near two billion by the turn of the century. Among the regions, the population of Europe is projected to peak around 2025 at 0.74 billion and decline thereafter.
The UN report, as a result, makes the case that with planning and the right investments in people now to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves but for global commons, the world of seven billion and beyond can have thriving, sustainable cities, productive labour forces that can fuel economic growth, youth populations that contribute to the well-being of economies and societies, and a generation of older people who are healthy and actively engaged in the social and economic affairs of their communities.
In many parts of the developing world where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the unmet need for reproductive health care, especially voluntary family planning, remains great, according to UNFPA.  As such, it is the view of the organization that “we all have a stake in the future of humanity. Every individual, every government, every business is more interconnected and interdependent than ever, so what each of us does now will matter to all of us long into the future. Together we can change and improve the world.”

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