moving towards more people- oriented, reproductive health approaches. Although it takes time for policy and legal changes to benefit women and men at the community and household levels, such changes are a critical first step. Policies and laws are needed to hold health services courts, schools, and other institutions, as well as communities and families, accountable. As such, the policy and legal changes made since 1994 based on human rights, equity, and meeting people's needs--are central to fullfiling the Cairo Mandate.

Women are running domestic violence shelters and fighting human-trafficking. Without recognition or fanfare, and often with little support, women are working to improve the quality of their lives and the lives of all people.

Fifteen years ago delegates from 189 countries met in Beijing for the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. It was a call to action to work for the laws, reforms and social change necessary to ensure that women and girls everywhere have the opportunities to fulfill their God- given potential. Today more girls worldwide are in school. More women hold jobs and serve in public office. And more countries have passed laws recognising women's equality, although for too many, laws are not yet borne out in their daily lives.

But women are still the majority of the world's poor, uneducated, unhealthy and unfed. They are the majority of the world's farmers, but are often forbidden to own the land or to access credit to make those farms profitable. Women care for the world's sick, but women and girls are less likely to get treatment when they themselves are sick.

The status of the world's women is a political, economic and social imperative. When women are free to develop their talents and contribute fully to their societies, everyone benefits.

When women are free to run for public office, governments are more responsive to their people. When women are free to earn a living and start small businesses, they become drivers of economic growth. When women are afforded the opportunity of education and access to healthcare, their families and communities prosper. When women have equal rights, nations are more stable, peaceful and secure.

Advancing women's equality is at the heart of the foreign policy of the United States. We believe that women are critical to solving almost every challenge we face. We view the subjugation of women as a threat to the national security of the US and to the common security of our world. So we are integrating women throughout our work around the globe.

In Afghanistan, the participation of Afghan women in decision making about the future of their country is critical for sustainable development, better governance and peace.

That is why we have included a Women's Action Plan to promote women's leadership, to increase their access to education, health and justice, and to generate jobs for women, especially in agriculture.

Women are powerful forces for economic growth and social progress...

Today we must say with one voice that women's progress is human progress and human progress is women's progress.  rw

Women making personal decisions tend over time, if those decisions can be made freely, to make population overall more sustainable.

The success of the modern human species in expanding throughout the world is due largely to the cooperative skills of women in raising more than two children each to adulthood. When times were hard or resources scarce, women tended to have smaller families than otherwise. Contraception is mentioned in history as early as there is writing.  rw

In countries that make effective personal control of reproduction possible for all, women invariably have two children or fewer on average. By making their own decisions based on what's best for themselves and their children, women ultimately bring about a global good that governments could never deliver through regulation or control. The writer interviewed women from many countries over a period of 25 years. Interspersing stories from these conversations with research across history and the social sciences, he delves into the roots of sexuality and procreation to discover how women's lives and status have influenced cultural evolution, history, and modern society.

Women have been so intent on reproducing at a time that is best for their child's survival that they have hidden their contraceptive use from their husbands and religious leaders. Societies that make it easy for women and their partners to safely plan the timing of births will experience stable or gradually declining populations. The Worldwatch Institute has demonstrated how important the stabilization in population is for long-term environmental sustainability.

Population growth is a driving force behind some of today's most serious problems, including climate change and rising food prices. Meeting the need for safe and effective contraception can speed the transition to sustainable societies.  rw

A paper asserts that family planning should have a higher priority than HIV in most poor countries, because it poses a greater threat to international development. Leadership may need to come from European governments and agencies, rather than the US.

Family planning promotion is unique in its potential benefits. It reduces poverty, maternal, and child mortality. It contributes to universal primary schooling, empowers women and enhances environmental sustainability.

Family planning programmes have raised the use of contraceptives from less than 10% to 60% and reducing fertility in developing countries from six to about three births per woman. But in half the countries contraceptive practice population growth and unmet need for family planning remain high. Investment in family planning should have a higher priority than in HIV prevention and treatment. In Uganda, with a longstanding HIV epidemic, population size is projected to grow from 30 million today to 61 million by 2025, and further to 127 million by the middle of this century. Hopefully, perhaps European countries, the World Bank, or even the Gates Foundation will give leadership. Most poor countries need encouragement to implement population control with conviction and commitment.

The keys are high-level political commitment, a broad coalition of support from elite groups, adequate funding, the legitimisation of the idea of smaller families and modern contraceptives.  rw

Fertility has gone down in some American countries and experts say, education was responsible.

An educated literate woman is far more likely to make use of clinics, post offices or transport systems, because education makes her more confident and less dependent on men. She is more likely to feel that she has control over her life and fertility.

Educated women are better able to keep their children alive and healthy. A 1% rise in women's literacy rate is three times more effective in reducing infant mortality than a 1% rise in number of doctors.

Four to six years of a education led to a 20% drop in infant deaths.

In families where a child had died, parents will tend to produce more children than they wanted. Having children becomes a form of insurance against the risk of no offspring to support you in your old age.

If a mother knows that there are certain things she can do to help keep her children alive she will be far more open to controlling the size of her family.

Women who are educated get better healthcare. In an ideal world all women would have several years education before they decide to start a family. But in every country in the world one school girl or another is discovering that she is pregnant. In patriarchal societies education may serve to further entrench inequalities. In India for example, educated women improved only the health of their sons.  rw

and unrestricted seed money by the Pathfinder Board of Directors, Pathfinder International launched the first phase of the Reproductive Health of Young Adults in India (RHEYA) Project, a seven-year pilot project to change the attitudes of adolescents and young adults related to reproduction, overcoming the idea that ill health is an act of God or a result of one's fate.

RHEYA Project has improved the overall utilization of reproductive health and family planning services primarily by changing popular beliefs and knowledge about early marriage and childbearing and the importance of spacing children to improve their chances of surviving and thriving.

In selected areas of the states of Tamil Nadu, New Delhi, Rajasthan, and Madhya

Pradesh, Pathfinder partnered with four local nongovernmental organizations to develop effective interventions that reached nearly 22,000 young people from

underprivileged communities with adolescent sexual and reproductive health

(ASRH) information. The project's goal was to reaching parents, in-laws, and community and religious leaders, as well as the young people themselves - all at he same time. More than 81% of the people of India live on less than $2 per day; despite amazing economic progress, much of the country remains crushingly poor. India is home to 30% of the world's young people - between the ages of 10 and 24.3 - those reaching their reproductive years. Indian women bear an average of 3.0 children, which means the country's population will double in 41 years.

Indian women - "like those in many developing countries" bear their children very young. The median age of marriage for girls is 16.75, well below the legal age of

18. Given little knowledge of or access to contraception, their childbearing is telescoped into adolescence and early adulthood.

Twenty-eight percent of women give birth before the age of 18, and the median age of sterilization is 25.77. Only 5% of married women between the ages of 15-19, and 21% between 20-24, use modern methods of contraception. In fact, according to a study from NFHS 2, 1998-1999, at least 25.6% of women between the ages of 15-19, and 18.4% between 20-24 would like to space their children further apart but do not have the ability to do so.

Access to reproductive health and family planning for these young people could lower birth rates to dramatically slow the population doubling rate.

For over 30 years, the government of India aggressively addressed the

problem of population, with a dominant focus on promoting small families and the use of sterilization after two or three children. "A small family is a happy

family," was the slogan, which led people to believe that the government's goal was to limit the population. They saw contraception as a government need, rather than as something that is to their personal advantage. Pathfinder directly

addresses that perception, persuading women and men to understand contraception and the timing of pregnancies as an important means of personal autonomy and improvement in their personal lives.

India has a tragically high maternal mortality rate and adolescent girls

are twice as likely to die in childbirth as women in their twenties. For those between the ages of 10-14, this risk is five times higher, due to their emotional and physical immaturity and their inability to seek and use adequate health care during pregnancy and childbirth. The children of young mothers are 50% more likely to die than those born to mothers aged 20-29.

Child spacing is more important for an adolescent because an adolescent is not fully developed and pregnancy retards her own growth. A child born less than 24

months after a previous birth is nearly three times as likely to die as a child born after a gap of 48 months or more.

Unwanted teenage pregnancies often lead to abortions - 16% of maternal mortality in India is due to unsafe abortions.

Adolescents are also the age group most vulnerable to Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS. In 2005, 32.42% of people living with HIV/AIDS in India were between the ages of 15 and 29. Knowledge about sexuality, reproduction, personal hygiene, and STIs is extremely low, since these are culturally embarrassing topics between mother and daughter, father and son, teacher and pupil, or even between friends.

A young girl in a poor village who learns how to control and take responsibility for her reproductive life, will be able to change the course of her life, from delaying marriage and children to acquire education, to making healthy decisions about sexual activity and preventing sexally transmitted diseases. She will be more able to take steps to ensure healthy pregnancies and care of newborn children.

In India, and in much of the developing world, the key to reducing maternal and child mortality, the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, empowering women, improving their health, ensuring family well-being, and reducing

population growth rates, is an urgent focus on adolescents.  rw

The short answer is that while there are racks of data that show strong correlations with fertility decline, all of the models fail to establish predictive causality.

In short, while there are "theories" about the "demographic transition," there are no hard-and-fast rules, and quite a few important exceptions.

John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has looked at countries with similar socio-economic profiles, for example, and found that many of them have very different track records.

Algeria and Tunisia, for example, had comparable proportions of literate people, city dwellers, and the exact same life expectancy in the mid-1980s. Algeria's GNP of $2,360 per head, however, was almost double that of Tunisia. So did Algeria's fertility decline faster than Tunisia's? No. In fact, Algeria's fertility decline started about 15 years later than Tunisia's.

Why?

The short answer, according to Cleland, is that the Algerian government regarded family planning as a tool of Western oppression, while Tunisia had a more positive attitude towards contraception. While the government of Algeria has since embraced a very successful family planning program, their 15-year delay will have a real cost -- a 2050 population that will be 20 million people higher due to governmental delay.

A similar story is told in Bangladesh and Pakistan, two nations that used to be one country. At the time of their 1971 split, Bangladesh was far poorer than its neighbor. So did Pakistan's fertility rate fall faster than that of Bangladesh? No. In fact, Bangladesh's fertility rate fell soon as a direct result of government resources put into meeting the unmet need for contraception in that country. In Pakistan, instead of focusing on family planning and health care, that government focused on saber-rattling and weapons procurement. As a result, Pakistan will have about 150 million more poor people in 2050 than it might have had if it had followed the Bangladesh model.

Cleland argues such comparisons show that the link between economic development and smaller families is "much weaker and more variable" than previously believed, and that "the empowerment of women ... will facilitate fertility decline but is not a precondition for it."

Ironically, Cleland's theory is challenged by the case of West Bengal, right next door to Bangladesh. The Muslims of West Bengal (which includes the city of Calcutta) have the highest levels of contraceptive use in India -- higher even than that of the Muslims of Kerala. The total fertility rate of West Bengal is expected to hit the replacement rate within the next two years.

What's odd here is that the state government of West Bengal "has been quite indifferent to population policy" according to Alaka Basu and Sajeda Amin, writing in the December 2000 issue of Population and Development Review. "West Bengal has never had the kind of aggressive or even efficient family planning campaign or program that many other parts of India have embraced at various times." According to Basu and Amin, both Bangladesh and West Bengal share a common language and a common culture that embraces change -- another element in the matrix of factors that influence the speed of fertility decline.

The bottom line seems to be that every country, every culture, and every couple need to be treated as individuals if we are to get to replacement level fertility rates as quickly as possible. While education, economic development, and government support for family planning programs are all important, there is not a single "silver bullet solution" that triggers rapid and sustained fertility decline in every country every time. Instead, the decision to have smaller families appears to be a complex decision that can be encouraged and facilitated by a wide variety of programs, developments and outside forces.

The good news is that countries that have been slow to embrace family planning often find that modern contraceptive methods can help to reduce fertility quickly.

The bad news is that time lost cannot be regained. Though fertility may fall, the base population will be higher and so too will be the population when it reaches stabilization.

For more information, see "The Determinants of Reproductive Change in Bangladesh: Success in a Challenging Environment" published by the World Bank and authored by John Cleland and Sajeda Amin, and; "Conditioning Factors for Fertility Decline in Bengal: History, Language Identity, and Openness to Innovations," Population and Development Review, December 1, 2000 by Alaka Basu and Sajeda Amin.

I have appended below the historical and projected (UN Median variant) total fertility rates of the countries discussed:

�	ALG.	TUN.	PAK.	BANG.	INDIA
1950-1955	7.28	6.93	6.28	6.7	5.97
1955-1960	7.28	7.04	6.28	6.76	5.92
1960-1965	7.38	7.25	6.28	6.85	5.81
1965-1970	7.38	6.89	6.28	6.6	5.69
1970-1975	7.38	6.21	6.28	6.15	5.43
1975-1980	7.18	5.69	6.28	5.6	4.83
1980-1985	6.36	4.9	6.23	5.25	4.48
1985-1990	5.23	4.12	6.08	4.75	4.15
1990-1995	4.12	3.13	5.83	4.4	3.8
1995-2000	3.15	2.32	5.48	3.95	3.45
2000-2005	2.8	2.01	5.08	3.46	3.01
2005-2010	2.51	1.91	4.62	3.08	2.7
2010-2015	2.28	1.85	4.11	2.75	2.46
2015-2020	2.08	1.85	3.6	2.5	2.28
2020-2025	1.91	1.85	3.14	2.31	2.14
2025-2030	1.85	1.85	2.79	2.16	2.02
2030-2035	1.85	1.85	2.53	2.04	1.92
2035-2040	1.85	1.85	2.34	1.94	1.85
2040-2045	1.85	1.85	2.18	1.85	1.85
2045-2050	1.85	1.85	2.06	1.85	1.85

Nearly 60% of couples or over 380 million women in the developing world (excluding China) want to limit or space their births.

Yet over 100 million of these women do not use family planning services mainly because of lack of accurate information and poor access to a variety of good-quality services.

none exist, to expand and improve services at local and national levels, and to build both the ability and the commitment to provide quality health care that individuals want. Specializes in areas of voluntary sterilization, family planning service delivery, quality of care, and informed choice are relied upon the world over, including health care for sexually transmitted diseases, postpartum care, and postabortion care. Offers practical information and on-line training for clinic workers.

9 out of 10 American voters believe family planning services are important.

• 74% of American voters favor public sector funding for family planning services.
• 66% of American voters believe it is important to ensure that abortion remains accessible.

1. Those that believe that there aren't enough people in the world will tell you that everyone should have all the children that they can. They will say that there is a 'birth dearth', overlooking the fact that there are more people on the earth than ever before, and overlooking that in the Bible (Genesis) God told not just humans, but the animals to 'Be fruitful and multiply. (we seem to be wiping out plant and animal species by our overabundance)
2. Those that believe that the environment is being degraded, and see the connection between bad human habits (i.e. sprawl and overconsumption) and the degraded environment, but do not see the connection between increasing numbers of people and the loss and degradation of plant and animal habitat - these people will tell you that any effort to reduce population is an attempt to 'control people', or an attempt to 'target' certain groups of people.
   

   Why Population Matters





3. Some, not really seeing the magnitude of population impact, will say that the U.S. has no business in the reproduction policies of other countries and neither should we be making any reproduction policies in this country, either, so let every family (or church) make it's own reproduction decisions.





4. WOA!! believes, along with about 170 countries, the United Nations, and a large number of people in the U.S., - that human sustainability and the environment are being severely impacted by overpopulation, and that 'population control' is NOT the answer. The answer lies in the principles of the Cairo Conference in 1994 (United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) September 1994, Cairo, Egypt), which include: a. Empowering women and girls in the economic, political, and social arenas, b.Removing gender disparities in education c.Integrating family planning with related efforts to improve maternal and child health, and d. removal of 'target' family sizes. More on this below.
5. Many believe that the earth is fast reaching it's 'carrying capacity'. They don't think that reduction in population growth is happening fast enough. The less severe methods recommended are incentives and disincentives, which include: eliminating tax breaks or welfare caps for more than two children, and trying to socially ostracize people for having more than two children.
6. Others want more severe methods because of the severity of the impacts caused by foreseen human overpopulation. The Chinese, in their one-Child policy, used large disincentives, ostracizing, and even imprisonment to enforce their policies.
7. Of course there will always be the few radical elements that will suggest more severe methods, some as bad as the methods Hitler used in Germany. WOA!! asks that you do not let these bad examples deter you from wanting to do something worthwhile about human overpopulation. We cannot afford to let more and more of the world, humans and animals, suffer a degraded existence or early loss of life altogether due to too many people.

Rapid population growth in the world's poorest countries is a major obstacle to poverty reduction. Rapid population growth rates and high fertility rates correlate closely with high rates of maternal and child mortality, and most of the countries that are furthest from achieving the Millennium Development Goals have high rates of population growth.

Success at reducing fertility rates does not require coersion. The forced sterilisation policies pursued by India and China in the 1970s were an outrageous violation of women's rights. In International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 concluded that strengthening women's sexual and reproductive rights and social status; improving maternal and child health, nutrition and education; and increasing access to and the use of modern family planning, would work the best, empowering women tend to choose to have fewer children and to space their pregnancies. This has positive effects on the health of mothers and children alike and on the development prospects of poor communities and countries.

While total fertility rates have fallen across the developing world from an average of 5.6 children per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2005, almost all of the 50 least developed countries have much higher rates, in most cases more than five children per woman. By 2050, Uganda is expected to grow from 27 to 130 million; Niger from 14 to 50 million; Iraq from 29 to 64 million; and Afghanistan from 31 to 82 million. Jeffrey Sachs noted: "not only will the world's population continue to soar in the medium and high forecasts, but it will soar in precisely those parts of the world that are struggling the most today with extreme poverty, disease, famine and violence."

The Millennium Development Goals (MGD), agreed in 2001, made no reference to population growth, and the 2005 Commission for Africa report said almost nothing on the subject, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact that rapid population growth has on poverty reduction efforts.

MDG 1 called for halving, by 2015, of the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day. But the number of Africans living in poverty has increased by more than 100 million between 1990 and 2005 - partly as a result of population growth. In much of Africa rising populations have diminished the poverty-reducing effect of economic growth. MGD 1 part 2 calls for a halving of the proportion of people who are hungry. The slow pace of the decline in malnutrition is far too slow to achieve the goal, and the trend looks set to be reversed by food price rises and the economic downturn.

Where women lack rights, where they lack the status or the power to insist that their partners use contraception, or where modern family planning is simply not available, closely-spaced children and high fertility rates are very common. Children born less than two years after the next oldest sibling are more than twice as likely to die as a child who is born following a three-year gap.

High fertility strongly increases a woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes. 210 million women each year suffer life-threatening complications and a further 536,000 die in pregnancy, during childbirth or in the six weeks following delivery. Of these, 67,000 maternal deaths result from unsafe abortions, carried out in unhygienic conditions and/or by unskilled providers. Many of these deaths could be avoided if women had access to modern family planning and, most importantly, felt sufficiently empowered to insist on its use.

380 women become pregnant each minute; half of these do not wish for or plan their pregnancy. When women have rights and the use of family planning maternal and child deaths are drastically reduced, simply by preventing unplanned babies from being born. 125 million women worldwide would like to control their fertility, but are either not using or unable to insist on using, modern contraception.

About 14 million girls aged 15-19 give birth each year, many lacking the social status or power to control their fertility. Many are forced into an early marriage. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, especially amongst the poorest social groups, see the highest rates of adolescent fertility. Girls aged 15-19 from the poorest groups are three times more likely than their better-off peers to give birth in adolescence, and bear twice as many children during their lifetime. They are also 2-5 times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as women in their 20s, and their babies are less likely to survive as well.

Population growth can increase the risks of political instability and conflict, due to poverty, rapid urbanisation, reduced supplies of farmland and water per capita, and pressures on already overstretched infrastructure and services.

The responsibility for the current climate crisis rests squarely with developed countries, whose consumption patterns are pushing the world's fragile eco-system beyond its limits, inflicting huge global costs - not least on the world's poor. But the necessary global transition to a low-carbon, less resource-intensive, less polluting economic future will not be infinitely harder to achieve in a world of 10 billion rather than 6.8 billion people.

The link between population growth and poverty is two-way: poverty often leads to higher fertility and population growth, while high fertility and high population rates can entrench poverty. The key is to replace this vicious circle with a virtuous one, where women's rights, and their capacity to exercise choice, alongside access to better healthcare and nutrition, and modern family planning, allow the poorest women to make informed decisions about family spacing and size. When they are able to do so, they consistently make choices that are good for their health and that of their children.

In developing countries where the birth rate has fallen, between 25 and 40% of economic growth is attributed to the demographic change. This dividend includes the benefits of improved health and nutrition (healthy and well nourished people are more productive) and the freeing up of resources for investment in education and skills.

Save the Children calls for donors, international development agencies and developing country governments to make a commitment to the rights of women and girls, and to tackling a range of structural inequities that prevent the realisation of these rights, and to improve access to and use of family planning.

A new target was added to the MDGs, calling for universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015. On current trends, this target will not be met - in fact, national and donor resources for family planning have fallen since the mid-1990s. This must change: investment in these services must become a high priority for development spending. Comprehensive family planning services should also include the right to safe abortion and the necessary services to ensure this.

In the largest meeting ever focused on best practices and lessons learned from international family planning programs, participants shared results demonstrating family planning's powerful contribution to breaking the cycle of poverty and improving family health worldwide.

For example, CEDPA staff presented a poster session on its work to advance family planning usage in the central Terai region of Nepal. The project, Expanding Voluntary Use of Contraception in the Central Terai Region of Nepal, trained volunteers to disseminate information, counsel families and provide commodities to some of the most marginalized populations in Nepal.

Does the State indefinitely keep throwing tax payers' money at pregnant women when there's a national consensus on reducing the population? Or does it provide nutritional care to women who can't afford the most basic maternal care? Both methods are scampering up the wrong tree. Linking incentives and disincentives with the use of contraception is pointless. Such an approach fails, making needy individuals with more than two children ineligible for schemes such as PDS ration, mid-day meals or micro-credit are inhumane.

The real way is to bundle policy initiatives like the education of girls, provision of better health services and social security, empowering women to take reproductive decisions and providing peer group information on contraception. The correlation between these initiatives and reducing fertility rates is proven. Will the State, socialistic in its rhetoric down the decades, stop taking the easy way out and proceed to build a solid welfare net that can take care of our needy millions who, today, have nothing to gain in the long-term by having smaller families.  rw

The Cairo Consensus of 1994 promised universal access to primary education. Unfortunately, this agreement has not been honored. Lack of access to reproductive health services means that more than 500,000 women die in childbirth every year and 40 per minute seek unsafe abortion. Millions of women who play by all the rules of faithfulness in marriage contract the AIDS virus.

Because of the low status of women in many cultures, and of religions of all stripes which limit the spheres in which women and girls can participate, the world is digging an unnecessary hole for itself.

The UNFPA is a leader in the fight for the education, health and human rights of the world's women. In 2006, 180 countries allocated funds for UNFPA but not our own.  rw

Congress votes to contribute U.S. funds to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the but when these bills reach President Bush's desk, they die, because China is one of the more than 100 countries in which UNFPA operates.

President Bush is convinced, as were conservative Presidents before him, that China's national family planning program is driven by forced abortion and coercive sterilization. The Chinese government has denied this allegation for more than 20 years. China, the world's most populous country, employs draconian measures to put the brakes on further population growth. These have included reducing food rations, reducing living space and denying school choice to parents who have children beyond a couple's first child.

It has not been resolved, however, whether the Chinese government is perpetrating coercion. Beyond the moral repugnance of government dictating bedroom decisions, it is a strategy that is unnecessary and likely unworkable. Studies indicate that when couples have access to family planning information, education and supplies, they choose to limit their family size.

To correct the administration's policy, a bill in the House of Representatives calling for a $34 million fiscal year 2008 appropriation to UNFPA, would ensure detailed presidential accountability for refusing to release these congressionally appropriated funds.

In the 32 Chinese counties that receive UNFPA assistance, not only have maternal deaths declined, but abortions have decreased from 24 per 1,000 women to 10 per 1,000 women.  rw

International funding for these programmes increased from $168m in 1971 to $512m in 1985. The proportion of married women using a contraceptive rose from less than 10% to about 60% between 1960 and 2000 and the average number of births per woman dropped from six to about three. Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest contraceptive use (22%) and highest fertility rate (5.5).

Throughout this period, family planning for population control was the centrepiece of various controversial discourses. Some took a position against contraception as a principle. Coercive programmes in some countries added more fuel to these discussions.

In 1994, the International Conference of Population and Development replaced the rationale for family planning with a broader agenda of women's empowerment and sexual and reproductive rights.

The agenda was aimed at empowering women, through moving attention from population growth to reproductive health.

However, funding for these programmes dropped from $560m in 1995 to $460m in 2003 and use of contraceptive methods rose with a slower pace. Some other issues, such as HIV/AIDS, were seen as leaving high fertility as yesterday's problem.

The benefits from family planning have not prompted more support and not only failed to convince the opposition, but missed its financial support.

Some of the benefits of family planning such as poverty reduction, gender equality and human rights are being challenged, it is astonishing that even its health benefits are not being appreciated.

Family planning can prevent 90% of abortion-related deaths and 32% of pregnancy-related deaths. Saving lives is the best argument for family planning. After Islamic revolution in Iran, all family planning programmes were suspended for about a decade, but when the religious leaders recognised the health benefits of family planning and its role in saving the lives of women, they issued fatwa in 1989 and authorised the use of all contraceptive methods.

Today 74% of Iranian women use a contraceptive method and the maternal mortality ratio is 76 per 100,000 live births.

Sri Lanka increased contraceptive use (70%) and reduce maternal mortality ratio (99) with limited financial resources.

In Uganda, 4 out of 10 pregnancies are unintended; 1.6 in 10 end up with abortion and 16 pregnant mothers die everyday. Fertility rate in Uganda is 6.7 children per woman. These figures indicate the needs for family planning and requires political support, increased funding expansion of services and increased accessibility of various contraceptive methods. Emphasis could be on rural communities, unmarried youth and women receiving post-abortion care.  rw

UNFPA assistance includes family planning services, reproductive health commodities and supporting interventions such as the treatment of fistula.

Assistance includes support for gender sensitive legislation, supporting woman victims of violence, strengthening women's crisis centers and engaging men in ending violence against women.

UNFPA will support the Population Census Organization of Pakistan to ensure women's concerns are addressed. UNFPA will continue to work on policy and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals.

UNFPA will continue to provide emergency maternal health services for women in earthquake affected areas.  rw

The conference will focus on taking stock of the progress made in advancing the ICPD agenda and agreeing on a common strategy to take to the next level.

At the Conference in Cairo in 1994, 179 countries agreed that population and development are inextricably linked, and that empowering women and meeting people's needs for education and health, are necessary for both advancement and balanced development.  rw

Although countries promised to provide the funding to ensure universal access to reproductive health by 2015, this has not been achieved. Millions of women continue to be denied the highest attainable standard of health. Controversies surrounding sexual and reproductive health are heated. Different world views on women's role in society and on sexual morality, and the relationship between religion and the state, clash repeatedly. Every year more than 530,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth, and another 20 million become ill or disabled. With an average of 6.9 children per woman Uganda has one of the world's highest fertility rates yet many Ugandan women choose to end unwanted pregnancies by an illegal abortion. Reproductive rights are not a priority, because of the country's social conservatism.

One million teenagers become pregnant in the USA each year, 85% are unintended, and about 35% end in abortion. 40% of American women have been pregnant by the age of 20, and about 30% will have contracted a sexually transmitted infection by the age of 24. Denmark's compulsory sex education and access to contraception have contributed to one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy. The impact of health-sector reform is identified as a critical factor. In some countries the reproductive rights movement is challenged by the lack of a legal framework that allows independent NGOs to be advocates for change. The socioeconomic inequities that determine women's access to information and services are overlooked. In Latin America, the Roman Catholic Church is the main force that opposes full recognition of sexual and reproductive rights. While official policy is based on religious dogma, unofficial and often illegal mechanisms enable the widespread exercise of private sexual and reproductive choices, as long as they are hidden.

These restrictive policies have the greatest effect on ethnic minorities, single mothers, those in rural areas, and homosexual men and women. As systems of social belief become more diverse, it seems unlikely that one religion's influence will be the sole determinant of policy on reproductive health.  rw

For the UN to succeed in its endeavors, partnership with civil society is a necessity. The conference in 1994 forged a consensus to ensure that reproductive health is recognized as a human right and reached agreement on actions to achieve gender equality, economic and social justice. It also paved the way for the Millennium Development Goals�adopted by all the world�s countries as a blueprint for building better lives for people everywhere in the 21st century. The commitments range from halving poverty to halting HIV-AIDS, from reducing child mortality to eliminating gender disparity by 2015. They are a call to which every one of us can and should respond; one of the most effective ways is through the education and empowerment of girls and women.  rw   

The speech will occur on January 8, 2010, having been postponed due to extreme weather conditions in Washington DC. Please follow the headline link or go to www.icpd2015.org for a live streamed broadcast at 3:00 pm. A transcript and video of of the speech will be posted on this site following the event.

The "Cairo Consensus" was reached in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt by 179 nations. It was agreed to achieve universal access to education, especially for girls; reductions in infant, child and maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive health.

The 1994 ICPD was followed by the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women which established the Beijing Platform for Action, and the 2000 Millennium Summit, that established the Millennium Development Goals. These three conferences and their reinforcing commitments are the cornerstones of population and development policies globally.

The programs resulting from these conferences have improved and saved millions of lives through effective and affordable reproductive health programs, and has resulted in the growth of economies and preservation of natural resources.

When we leave the P (population) out of the ICPD, we cannot achieve the goals of the ICPD or those of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs.) Since the 1990's, lack of attention to population has had alarming impact in countries such as Kenya. In the 1980s the average family size in Kenya fell from 7.2 to 5.4, as a result to the effort put into family planning programs. In 1990 the projected population of the Kenya for 2050 was 54 million. Now, with the diminished focus on family planning in Kenya, the population in 2050 is projected to 84 million.

These 84 million will need to be fed, educated, and employed - perhaps an insurmountable challenge for Kenya. Increasing poverty is extremely visible through the mushrooming of slums. When population grows so fast, education and health systems are overwhelmed or fail all together, and development cannot be sustained and it is girls and women who suffer the most.

Development was declared to be a universal and inalienable right by the ICPD, but the British parliament concluded 2 years ago that "the evidence is overwhelming; MDGs are difficult or impossible to achieve with the current levels of population growth in the world's least developed countries and regions."

While coercive family planning has in the past occurred in countries like India, it was found that the truly successful family planning in countries such as Iran, Bangladesh, Thailand or Colombia - have been entirely voluntary. About one third of the decline in maternal mortality in the West is not due to better obstetrics, but to voluntary family planning.

The ICPD PoA says: " The success of population education and family planning programmes in a variety of settings demonstrates that informed individuals everywhere can and will act responsibly in the light of their own needs and those of their families and communities."

Unfortunately there are still many barriers to adequate family planning. Many poor and ignorant women beleive that contraception is more dangerous than childbirth - actually the risks can be literally a thousand fold in the opposite direction.

No women can be free unless she can decide whether and when to have a child. Family planning leads to increased health benefits to women and families and opens the door to all the other aspects of reproductive and sexual health.

There are 1.2 billion young people who are in the prime of learning about their own sexuality. Youth need sexual reproductive health and rights and girls need empowerment and education. Girls with secondary school education make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Investing in these critical areas is the way to go for the achievement of the Cairo agenda and the MDGs.

Not only should there be universal access to contraceptives, but there must be dissemination of correct information and the development new contraceptive technologies for both women and men, and protection from HIV and STIs.

Having babies delivered by skilled birth attendants is a worthy goal, but making family planning available is more expediant. Community health workers with minimal training can deliver injectable contraceptives safely and responsibly.

Lowered maternal mortality can only be realized by making safe abortion available. Medical abortion and manual vacuum aspiration can be made available in low resource settings when skills are acquired to use them responsibly.

We must:

1. Revitalize and reposition family planning

2. Restore and sustain family planning budgets

3. Disseminate accurate and comprehensive information on family planning

4. Meet the unmet need for family planning with universal access to contraceptives

5. Empower communities to access and distribute contraceptives

6. Build relationships with maternal health advocates

7. Build bridges between actors in other fields such as HIV/AIDS, education, human rights, development, migrations, etc

8. Develop messages which communicate to policy makers and donors the relationship between population dynamics, family planning and maternal health, sexual and reproductive health

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.

Visit http://www.pathfind.org/site/DocServer/PRACHAR_Impact_-_Pathfinder_WP_Jan_2010.pdf?docID=18181 to see the report on the impact of implementing the model in the reproductive health and family planning programs in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

This means that all women should have access to family planning services. At present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The good news is that countries that want to reduce family size can do so quickly.

In one decade Iran dropped its population growth to one of the lowest in the developing world. It's annual population growth peaked at 4.2% in the early 1980s. As this growth began to burden the economy and the environment, the country's leaders realized that overcrowding, environmental degradation, and unemployment were undermining Iran's future.

In 1989 the government restored its family planning program. The resources of education, culture, and health were mobilized to encourage smaller families. Some 15,000 clinics were established to provide rural populations with health and family planning services.

Religious leaders were directly involved in appealing for smaller families. Iran introduced male sterilization, contraceptives such as the pill and sterilization, were free of charge. Iran became the only country to require couples to take a class on modern contraception before receiving a marriage license.

In addition a broad-based effort was launched to raise female literacy, from 25% in 1970 to more than 70% in 2000. Female school enrollment increased from 60 to 90%. Television was used to disseminate information on family planning. As a result of this initiative, family size in Iran dropped from seven children to fewer than three. From 1987 to 1994, Iran cut its population growth rate to 1.3% in 2006, slightly higher than in the US.

Soap operas on radio and television can quickly change attitudes about reproductive health, gender equity, family size, and environmental protection. It costs relatively little and can proceed while formal educational systems are being expanded.

The U.S.-based Population Media Center has initiated projects in some 15 countries. Their radio dramas in Ethiopia, address issues such as HIV/AIDS, family planning, and the education of girls. A survey in 2004 found that 63% of clients seeking reproductive health care at 48 service centers reported listening to one of the dramas. Demand for contraceptives increased 157%.

For Bangladesh, $62 spent by the government to prevent an unwanted birth saved $615 on other social services.

When countries move quickly to smaller families, productivity surges, savings and investment climb, and economic growth accelerates. This lasts for only a few decades, but it is usually enough to launch a country into the modern era.

Meeting the needs of the 201 million women who do not have access to effective contraception could each year prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies, 22 million induced abortions, and 1.4 million infant deaths.  rw

Not having more than two billion people in 20 years time is a desirable outcome for China. There is a limit to how many people China can support. But did the regime have to impose such a draconian birth-control policy?

The Chinese government's "soft" birth-control policy, encouraging later marriage, fewer births and longer birth intervals - brought the fertility rate down from 5.7 in 1970 to 2.9 by 1979. And it happened before the one-child policy was introduced.

Critics point to the Indian experience, where an early experiment with enforced birth-control measures created a backlash and yet, India's birth rate has also fallen to only 2.8 this year.

The transition from high birth rate, high death rate societies to longer-lived communities works its magic eventually. But it does take its time.

Compulsion does make a difference. By 1980 China's fertility rate was already down without compulsion to the rate that prevails in India today. With compulsion, it has fallen to little more than half the current Indian fertility rate. So China's population will level off at about 1.4 billion by 2020, while India's will go on growing to at least 1.7 billion.

If China had taken India's approach, its population would probably reach two billion before it stopped growing. That could easily be the margin between success and disaster.

China's economic miracle skates along the edge of environmental calamity. Breathing the air in Beijing is the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarettes every day. Dozens of cities are experiencing severe water shortages. It's bad enough but what would it have been like without the one-child policy?

In large parts of the world, it is not acceptable to suggest that the number of people can be a problem. Population control is absent, for example, from discussions about how to minimise climate change. It's partly out of concern for the religious sensibilities, and partly because of the human rights issues.

In addition there are demographic implications. The shrinking number of people in the working-age population who have to provide for an aged population. Another is a wave of selective abortions and female infanticide. In China girls are in such short supply that by 2010 there will be 37 million young Chinese men with no prospect of a wife.

Almost two-thirds of Chinese families have only one child. And the Government is determined to retain the policy and intends to bring the population down whatever the collateral social damage.

China is well beyond its long-term "carrying capacity" even with its present population. There are things worse than a one-child policy such as social disintegration and civil war.  rw

India's most populous State, Uttar Pradesh, will account for 22% of India's population by 2026. Fertility rates here destined to take decades to reach replacement levels. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are forecast to jointly account for only 13% of the population increase during the same period.

Currently, 42% of India's population produces three or more children. Of 188 million couples requiring contraceptive coverage, only 53% cent are using contraceptives. The percentage of women having more than three children is 57% in Uttar Pradesh, 54% in Bihar and 49% in Madhya Pradesh. Almost half the girls there are under 18 at marriage.

There is urgent need to push up the age of marriage, delay the birth of the first child and widen the scope for spacing and limiting families. Vasectomy is a feasible way.

Unfortunately, any efforts to limit population are attacked by critics as an invasion of "human rights". Given the culture of the northern States, such goals are dumped as "unacceptable" and "impossible" and invariably shunned by many politicians.

The Millennium Development Goals do not envision family planning as the route to improving maternal and child health. This acts as a deterrent to organisations getting involved overtly.

Concentration on maternal and child health services has excluded men. Counselling on vasectomy is just not their business. In India, men have ceased to be the object of family planning ever since eight million male sterilisations were conducted coercively and haphazardly during the draconian Emergency period.

Even now horror stories of three decades gone by give shudders to politicians, especially in the Hindi belt. With no other terminal option available, millions of women have perforce to undergo tubal ligations having already borne the brunt of unwanted pregnancies and induced abortions.

The recent resurrection of the vasectomy programme comes as a welcome surprise. Madhya Pradesh has doubled vasectomies in the span of just one year from 7,000 to over 15,000. Haryana has shown higher and higher performance each passing year. Punjab has quadrupled the number of vasectomies in a matter of one year. Rajasthan has upped the vasectomy performance from just 1,700 during 2003-04 by almost five-times.

On October 6, in Vadodara, nearly 900 vasectomies were performed and hundreds of men had come willingly for this outpatient procedure.

At every health facility, ANMs and village women togged up in their best attire escorted the "acceptors" for vasectomy. Surgeries progressed speedily and while the patients waiting their turn, paranthas, enthusiastic counselling and a bag full of condoms were kept in readiness to complete the day's work.

Whether the carrot was the Rs 200 motivation money or the Rs 1,000 compensation for acceptors, an enormous response was evident. But India's annual vasectomy total remains less than a 10th of the pre-Emergency levels, despite hundreds of surgeons having acquired the Chinese non-scalpel skill.

In India, vasectomies are treated as the poor man's option. In some Latin American countries vasectomy has been presented as an alternative to female sterilisation. What is needed is for decision-makers to stop worrying about resurrecting the ghost of 1975 and understand that our population growth is having a detrimental effect on maternal and infant mortality.  rw

Women bear the brunt of controlling childbirth. Half of married women use contraceptives and few know about the use of condoms by males. Female sterilisation is on the rise and 84% children are breastfed in the first year of birth.

The study was done by the research arm of the Population Welfare ministry, funded by USAID, to collect reliable estimates on pregnant women and family planning usage.

The last such survey was done in 1990-91.  rw

This is due to the effort of the village's people who want to build a better life, for themselves and for their children.

Every Monday the head of the village takes a few minutes to tell stories about family planning, effective contraceptives and the harms of having too many children. Collaborators visit each family to encourage newly married husbands and wives to use proper contraceptives.

Y Lim is one of the women in the village praised for her family planning practise. She got married at 21, but didn't have her first child for another three years. She waited until they had a stable income. Now she has two children who are well-behaved and excel at their studies.

They have been able to afford adequate accommodations and two family motorbikes. Y Lim is attending classes to improve her business skills.

Y Lim's family is one of many in the village practising modern birth-control methods, ensuring that the children have a brighter future.  rw

Women are having one or two children, and later,

due largely to Jamaica's family planning programme.

The total fertility rate has fallen, reaching 2.5 children per woman in 2002. In 1997, the fertility rate stood at 2.8 children per woman. This number continued to decline to 2.21 in 2001, 2.05 in 2002, 1.99 in 2003 and 1.93 in 2004.

20% of female-run businesses have been in existence for over 20 years, 57% are sole proprietorships or partnerships, 76% operate from well-defined business plans and 34% are college or university-educated.

The Bureau of Women's Affairs monitors government policy on women. The Association of Women's Organisations of Jamaica (AWOJA) co-ordinates women's organisations islandwide. Women's Crisis Centres help those in dire straits. The Women's Political Caucus facilitates participation in politics. The Women's Construction Collective trains women in construction. Woman Inc runs a crisis centre and shelter.  rw

The total fertility rate declined from 6.0 in 1984 to 4.0 in 2005. Maternal mortality declined from 500 in 1991 to 350-400 per 100,000 life births in 2005.

The female population 15-49 years was 39.2 million which was 52.1% of total female population.

Life expectancy of females had risen to 66 from 61 years in 1991, for male expectancy was 64 years.

The population ministry was pursuing awareness campaign and rise in female' mean age at marriage from 21.7 years in 1991 to 23.4 years was a testament to its success.

The contraceptive prevalence rate had risen from 11.8 in 1991 to 36.0.

The credit also goes to media that had adopted an active role in creating awareness about over-population, especially at the grassroots level. The government was encouraging public-private partnerships to help achieve their targets.  rw

What is Senegal doing right? The Senegalese government has taken an active role in the sex education of its citizens. In 1986, the government launched a massive prevention program, pouring resources into AIDS education.

The Senegalese brand of Islam dictates there is little opportunity for teenagers to be alone together. The lack of alcohol plays a role in disease prevention. Senegal's sex worker registration system, in place since 1969, provides prostitutes with weekly health care and free condoms, 100% of sex workers surveyed said they use condoms with every customer.

But there are other reasons for the country's low AIDS rate, including the early and intensive efforts by the country's powerful imams to educate their congregations about AIDS. While imams limit their sermons to discussions of abstinence and fidelity, doctors are often on hand to handle practical instruction and clinical questions.

Teaching people to use condoms is a contradiction of Islamic law. The imam teaches fidelity in marriage and abstinence before marriage. Outside the mosque, he said, he can discuss HIV and AIDS more directly and, like many Senegalese imams, he refers congregants to a local clinic or doctor.

Imams enjoy enormous political and cultural power in Senegal. Senegal's anti-AIDS strategy provides a blueprint for other countries struggling to contain the spread of the disease.

Another of Senegal's successful HIV/AIDS prevention techniques is frank, open and comprehensive sex education beginning at age 12, and AIDS awareness training starting as early as 1st grade.

It provides peer counselors to students and sponsors family life education clubs in schools. Senegalese girls have delayed sex three years longer than their mothers' generation, and condom use has risen threefold from 10 years ago, to nearly 70%.

Comprehensive sex education, including information about condoms and how to use them, is one of the most important weapons in the fight against AIDS.

In Senegal and in Uganda, where the HIV rate has fallen to about 6%, the governments were quick to implement "Abstinence, Be Faithful and Use Condoms", approach. Senegal's policy of legalized prostitution means the country is ineligible for PEPFAR funding, so it relies on donations from the UNFPA and the Global Fund. That means Senegal's teachers and community leaders are free to discuss condom use as part of a larger prevention message.  rw

Before 1974, the fertility rate was around 2.6 children per woman but decreased when the family-planning policy was implemented in 1973. By the mid and late 1990s, the fertility rate of Chinese women had dropped to about 1.8.

Employment pressures, delayed wedlock and longer life expectancy have all influenced women's childbearing age. In the 1990s, a Chinese woman would marry at 22 but now the age has climbed to 24.  rw

Family planning is an important part of reproductive healthcare. The lowering of the birth-rate will help improve living standards. Viet Nam has unveiled a programme that implements reproductive healthcare and family planning under the Cairo model.

The country's population will face more difficulties, including how to improve living conditions. From the Human Development Index (HDI), Viet Nam ranks 107th out of 184 countries. From individual HDI criteria, the country's average income of US$650 per person per year places Viet Nam on the list of impoverished nations. Vietnam will come off the list if the country reaches an annual per capita income of $1,000.

At the current development level and with a stable replacement birth-rate, Vietnam will reach this goal in the next 10 years. The country's GDP has been increasing at 8% annually, while population has gone up by 1.3-1.4%.

When parents have children, expenses for feeding, housing and education are high. It takes time for children to become contributing members of society. Therefore, if we work on population, we will reduce the social burden.  rw

Five years ago, Las Tunas reported 12.9 deaths per thousand live births. Cuba has achieved the best results to reduce infant mortality. Over the past few years the country's rate has ranged between five and seven, very similar to the statistics of many developed nations.  rw

The progress of countries toward sustainable development can be assessed using the UN Human Development Index (HDI) as an indicator of well-being, and the ecological footprint as a measure of demand on the biosphere. As world population grows, less biocapacity is available per person. In 2003, Asia-Pacific and Africa regions were using less than world average per person, while the European Union countries and North America had crossed the threshold for high human development. Only Cuba qualified for sustainable development.

The Havana government has organized a socialist society with a high level of literacy, education, long life expectancy, low infant mortality and low energy consumption.

It is the world's leader in organic agriculture, and is making contributions to medical research, not to mention that Cuban doctors are serving the people in poor developing countries. Cuba has developed a considerable research capability.

Castro declared: Humanity is going through difficult times, plus a non-stop consumption process typical of the globalized imperialist system.  rw

The country's demographic pattern started to change in 1991, when longevity became more common and birth rates fell.

Brazil needs to get ready for the elderly population to come.  rw

The Cuban media has run a candid coverage of a phenomenon that promises to wreak havoc on a strained social service. The effort to sustain the socialist society is being constantly challenged by emigration, aging adults and childless women.

Since 1978, Cuba's fertility rate can no longer sustain current population levels. During the 1960s and 1970s, Cuba's annual birth rate was about 250,000. In 2005, there were slightly more than 120,000. Seniors 60 and older make up about 16% of Cuba's population. By 2025, 26% of Cubans will be elderly and Cuba will join the 11 countries with the world's oldest populations.

Among the causes are housing shortages, high cost of living, lack of day-care centres and goods like children's clothing and the migration of adults of child-bearing age. Advances for women in the workforce and availability of birth control also contributed.

Cuba's population rate started to slip in the 1950s. If communism collapses Cuba is likely to witness a massive outward migration of youth.

Cuba has about 300,000 people over the age of 80, but the government has focused its attention on infant mortality and educating children.

The Cuban health system is not geared toward the catastrophic illnesses of older people.

Elderly people earn less than $10 a month from pensions, so many are street vendors who say they were forced to return to the workforce because they could not survive on their incomes.  rw   Karen Gaia says: Cuba is unique in that it has one of the best health care systems, best education system, lowest infant mortality rate, and lowest birth rate among the developing world. But Cuba is a poor country due to the trade embargo and the economic and brain drain resulting from the emmigration of the wealthier people of Cuba. If it were not so poor, perhaps it would not lose so many of its people. Perhaps it was a mistake for Cuba to send health care workers overseas to help other poor countries.

Men and women in Delhi are obese. The immunisation rate of children is low. Anaemia is a big problem.

But Delhi's fertility rate stands at 2.13, which is perfect.

Married women in Delhi seem to have accepted the two child norm. Over 92% live with two children and didn't want a third.

Over 70.7% of mothers who had two daughters didn't want a third pregnancy in the hope of a male child.  rw

A total of 4,484 maternal deaths from 1.3 million births to 14.4 million females aged between 15 and 49 years were investigated during 1997-2003. Based on about 26 million births in 2004, nearly 78,000 maternal deaths are estimated in India in that year.

The leading causes of death have been haemorrhage 38%, sepsis 11% and abortion 8%.

Seven states, including Karnataka, are performing poorly. Uttar Pradesh leads in avoidable deaths during childbirth.

Uttar Pradesh 517, Assam 490, Rajasthan 445, Madhya Pradesh 379, Bihar 371 and Orissa 368 with MMR ranging between 517 and 358 still remain a cause of concern.

As in childbirths, India has managed to reduce rate of infant mortality from 80 per 100,000 in 1990-91 to 58 per 100,000 2004.

Expectant mothers opting for institutional delivery will be given Rs.2,000 at the time of child birth.

In the villages, the incentive is being provided through young women known as ASHAS. Incentives given to men and women opting for sterilisation is also being enhanced to Rs.800 to encourage people to have spaced out children and small families.  rw

The success has been attributed to a network of 3,500 full-time workers and volunteers. Half received training in communication and were dispatched to areas where they raised awareness of family planning. Local authorities brought information about family planning to commune and hamlet meetings.

With funding of nearly VND7 billion, the province has prioritised family planning services in communes with particularly high birth rates.

The project has made credit available to open small businesses and modernise farming. Last year more than 2,000 people in 19 communes were provided with loans. As a result living standards have improved, as has awareness about the need for family planning.

At least 66% of married couples have sought out contraceptives and many women have been provided with gynaecological check-ups. Pregnant women have received pre-natal check-ups, iron vitamins and vaccinations.

The province has been listed among 43 cities and provinces nation-wide with low birth rates but still faces difficulties. Some districts only enacted policies in the third quarter of last year.

Worse, the allowances paid to population workers remains low and at odds with the workers' increasing number of tasks.

However, the province will reduce its birth rate further to 1.3%; decrease the number of malnourished children to 26%; and increase the number of married couples using contraceptives to 68%.

The province has set a target to reduce the population growth rate to 1.25 per cent by 2010.  rw

The primary health care system has also played a part in the reduction.

In 1981 the average number of children per woman was 7.

By 1994 it had dropped to 5 and in 1999 to 4.

The use of contraceptives and economic factors have also contributed to this change.

The average of children now stands at 3.

Most couples were opting to have at least two to three children while the phenomenon of having one child was no longer considered odd.

UNFPA is targeting young people who are threatened with poverty, illiteracy, risks of pregnancy and HIV. It recognised that investment in young people promoted social and economic growth.

The key to these efforts was keeping girls in school, building life skills, delaying marriage and pregnancy until adulthood and preventing HIV.  rw

Smaller-sized families provide more female equality and better care for children, but they pose challenges to traditions such as taking care of the elderly and the establishment of good child characteristics. Up to 30% in Ha Noi said they have not had time to teach their children beneficial characteristics.

The trend that married children live apart from parents has driven old people into a danger of loneliness and economic difficulties. All Vietnamese families face problems such as drug addiction, prostitution and street children.

Agencies and social organisations have worked together to increase public awareness to build a model of sustainable families. Vietnam Family day is celebrated every June 28 with activities to raise public awareness against social evils involving the family.  rw

In 50 years, Tunisia has had only two leaders, and has won praise for its remarkable economic success.

Nearly 80% of its population is considered middle class. The poverty rate has dropped from 33% in 1967 to about 4.2% in 2004. Almost 90% of the citizens own their own houses, and have access to education, health facilities, and clean drinking water.

There is virtually no problem of religious extremism in Tunisia.

There is no place for religious extremism in the country. Polygamy is prohibited. Tunisia's entry into the newly-established United Nations Human Rights Council shows that it has great support and respect among UN members.

The Tunisian government has succeeded in these things because it has three strong pillars of support. They are women, workers and the business community.

Tunisia has all the qualities necessary to become a model for Muslim countries in protecting women's rights and promoting gender equality.

President Ben Ali emphasized the importance of women and women's rights in the country's development.

Ben Ali's government has maintained good relations with labor unions by consistently raising minimum wages.

The business community, which has benefited from pro-market policies, has always extended its full support to the government.

Ben Ali wants to raise the economic growth target to 6.3% in the coming years to cut the unemployment rate to 10% by 2010. He also aims to double the per capita income of Tunisians to 8,000 dinars.  rw   More on Tunisia from the CIA factbook: Population growth rate: 0.99%; Total fertility rate: 1.74 children born/woman; Toxic and hazardous waste disposal is ineffective and poses health risks; water pollution from raw sewage; limited natural fresh water resources; deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification.

The government joined with international organisations to educate women and their partners about sexual health and the use of contraceptives. Women who want to move ahead in their careers normally have fewer children.

The UNPF and the Ministry of Health have been providing programmes where they educate adolescents about family planning, and partnered with the Women's Centres to target young people to bring about an awareness of sexual health and the use of contraceptives. Women are now more concerned about their sexual health.

In 1997, the fertility rate stood at 2.8 children per woman, 3 years later that number decreased to 2.25. This continued to decline to 2.21 in 2001, 2.05 in 2002, 1.99 in 2003 and 1.93 in 2004. Women in the age group 20-24 had the highest number of births - 99 per 1,000.

Meanwhile, the decline in 2002 was evident in younger age groups - from 112 births for every 1,000 women 15-19 years in 1997 to 79 in 2002, and from 163 to 124 for age group 20-24. However, the number of women in the 25-29 age group who had children rose from 112 to 118.

Women in rural areas had a fertility rate of 2.8, while the rate for women in the Kingston Metropolitan Area was 2.4. Women in other urban areas had a fertility rate of 2.2.  rw

The decline reflected the slowing of population growth during the past 15 years, which would help the country's population stabilise at 115-120 million.

The report negated the widely maintained view that the country was going through a "baby boom". However, questions were raised on the reported increase in the number of third births.

The new report, based on the 2005 population survey is an attempt to provide unequivocal answers to questions and provides a concise summary of the situation.  rw

By 2050, it will have close to 260 million inhabitants, based on data compiled in 2004, when the population stood at 182.1 million.

The population-growth rate has been slowing due to lower fertility and birth rates. Between 1991 and 2004, the birth rate measuring the number of babies born per 1,000 inhabitants, went from 23.4% to 20.6%. During the same period, the fertility rate dropped, from 2.7 births per woman to 2.3.

The number of Brazilians aged 70 or older will rise.

In 2004, 7.7 million, or 4.1% of the country's total population, were 70 or older. By 2050 Brazil's this will be 34.3 million.  rw   Brazil's birth rate is still above replacement level (usually 2.1); its population growth will not go below zero until many years after replacement level birth rate is reached.

Indonesia's population would have surpassed 300 million if the government had not implemented the program. The country s environment would have been much worse if Indonesia was over populated.

The current population is burdening the environment as evident from the landslides and floods due to deforestation.

The government is endeavoring to improve the quality of human resources and at the same time control the population in an effort to build a prosperous community.

Economic growth and improvement of the quality of life will be hard to accomplish if the population continues to increase.

Low-income families tended to have more children therefore the family planning program was mainly intended for the former.

The program in Indonesia was considered successful especially during the 1980s and 1990s. Many developing countries sent their personnel to Indonesia to observe and study the program.  rw

One of the secrets to Brazil's rapid fertility decline was that the owner of a large TV Brazilian station (TV-Globo) came to believe that encouraging small families was key to Brazil's future economic development. TV-Globo ran ads "normalizing" small families, and even worked family planning messages into their popular soap operas. The education worked!

Today, with energy self-sufficiency a near-reality and family planning programs firmly in place, Brazil's chief complaint is that the U.S. (as well as Europe) continues to have strong agricultural protectionist policies that keep out their products (such as oranges).

In the late 1960s the issue was at the forefront of public concern, but has since seen a decrease in responsible reporting the importance of addressing the dramatic growth we are faced with. We cannot tackle climate change, poverty, food and water shortages, and the energy crisis - without also addressing the population factor.

When the lead article, by Julia Whitty, says that "Two hundred million women have no access whatsoever to contraception," this is false and represents a common misunderstanding. Lack of access is only minor reason for non-use in most countries. The term "unmet need" does not mean unmet demand for contraception, but rather describes the estimated 215 million women who don't want to be pregnant and are not using contraception, and -- most of them don't want or intend to use family planning because: 1. they have heard it is dangerous, 2. their male partners are opposed, 3. their religion is opposed, or 4. they don't think it will work because they think God determines how many children they will have.

An increase in contraceptive use can only be accomplished using communications to overcome these informational barriers. Also, about 1.6 billion adults in the world do not practice family planning because of societal demands for large families. People must be provided with informed choice based on knowledge of the health and economic benefits of delayed and spaced childbearing.

Whitty also claims that those concerned about national population issues are nativist/racist. While there are some racists involved in population and immigration debates, their racist arguments are not condoned or supported by the mainstream population stabilization movement. Diversity has made and will continue to make the US strong and vibrant. However, we must also mind our domestic carrying capacity and limit our population size if we are to have a healthy and prosperous future with some semblance of biodiversity remaining.

For example, in Australia, where population is mainly driven by immigration, there are legitimate concerns about limitations of water and other resources making national sustainability impossible if population growth continues at 2.1% a year- doubling in just 33 years. The U.S. population, currently at 309 million, grows at about 1% per year, which would double in only 72 years. We are the third most populous nation on the planet.

There is a tendency to assume that anyone concerned about limiting immigration is racist without looking at their motivations. There are also those who say that anyone concerned with global population issues must be driven by racist concerns. But as a driving factor in determining whether human civilization is sustainable, the population issue is too important to be ignored, and the name calling against those working toward true sustainability on the planet needs to stop.

"Swazis are traditional people, and their sexual behaviour is inbred and totally against safe sexual practices, like condom use and monogamous relationships. The report,found that maintaining a centuries-old cultural belief in procreation to increase the population size, was having devastating consequences in the age of AIDS.

The study shows that Swazis believe it is ideal if a Swazi woman has a minimum of five children. "Nothing must stand in the way of procreation. This belief had come about when the population was a tenth of its present size. Swazis still believe that a woman's role is to bear children continuously, and that a man's role is to impregnate multiple partners, which is why polygamy is so strong here. In the minds of young men, who may not ever get married they can still have many children from multiple girlfriends.

A survey of nearly 2,000 women found that 42% tested HIV positive in 2008, up 3% from 2006.

In 2000 life expectancy was 61 years; now it is 32 years.Women report that they have been subjected to continuous childbirth by their husbands or in-laws, against their will.

In Swazi culture, decision-making has traditionally been a male prerogative and Swazi men strongly defended the practice of "kungena", or wife inheritance, whereby a widow becomes the wife of the deceased man's brother, a practice found to spread HIV.

Another cultural factor was gender preference - often insisted upon by in-laws that a woman bear a boy. In traditional law only a boy can lead a family into its next generation.

Swaziland is mainly rural, but in the northern Hhohho Region, where the capital, Mbabane, is located, the fertility rate is 3.6 children per female, compared to 4.3 children in the underdeveloped southern Shiselweni Region. The fertility rate among women whose education finished at primary school was 5.1, but only 2.4 - less than half the number of children - among students who advanced to tertiary education. The poorest Swazi women have a fertility rate of 5.5, while the figure among the richest is only 2.6 children.

"The rich/poor fertility divide is testament to the lack of a government social safety net - like a good pension scheme for the elderly - so, for those without assets, their only security comes from lots of children, who together can support their parents when they are older," said Tanya Kunene, a social welfare officer in Manzini Region.

The study found that, like many traditional societies, Swazis lived in isolation and were generally suspicious of other cultures - practices like monogamy.That may be changing. According to the study, some survey participants "called for the recognition of multiculturalism in Swaziland, which would create tolerance for other cultures co-existing with our own", and thus make "foreign" practices found to be effective in curbing HIV/AIDS more acceptable.  rw

Rapid population growth in the world's poorest countries is a major obstacle to poverty reduction. Rapid population growth rates and high fertility rates correlate closely with high rates of maternal and child mortality, and most of the countries that are furthest from achieving the Millennium Development Goals have high rates of population growth.

Success at reducing fertility rates does not require coersion. The forced sterilisation policies pursued by India and China in the 1970s were an outrageous violation of women's rights. In International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 concluded that strengthening women's sexual and reproductive rights and social status; improving maternal and child health, nutrition and education; and increasing access to and the use of modern family planning, would work the best, empowering women tend to choose to have fewer children and to space their pregnancies. This has positive effects on the health of mothers and children alike and on the development prospects of poor communities and countries.

While total fertility rates have fallen across the developing world from an average of 5.6 children per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2005, almost all of the 50 least developed countries have much higher rates, in most cases more than five children per woman. By 2050, Uganda is expected to grow from 27 to 130 million; Niger from 14 to 50 million; Iraq from 29 to 64 million; and Afghanistan from 31 to 82 million. Jeffrey Sachs noted: "not only will the world's population continue to soar in the medium and high forecasts, but it will soar in precisely those parts of the world that are struggling the most today with extreme poverty, disease, famine and violence."

The Millennium Development Goals (MGD), agreed in 2001, made no reference to population growth, and the 2005 Commission for Africa report said almost nothing on the subject, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact that rapid population growth has on poverty reduction efforts.

MDG 1 called for halving, by 2015, of the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day. But the number of Africans living in poverty has increased by more than 100 million between 1990 and 2005 - partly as a result of population growth. In much of Africa rising populations have diminished the poverty-reducing effect of economic growth. MGD 1 part 2 calls for a halving of the proportion of people who are hungry. The slow pace of the decline in malnutrition is far too slow to achieve the goal, and the trend looks set to be reversed by food price rises and the economic downturn.

Where women lack rights, where they lack the status or the power to insist that their partners use contraception, or where modern family planning is simply not available, closely-spaced children and high fertility rates are very common. Children born less than two years after the next oldest sibling are more than twice as likely to die as a child who is born following a three-year gap.

High fertility strongly increases a woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes. 210 million women each year suffer life-threatening complications and a further 536,000 die in pregnancy, during childbirth or in the six weeks following delivery. Of these, 67,000 maternal deaths result from unsafe abortions, carried out in unhygienic conditions and/or by unskilled providers. Many of these deaths could be avoided if women had access to modern family planning and, most importantly, felt sufficiently empowered to insist on its use.

380 women become pregnant each minute; half of these do not wish for or plan their pregnancy. When women have rights and the use of family planning maternal and child deaths are drastically reduced, simply by preventing unplanned babies from being born. 125 million women worldwide would like to control their fertility, but are either not using or unable to insist on using, modern contraception.

About 14 million girls aged 15-19 give birth each year, many lacking the social status or power to control their fertility. Many are forced into an early marriage. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, especially amongst the poorest social groups, see the highest rates of adolescent fertility. Girls aged 15-19 from the poorest groups are three times more likely than their better-off peers to give birth in adolescence, and bear twice as many children during their lifetime. They are also 2-5 times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as women in their 20s, and their babies are less likely to survive as well.

Population growth can increase the risks of political instability and conflict, due to poverty, rapid urbanisation, reduced supplies of farmland and water per capita, and pressures on already overstretched infrastructure and services.

The responsibility for the current climate crisis rests squarely with developed countries, whose consumption patterns are pushing the world's fragile eco-system beyond its limits, inflicting huge global costs - not least on the world's poor. But the necessary global transition to a low-carbon, less resource-intensive, less polluting economic future will not be infinitely harder to achieve in a world of 10 billion rather than 6.8 billion people.

The link between population growth and poverty is two-way: poverty often leads to higher fertility and population growth, while high fertility and high population rates can entrench poverty. The key is to replace this vicious circle with a virtuous one, where women's rights, and their capacity to exercise choice, alongside access to better healthcare and nutrition, and modern family planning, allow the poorest women to make informed decisions about family spacing and size. When they are able to do so, they consistently make choices that are good for their health and that of their children.

In developing countries where the birth rate has fallen, between 25 and 40% of economic growth is attributed to the demographic change. This dividend includes the benefits of improved health and nutrition (healthy and well nourished people are more productive) and the freeing up of resources for investment in education and skills.

Save the Children calls for donors, international development agencies and developing country governments to make a commitment to the rights of women and girls, and to tackling a range of structural inequities that prevent the realisation of these rights, and to improve access to and use of family planning.

A new target was added to the MDGs, calling for universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015. On current trends, this target will not be met - in fact, national and donor resources for family planning have fallen since the mid-1990s. This must change: investment in these services must become a high priority for development spending. Comprehensive family planning services should also include the right to safe abortion and the necessary services to ensure this.

The militant group set a deadline of January 15 for its order to be obeyed or it would blow up school buildings and attack schoolgirls. It also told women not to set foot outside their homes without being fully covered.

They said female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society. Teachers had little choice but to comply. The Taliban have destroyed more than 125 girls' schools in the area in the past year.

Swat has become a heartland for Pakistan's Islamic militancy. More than 200 government soldiers have been killed but the militants are still well entrenched.

Mullah Fazlullah has long been exhorting people to stop sending their daughters to schools, which "inculcate Western values". Hundreds of girls and women teachers have quit schools.

The militants have prohibited immunisation for children against polio, claiming that the vaccination is aimed at causing sexual impotence.

About 50% of girls have stopped attending school because of the threats. The inability of the authorities to provide protection had emboldened the Islamists, who burned schools "whenever they want".

In the past two years a further 100 schools have been burnt down in Waziristan and other tribal areas, leaving tens of thousands of children between the ages of five and 15 without education.  rw   Karen Gaia says: not all of Islam is against education of girls. Bangladesh, for example, educates its girls.

To bridge this gap, health department has come up with the idea of spreading the message to stop female foeticide.

Placards are being placed at major temples in the city to spread the message to stop female foeticide

In Punjabi they read: "Together we should worship and sing hymns of mother goddess, take oath to stop killing unborn girls and we should ask the goddess to give wisdom to everyone so that girls get due respect."

In Punjabi, there are 876 females for every 1,000 males, according to 2001 census

The banners will also be placed at community centres.

People prefer sons. "If you have sons and they have children, they will carry on the family name." People who want boys do abortion when they are pregnant with girls.

Families in Vietnam are restricted to two children. This ordinance was reinstated in November 2008, after being rescinded in 2003, originating in the 1980s thanks to government fears of a population boom and strains on resources.

The highest skews gender ratio is 120:100, in the northeast.

"Confucian values" which prize sons over daughters and men over women have been blamed in part. Vietnam traditionally has been a patrilineal society, with sons responsible for caring for parents in old age. Daughters, who marry and leave, are considered "outsiders". "In the household, the decision making process is very traditional. Nothing has changed."

The authorities seized 30,000 sex-selection books in early July and shut down seven websites that were advising couples how to have sons.

Revealing the sex of the foetus is illegal but doctors find creative ways around direct statements.

The abortion rate in Vietnam is one of the highest in the world.

Vietnam's gender imbalance "holds the potential for increased levels of antisocial behaviour ultimately presenting a threat to stability and social order," a 2007 UNFPA report has warned. Some experts have worried that this may lead to an increase in the trafficking of women.

A new law, the Shia Family Planning law, which if brought in, could have drastic repercussions for women. The Afghan constitution allows Shias to have a separate family law from the Sunni majority based on traditional Shia jurisprudence.

It sanctions marital rape and says a woman could leave her house alone only "for a legitimate purpose" and says she could refuse sex with their husbands only when ill or menstruating.

The law has succeeded in instilling fear and insecurity among an already traumatized female population. Sunni Muslims may be affected as well as Shia.

A doctor says he is seeing more female patients who were depressed since news of the law emerged. "They have the kind of hopelessness that comes with knowing your life is incredibly repressed."

Even in remote areas there has been a huge outcry here from the women over the law: demonstrations, protests on the radio, grass roots organisations very quickly coming together.

Technically, women received the right to vote in the early 1960s, and everyone talks about Kabul in the 1970s, when women wore miniskirts and were the smartest ones in the medical schools. But Afghanistan is scarred by decades of war and occupation.

This was the gist of a report by International Planned Parenthood Federation - Contraceptives at a Crossroads: Averting a Global Contraceptive Crisis, which came out on World Population Day, July 11. The report described systemic problems that bar individuals and couples from access to reproductive health supplies such as contraception and condoms.

Unless governments and donors act, the health and human rights benefits that family planning and contraception services have delivered over the years will be reversed, and global development efforts will not be achieved.

Women want to space their children, and women who work a lot don't want to be pregnant all of the time.

The World Bank in 2008 reported that tens of millions of unplanned pregnancies occur because women lack access to contraception. "Giving women access to modern contraception and family planning...helps to boost economic growth while reducing high birth rates so strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education, and high numbers of maternal and infant deaths."

The report recommended matching donations between wealthy and developing countries to increase funding for reproductive health supplies which should be incorporated into national health plans. Governments should collaborate more with the private sector to ensure supply availability and to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights.

A widowed and HIV-positive patient admitted herself to have her baby delivered in a hospital, even though she had no money to pay the bill, to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus during childbirth. After labor, both mother and baby were shunted into a locked, guarded room with other indigent patients. They were given one meal, sometimes two, a day, but no clothes or diapers for the infants. In the poor conditions the baby died, even though it was born free of HIV.

Such horror stories are common and are spurring outrage in Kenya. Government inaction makes the practice de facto public policy, even though its legality has been questioned.

Poor Kenyans who are seriously ill or dying often avoid hospitals, even though they might provide treatment or dispense painkillers and help control public contagion.

Because of this, terminal AIDS and cancer patients often end up going back to their families in their homelands, where they face a painful, lingering death with little more than family members or traditional healers to comfort them.

Similar problems exist in Nairobi. Bodies of accident victims, for example, are held until the family can pay the expenses.

household incomes. This would worsen the condition of women already struggling against an 'entrenched patriarchy'.

Despite making commitments to gender equity, many countries lack the funding to implement policies and legislation. As aid dries up, programmes focused on women are likely to decline. At a domestic level many households will prioritise the education and welfare of sons over daughters, with long-term consequences for overall development. Investment in women's livelihoods should be 'a central focus of governments' economic recovery policies.

In 2007-2008, many African countries enjoyed relative economic growth and increased investor confidence like never before. However at the end of 2007, the world experienced an increase in commodity prices like fuel and food, followed by the global financial crisis. Now commodity prices have dropped, with negative effects on export earnings, fiscal revenues, and household incomes.

The conditions are preventable and no women should suffer them. More than 80% are delivered at home with unskilled birth attendants. In a majority of healthcare centres, emergency obstetrical care is not available on twenty-four hour basis. Delay in medical treatment in emergency cases is the major contributory factor to cause womens' death and pregnancy related morbidity.

More than seventy five thousand villages all over the country have no proper road network. People living in mountains, forest areas and small islands have no access to available emergency obstetrical care. A majority of Basic Health Units (BHUs) and Rural Health Centres (RHCs) are not functional. With a few exception EmOC is not available on a twenty-four hour basis in tertiary care centres. The health of the women was never considered an important issue. In the name of culture, tradition and religion they were never given equal status.

A system based on gender inequality will not adopt policies for the well-being of women who are poor, powerless, pregnant (most of the time without their consent) and weak as a class. It is disturbing to note that religious political parties and traditional political parties have little time for women.

Political institutes have a great number of women but most of them are not interested on the issues related to women's health and rights.

The health of the nation was never a priority for our governments and the country has no health care structure. This is one of the unhealthiest nations with a very poor healthcare system.  rw   Karen Gaia says: Reproductive health care, along with availability to contraception, is the number one key to lowering fertility rates. As has been shown in Bangladesh.

Women in Swat are not allowed to work except in totally segregated environments. Women are likely to come under greater pressure and their tribulations will certainly increase." Muslim Khan, spokesperson for the Taliban (TTP), insists that "women will benefit the most from the enforcement of the shariah" ... "Women are not supposed to work in factories, or fields. That is a man's work and we will not allow them to shrug off their responsibility."

Over the past two years, the valley of Swat, 160 km from Islamabad, has been under the control of the militants defying the over 20,000 Pakistan army troops deployed there. Washington fears that the enforcement of shariah laws in Malakand could facilitate the movement of al-Qaeda and Taliban in an area which is known to have become sanctuary for militant groups.

The ruling Awami National Party has defended the accord as it will improve law and order in the former princely state which acceded to Pakistan in 1969.

"In every village, in Swat, we have appointed one or two religious leaders who resolve people's conflicts in the light of Islam. Nearly 75% of the cases pertain to women's right to property, divorce and consent of a woman in marriage.

But if the courts are to provide justice, they must try the militants and the security forces, for the atrocities committed in the last two years, some 3,000 local people have been killed.

But implementation of secular laws in Pakistan's tribal areas has been notoriously difficult. The new accord has demanded that the Taliban lay down their arms first.

The TTP has demanded that the security forces leave Swat. The TTP has also asked for a general amnesty for themselves.

For the past two years the TTP has been enforcing its own radical brand of Islam on the people of Swat, severely punishing anyone who disobeyed.

In Afghanistan, during Taliban rule women were not allowed to work or leave their homes unless enveloped in a burqa, or accompanied by a male member of the family. Female education has been banned and over a hundred schools, most of them girls' schools, demolished.

The Taliban shot dead a woman councilor who spoke against the Taliban and beheaded a local dancer. Asked if they were ashamed of such atrocities committed against women, Khan said: "We needed to teach women a lesson."

With the signing of the accord, however, educational institutions are being allowed to reopen, and both girls and boys will return to their schools or what is left of them. The Taliban left no stone unturned to destroy the rich cultural diversity of the Pakhtuns and enforced their code of life which was not necessarily Islamic.

The local people wait with bated breath to see which way the wind blows.

The fact that the institution of the jirga [tribal council] excludes women from all decision-making belies its undemocratic nature. This suggests that women shall not be consulted in the process of accessing justice either before or after the imposition of shariah.

There are many contradictions between shariah and the customary law in the north-western regions.

How shall the shariah magistrates renounce their own code of honour when it comes to issues of a woman's inheritance or choice in the matter of marriage or divorce. There are concerns over barbaric customs in which a woman must be killed for perceived transgressions of the moral order. The area is also known for the prevalence of a custom in which young girls are given away to men in dispute settlement.

Part of the rights enshrined in Islam is that a woman is free to receive an education and to participate productively in society. Will not the imposition of shariah tear asunder the fabric of Pakhtun society where women are largely confined and supposedly 'protected' in order to retain the 'honour' of the men in the family?  rw

Around 800,000 pregnancies are reported each year in Nepal. Approximately 17% to 20% take place in hospitals or health care centres. The government has been providing Rs. 1,500 for the mountain regions, Rs.1000 for the hills and Rs. 500 for Tarai areas as transportation cost to women who travel to hospitals or health care centres for child delivery since last two years.

The government has allocated a budget of Rs 390 million for providing free maternity services and another Rs. 170 million for transportation costs to be paid to women. The government has earmarked Rs. 1,000 for simple deliveries, Rs. 3,000 for complicated deliveries and Rs. 5,000 for deliveries requiring surgical operation.

The Health Ministry has also started providing free of charge all 'essential' listed drugs.  rw   Karen Gaia says: When I was trekking in a roadless Nepal area a few years back, we saw sick people being carried out in a basket on someone's back, sometimes two or three days to the airport or bus service. In the monsoon season, this is very risky business due to the numerous mud slides and slippery slopes. 50% of the population lives in mountains, most of them without roads.

In 1950 Pakistan had a population of 37 million and was the world's 13th largest country. By 2007 it was the sixth with 164 million people.

A proportionate increase in the number of young people of working age relative to children and the elderly played a significant role in the development of Asia's top 10 countries but if a country cannot use the youth productively, and there are a lack of opportunities it leads to frustration, increased crime, etc.

Forty percent of Pakistan's population is below 25. Last week, Some experts blame the country's stagnating family planning programme for developmental and security challenges. Some link the country's stagnating family planning (FP) programme to developmental and security challenges.

A quarter of married women who want to end childbearing, or space their births, do not use contraception. Pakistan saw a surge in contraceptive use in the 1980 and 1990s but has reached a platea. Lady health workers make house to house visits in an effort to detect problems faced by pregnant women but this too was hijacked. Because its forte was outreach and had a well laid out infrastructure, the same women were used for other programmes, including campaigns on TB, malaria and polio.

There is no need for a Ministry of Population. If a woman comes for child immunisation, take that opportunity to counsel her on spacing her pregnancies.  rw

Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, four times.

Prostitutes work voluntarily in many brothels in Cambodia and elsewhere. But there are also many where teenage girls are slave laborers.

Young girls and foreigners without legal papers are vulnerable. Pross was never paid, and she had no right to insist on condoms. Twice she became pregnant and was subjected to crude abortions.

The second abortion left Pross in great pain, and she pleaded with her owner for time to recuperate. That's when the woman gouged out Pross's right eye with a piece of metal. The owner discarded her, and she is now recuperating with help. The Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia is fighing sexual slavery. The foundation is working with Dr. Jim Gollogly of the Children's Surgical Center in Cambodia to get Pross a glass eye.

The Obama administration will have the Wilberforce Act, just passed by Congress, which strengthens sanctions on countries that wink at sex slavery.  rw

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a major problem and that the 350 girls who had sought refuge at the two churches were a small group.

"It is possible that several hundred girls aged 15 to 16 may have been circumcised."

The majority of the girls were brought to the missions by their parents, who resisted pressure by their communities, elders and grandparents to have their daughters circumcised.

Substantial work has been done to sensitise girls and the community to the dangers of FGM, more needs to be done to ensure that those who encourage the practice face the law. The district advisory council is doing everything to ensure the girls are safe and consultations are ongoing to make sure that they can resume learning when schools open.

District officers should ensure the girls are not beaten or circumcised when they return home, and the law should deal with errant fathers and community leaders.

Evidence shows that female circumcision is still common, particularly in rural areas and among women who have received less education.

FGM in the two Kuria districts range between 75% and 90%, with the age at circumcision between 12 and 14.

The community is hiding under history, tradition and cultures that state that the girl is likely to become pregnant if she is not circumcised and that will bring shame to the family. Girls who do not undergo FGM face severe stigma in their communities.  rw

However, it is estimated as being prevalent in about 25% of Nigeria. The Nigerian government is ineffective in its enforcement of its policy.

The risk of being subjected to female genital mutilation has formed the basis for claims for asylum status. The first state to recognise this was the US, where a girl from Togo was granted refugee status and other countries have also granted asylum on this basis.

The High Court has ruled that female genital mutilation falls within the definition of inhuman and degrading treatment. Protection can come in the existence of laws to which women can appeal for protection, or the possibility of relocation within the country to a place where the practice is not carried out. Relocation is often not an option for a young person in Nigeria. A young woman in Nigeria comes under the control of her parents until she marries, and is then under the control of her husband and his family.

The European Court of Human Rights found that this has to be a reasonable option in all circumstances. This took into account the personal and economic circumstances of the applicant, and his or her ability to move around. The European Court will now be looking at whether it is reasonable to expect a family to relocate in all circumstances, and whether it will be safe. If it finds it is not, it will mean that the family cannot be sent back.  rw

Every hour, the country has an extra 200 little mouths to feed. And increasing numbers are being born into poverty. Government figures show that the number of people living on less than $1 a day has risen by 16% since 2003, to 28m. More people mean more houses, which means less land to grow crops. The government imposed a temporary ban on building on farmland, as it revives its attempt to achieve self-sufficiency in rice.

Senior officials are pressing President Arroyo to agree to a big expansion of state-provided contraception and other family-planning help. But Mrs. Arroyo is a Catholic and wary of upsetting the influential bishops. She relies on their support to resist pressure for her resignation following corruption scandals.

For years poor Filipinas relied on contraceptives supplied by USAID, America's agency. However, its programme has been wound down and the government has put only modest provision in its place. Despite a ban and the risk of up to six years in jail, 500,000 Filipinas have abortions each year.

The debate over whether population growth is the prime cause of poverty has raged in the Philippines for years. The Catholic bishops point that corruption and misgovernment are mostly to blame. The Philippines has more than enough land and other natural resources to support its population if it were not so incompetently run. But fast population growth only makes things worse. And figures from the UNPF show that making contraceptives widely available does seem to bring down population growth.  rw

Birth and poverty rates here are among the highest in Asia. And the Philippines, where four out of five of the country's 91 million people are Roman Catholic, also stands out for its government's rejection of modern contraception as part of family planning.

The government has supported only what it calls "natural" family planning. No government funds can be used to buy contraceptives for the poor, although anyone who can afford them is permitted to buy them. Local governments can also buy and distribute contraceptives, but many lack the money.

Distribution of donated contraceptives in the government's clinics ends this year, as does a contraception-commodities program paid for by the US. For years it has supplied most of the condoms, pills and devices used by poor Filipinos.

"Family planning helps reduce poverty," President Arroyo said in a 2003 speech that detailed her approach to birth control. But she said then and has since insisted that the government would support only family planning methods acceptable to the Catholic Church.

Women not wanting to get pregnant, Arroyo advised, should buy a thermometer and recording charts and abstain from sex when they are outside the "infertile phases of the monthly cycle."

Arroyo, 61 with three grown children, said in 2003 that when she was a young mother, she took birth control pills. She later confessed to a priest.

Health workers fear retaliation and harassment from officials in the national and city government, as well as from the Catholic Church.

In 2005, Catholic bishops announced they would refuse Communion to government health workers who distributed birth control devices.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines declined requests for comment on its family planning policies. "Chemical agents and gadgets that make up the contraceptive methods of birth control have caused damage in family relationships, disrupting the unity and openness that build family life, and even the hideous murderous act of abortion," said Archbishop Paciano Aniceto.

In recent weeks, public alarm over the soaring price of rice has focused attention on the fast-growing population. Despite increasing rice harvests, farmers here have been unable to keep pace with domestic demand. In 1970, the population was about 36 million and growing at about 3% a year. But with an aggressive family planning program that provides the poor with free contraceptives, Thailand has reduced its population growth rate to 0.9%. In the Philippines, the rate has declined sluggishly to about 2.1%.

There are now about 26 million more people in the Philippines than in Thailand.

The Philippines produces 16 million metric tons of rice a year and needs to import 2 million tons. If the Philippines had pursued what Thailand has done, the Philippines would be a net exporter of 3 million metric tons.

The Philippines could have lifted 3.6 million more people out of poverty if it had followed Thailand's population growth. The evidence from across Asia is that good population policy contributes to significant poverty reduction. There appears to be widespread public support in the Philippines for modern contraceptives.

About 90% of respondents supported government funding of contraceptives for people who cannot afford them.

Poor families have more unwanted pregnancies than richer families. The problems the poor face will increase sharply this year as the Philippine government and USAID end the distribution of donated contraceptives.

The government's plan for "contraceptive self-reliance" anticipates that condoms and other products will be available in shops or will be given to the poor by local governments.

But access to contraceptives will be restricted for most of those who cannot pay and for many who might be willing to pay.

Abortion is illegal , but a 2006 study found that there were about 473,000 a year, which accounts for about a third of women with unwanted pregnancies. About 80% of abortions had complications requiring medical treatment.

The natural method to control population growth does not work.

USAID has increased its budget, from about $12 million to about $15 million a year, to provide technical assistance to 700 local governments and "to help the private sector to grow the market" for contraceptives.  rw

More than 3 million people, 3.9% of the adult population, are living with AIDS in Nigeria. The rate is rising by 300,000 people a year, according to a joint UN program.

Condoms are available throughout Nigeria because the federal government, in partnership with family health organisations, has programmes to distribute and sell them.

Many religious groups back condom use, having recognised that abstinence has failed to yield the desired results.

Anambra State has a history of political instability and violence and is now making "a desperate attempt to uphold morals".

Commissioner Ilika also railed against abortion. He said. "All fetuses must be allowed to live no matter the circumstances that led to the pregnancy, even rape."

He added that medical practitioners in the state will face stiff penalties if they are caught carrying out any 'anti-life' activities. "The state government will withdraw the license of any medical personnel who flouts this directive".  rw

However, the approved version is far from the original. The final measure can be applied only to high school students and above.

It is hoped that the ordinance is acceptable to the religious sector which is against the original proposal of exposing elementary pupils to human reproduction.

Bishop Honesto Ong-tioco said the ordinance was "crafted" to appear as a reproductive health and population management law but actually pushed for the use of abortifacients, branding them as "safe" methods.

"I admonish you to defend the sanctity of human life and the family that are now in tremendous danger," Ongtioco said.  rw

Sheikh Ali Salman called for the sacking of Cabinet Affairs Minister, accusing him of either failing to keep track of population growth or hiding the figures. In response a written response, revealed Bahrain's population to be 1,046,814, of which 529,446 are nationals.

We thought the population was just 750,000," Sheikh Salman said in parliament. Bahrain's local population should be 447,531 today, given the population's annual growth rate of 2.7%. "We are shocked to see it at 529,446. This shows that the increase is the result of criminal political naturalisation," he added.

Naturalisation had robbed Bahrainis of at least 10,000 jobs.

The population growth had impacted the quality of education and healthcare, increasing the average number of students in classrooms and how long people had to wait for hospital appointments.

Responding, Sheikh Ahmed said the expanding local population was due to a rise in the birth rate, which stood at 3.6% and not 2.7%.

He said the growth in the expatriate population stood at 8.8% and that the high number of foreign workers were needed for the kingdom's economic development.  rw

The embassy was concerned about the rumours that the contraceptive was not safe. Depo Provera had met the FDA standards and it was unfortunate that an impression had been created that it was unsafe.

An invalid test was conducted by a Zambian laboratory technician and this led to the rumours. The drug was designed to be tested with human blood, but this was done with something else, which led to adverse results. Health Minister Brian Chituwo announced the withdrawal of the contraceptive on suspicions that the drug had an HIV/AIDS virus.  rw

After her fourth child, one woman was advised not to have any more children due to a rheumatic heart condition. When she requested a sterilization , however, she was refused despite the medical risk.

Many women have been forced to abstain from having sex with their partners in order to avoid pregnancy.

Affording basic necessities, such as food, has become an enormous challenge. One plaintiff says that she must choose between contraceptives and feeding her family. This is a violation of human rights with consequences for both families and the larger community. For nearly a decade, the government has prevented women from deciding when to have children.

They are asking the Court of Appeals to revoke Executive Order 003, which instructs city officials to "uphold natural family planning. The policy has been applied to prohibit the dispensing of family planning services in all city hospitals and health centers.

The plaintiffs argue that the ban not only violates the Philippine Constitution, but also violates the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The Philippines ratified this treaty without reservation in 1981.  rw

Experts believe the reasons are: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

Hispanics have fertility rates about 40% higher than the U.S. overall. Americans, especially those in middle America, view children more favorably than other Westernized countries.

Demographers say it is too soon to know if the sudden increase in births is the start of a trend.

To many economists and policymakers, the increase in births is good news. Countries with much lower rates face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders.

But the higher fertility rate isn't all good. The CDC reported that America's teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years.

Births are more common in nearly every age and racial or ethnic group. Total births jumped 3% in 2006, the largest single-year increase since 1989. The recent birth numbers are a result of many women having a couple of kids each, rather than a smaller number of mothers, each bearing several children.

The 2006 fertility rate of 2.1 children is the highest level since 1971. The fertility rate among Hispanics 3 children per woman has been a major contributor. The high rate probably reflects cultural attitudes toward childbirth developed in other countries. Fertility rates average 2.7 in Central America and 2.4 in South America.

Fertility rates often rise among immigrants. The rate among Mexican-born women in the U.S. is 3.2, but the overall rate for Mexico is just 2.4.

Some complain that many illegal immigrants come here purposely to have children.

"The child is an automatic American citizen, thus entitled to all benefits of American citizens."

Fertility rates were also relatively high for other racial and ethnic groups. The rate rose to 2.1 for blacks and nearly 1.9 for non-Hispanic whites in 2006.

Fertility levels tend to decline as women become better educated and gain career opportunities. Experts say those factors, along with the legalization of abortion and the expansion of contraception options, explain why the U.S. fertility rate dropped to 1.7 in 1976. The fertility rate climbed to 2 in 1989 and has hovered around that mark since.

Other factors include: declines in contraceptive use here; limited access to abortion in some states; and opportunities for mothers to return to work. It is more common for American women to have babies out of wedlock and more common for couples to go forward with unwanted pregnancies. New England's fertility rates are more like Northern Europe's. American women in the Midwest, South and certain mountain states tend to have more children.

The influence of religions in those latter regions is an important factor.  rw

The capital's population must be kept within 18 million by 2020 for the city to be properly developed. But the target could be difficult to meet if the policy is not strictly observed.

More than 400 million births in China have been prevented since the policy was enacted in the 1970s. The policy helps ensure a sustained social and economic development.

A 2007 survey conducted in major cities showed that many of celebrities and rich people have two children, with 10% having three. This evokes increasing complaints from the public. The fines are not heavy enough. The link between the fine and their annual income should be a more important factor. But how to effectively implement it is another challenge.

Many rich people either ignore the penalty or are slow to provide the money. One violator only paid $14,000 of his fine of $106,000. The suggestion is to have the names of the offending rich people recorded and deprive them of the opportunity to compete in titles such as "honorary citizen", for a majority of them do not wish to see their reputation tarnished. Respect for the law must be the real answer.  rw   Karen Gaia says: China needs to work on male preference. When females are valued, the fertility rate will go down.

The current population level puts the Philippines in 12th place in terms of population worldwide. The good news is that the growth rate seems to have slowed�but not fast enough to ease the strain on national and family resources. Each fertile Filipina is expected to give birth to at least three babies in her lifetime. China has been implementing a one-child policy to stem the growth of its population. In many affluent societies, population growth has been in the negative figures for years. These countries are experiencing growth through migration, as in the US.

The decrease in population growth rate is mostly due to individual choice in this country. The government has failed to put in place a population management campaign, mostly because of opposition from the Catholic Church.

The Arroyo administration's failure to implement a population control program is par for the course. All previous administrations that attempted to control population have bowed to the Church's stand against all forms of contraception.

Even the US government has all but accepted defeat. After 30 years of supporting programs to slow population growth, Washington announced that it was sending its final shipment of contraceptives to the Philippines.

The Department of Health has given up as well, saying that contraceptive distribution programs will now be paid for by the local governments that can afford them. Only localities that can't pay for population control programs will be subsidized by the national government.

For some reason, few politicians have dared to challenge the Catholic hierarchy when it comes to population policy.

Advocating a population control program will lead to lost votes, despite the waning influence of the Church in nearly all other aspects of daily life. Many politicians have used the "pro-life" tag even without real "pro-choice" opposition, muddling the situation even further.

The only champions of choice are underfunded NGO's that support women's rights. And not all do so openly, not even the large party-list groups, who fear a backlash from the Church.

The devolution of contraceptive distribution programs could change the population policy in the years to come. Local governments, especially those affluent enough to ignore the Church and its power to influence the vote, could provide the breeding ground, as it were, for a national population control policy.

Local governments see the cause-and-effect relationship of population and poverty. Local officials need to provide jobs, health services, education and other benefits that the cash-strapped national government simply cannot subsidize. It will take an enlightened local official who is willing to take the political risk of saying that a realistic population policy is required, and back that up with sustained funding for contraception. Then, perhaps other localities will implement their own population control campaigns. Ninety million Filipinos is a lot of people to feed, shelter and educate. If the Church and the national government will not do it, somebody else�someone not beholden to the Catholic vote, if it truly exists�will.  rw   Karen Gaia says: The only complaint I have about this article is the use of the the term 'population control'. It has negative connotations that seem to contradict the purposes of the pro-choice proponents.

It's a rule that reduces the limited availability of other family-planning services and has led to a pullback in overseas delivery of contraceptives. In some areas, the largest distribution centers for contraceptives have experienced decreased access for over 50% of the women they serve.

The Bush administration has refused to release more than $200 million in funds appropriated for UNFPA. The administration continues to push its abstinence- only-before-marriage agenda, diverting 30% of its HIV/AIDS prevention funding to abstinence-only programs.

At the Global Safe Abortion conference, conferees were reminded that legalizing abortion doesn't increase its numbers it just saves lives. The ratio of maternal mortality has been declining at 1% annually. But it needs to decline by 5.5% a year. It would require just about $6.1 billion more in annual funding to achieve that goal.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) pulled $90,000 in planned support for Women Deliver because conference materials referred to "sexual and reproductive rights" and abortion. Abortion was legalized nationally in the US by a judicial decision, not by elected officials. The U.S. population continues to be deeply divided by the difficult ethical issues surrounding abortion. The US does not use tax dollars to provide or promote abortion abroad.

Economics and politics and even social conscience aside, we know that only by empowering all women can we ensure the future of the world.  rw

The average number of children per mother is 7.1. Women said they would like nine and men said 12, but some families said 40 or 50 children. It a society that encourages procreation.

Just 5% of Nigeriens use family planning and contraception. People aren't informed about the negative consequences of having so many children.

The 85% of Nigeriens who rely on rain-fed, subsistence agriculture to feed themselves are going to be hardest hit as millions more people compete for the same amount of farmland to grow food.

The Sahel has recently been identified as one of the regions most likely to be adversely affected by climate change.

The increase in the population will continue to accentuate the cereal production and wood-for-fuel deficits which started in the 1980s. Niger's population will quickly overtake the government's ability to provide health, education, jobs and even water points, tasks that it is already failing at today.

94% of Nigeriens live on 35% of the land. The most populated areas are along the southern border with Burkina Faso and Mali.

The Maradi region holds 20% of the population, 2,235,748 people, living on 3.3% of the country's land.

Niger's desert and mountain north accounts for 53% of Niger's territory but only 3 percent of the population, 321,639 people.

Niger plans this year to curb population growth which the INS says would reduce the population in 2050 to 33.3 million, still almost three times its current level.

The government wants the number practising family planning to increase from to 15% or 20% by 2015. The INS says 20% of women claim to want it.

The plan calls for information campaigns to educate religious leaders and women about the availability and importance of family planning.

Currently, every second girl is married and likely to be procreating before the age of 15. Raising the marriage age to 18 would take up to four years off a woman's reproductive life.

By 2015 population growth should have slowed to 2.5% and the average number of children per woman should be five.

Diadi Boureima, deputy representative of the UN Fund for Population Affairs (UNFPA) in Niger, said the task was a critical one.

If the demographics continue, Niger cannot develop. All the resources the country has will be going into social services and nothing will be left for investing in the economy. The government is acting accordingly.  rw

The birth rate had been dropping since 1991, although the decline had slowed in recent years. It rose 3% from 2005 to 2006.

The reason is not clear. Some experts blamed it on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education that does not teach how to use contraception.

Transmitted disease rates have been rising, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The rising teen pregnancy rate is part of the same phenomenon.

The new teen births are based on the 15-19 group of women, which accounted for most of the 440,000 births in 2006. The rate rose to nearly 42 births per 1,000 in that group, an extra 20,000 births to teen mothers.

In 1991, there were nearly 62 births per 1,000.

Opponents of abstinence-based programs seized on the data as evidence of wrong government policy.

The new report offers a state-by-state breakdown of birth rates. Many with the highest birth rates teach abstinence instead of comprehensive sex education. Research has concluded that abstinence-only programs do not cause a decrease in teenage sexual activity.

In the last decade, more than $1 billion has been spent on abstinence-only programs.

Decreased condom use and increased sexual activity are two likely explanations for the higher teen birth rate. But not all data supports those theories.

A government survey of high school students found that the percentage of those who used a condom the last time they had sex rose to 63% in 2005, up from 46% in 1991.

Births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high in 2006.

The U.S. fertility rate is at 2.1 children, an increase of 2% from 2005 to 2006.

Total births rose 3% to nearly 4.3 million in 2006.

Rate of Caesarean section deliveries rose 3%, 31% of all births. Health officials say the rate, is higher than is medically necessary.

The high C-section rate is believed to partly explain why rates of preterm and low-weight births also rose in 2006. Planned deliveries, including those involving C-sections, are often done before a pregnancy comes to full term.  rw

The government's stance, According to Melanie Walcott, could place Jamaica in the same position as Sub-Saharan Africa which has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world followed by the Caribbean region.

The ever-controversial issue came up during a workshop for close to a hundred students from the island's western high schools at the Holiday Inn Sunspree resort.

The workshop hopes the participating students who were selected on the basis of their perceived leadership qualities will come up with action plans to raise awareness among their peers concerning the best way to go about curbing the spread of HIV.

Pointing out the need for condom vending machines to be placed in schools, Walcott invited the students to get proactive on the issue with an aim to engaging further public debate. Ask for condoms to be distributed in schools and then you will push the hands of the powers that be.

St James has distinguished itself as having the highest incidence of HIV cases.

When a student pointed to the need for condom distribution the response was mixed. Some participants called for the abstinence campaign to be raised instead while others pointed out that it was already deafening.

Persons who are in their teen years in school have HIV, and high rates of teenage pregnancy, herpes, gonnorrohea and syphilis that means teens are having unprotected sex. We have spent millions of dollars on abstinence campaigns in schools. Empower these persons that if you need to have sex you need to have sex but you need to at least do it safely. So we are advocating for the use of condoms in schools.  rw

The Government sas it doesn't want to penalise mothers who become pregnant with a third child.

The Government provids a one-time assistance of Rs 500 to expecting mothers who have conceived their first or second child, but now they want this two-children cap to be removed.

The emphasis is on nutrition, not on population control. You can't have mothers and children dying.

But in a country where the population is nearing 1.2 billion, the Supreme Court said:

'You cannot keep producing children and expect the tax-payers to pay money for such schemes.'

Even the Opposition didn't buy the Government reasoning.

“You need to incentivise those who aid in population control and disincentivise those who promote population growing in excess,” says BJP leader Arun Jaitley.  rw

Countries with the highest levels of mortality have made virtually no progress over the past 15 years. Of the more than 535,000 women who died annually of maternal causes in 2005, 99% were in developing countries.

Slightly more than half of the maternal deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by South Asia with 188,000. These regions accounted for 86% of the world's maternal deaths in 2005.

Achieving MDG 5 will require improving health care and providing access to health services. Also crucial is ensuring that transportation and equipped facilities are within reach.

In addition, this requires educating and empowering women to make well-informed decisions and improving gender equality. A woman in Africa has a one in 16 chance of dying in childbirth or pregnancy, compared with a likelihood of one in 3,800 in the developed world.  rw   Karen Gaia says: MDGs are not the only goal; fertility rates drop when women are given access to reproductive health care and contraceptives are an option.

The objective of a new campaign is to sensitise Cameroonians on the negative effects of such practices and to find ways of reducing the sufferings of widows. Women in general and widows in particular are marginalised. As a result men and women hide behind tradition and culture to torture, exploit and use them as tools. Government, international organisations and the civil society should work towards the protection of widows. Since the launching of the campaign on the humanisation of widowhood rites they have registered a total of 1843 complaints in which women are battered, maltreated, chased out of their matrimonial homes or raped.  rw

Pakistan is to increase the number of delivery cases handled by skilled birth attendants to 90% and use of contraceptive among couples to 55%, reduce the fertility rate to 2.1 births, under-five and infant mortality to 52 and 40 respectively, and increase the immunisation of children to over 90% by 2015 in line with its commitments under MDGs.

The PDHS survey collected data on maternal and child health, fertility, care for pregnant women and family planning usage from over 95,441 households across Pakistan. USAID funded the $2.75 million study. Population and health sectors witnessed no progress and in certain cases, even negative progress during the last decade or so though the federal government increased health budget to Rs 18 billion in 2007-08. Over seven years after the start of current millennium, Pakistan stands at the same level where it had stood at the turn of current century. The total fertility rate and use of contraceptive devices remained at 4.1 births and 30% in last seven years starting from 2000-01. Contraceptive use is less than what it was targeted.

The continued high prevalence of traditional methods (7.%) compared with the use of modern methods (21.7%) suggested that people use traditional methods due to the unavailability of modern contraceptives.

Female sterilisation (8.2%) had come up as the most commonly used method signifying the lack of temporary methods and using sterilisation as last resort.

Pakistani women wanted to control the timing and numbers of births but the failure of family planning programmes appeared to have made them bear more children than they wish. Only four out of ten births in Pakistan are administered by health professionals; only one-third of the births are delivered at the health facilities; and just one out of four mothers receives professional postnatal. By one estimation 18,000 to 25,000 women die in Pakistan each year due to pregnancy related complications and another 500,000 suffer from maternal illness and disability.

Pakistan has the highest infant mortality in South Asia. Under-five mortality, is 94 deaths per 1,000 live births against the government's target of 80 for 2005-06. Infant mortality is 78 deaths per 1,000 live births against the target of 63 for 2005-06.

The results negated the government's claim of having achieved 77% coverage of fully immunised children in the country and reported it to be actually less than half. Almost every indicator carried a disparity between the urban and rural population, as well as between the rich and poor provinces of the country.  rw

The suit aims to "hold (Atienza) liable for acts which caused injury to women.

Her group and other organisations presented testimony on how Atienza, a devout Catholic, introduced a policy banning city clinics from issuing contraceptives or informing people how to use or obtain them.

Atienza stepped down as mayor of Manila earlier this year but was later appointed Environment Secretary by Arroyo, also a devout Catholic.

The Catholic church, dominant in the Philippines, frowns on artificial birth control.

Pangalangan said they had wanted to file a suit for years but finding women to testify against Atienza proved difficult due to fear of his position.  rw

The move to came in response to concern that current fines did not serve as enough of a deterrent.

The new measures single out the elite as needing to play their part in controlling the country's population.

Violators could see their credit ratings damaged, a serious threat in a society where people are increasingly taking out loans and where banks are prodded by authorities to restrict lending in line with policy aims.

China credits family planning laws with preventing 400 million births in a country that now has 1.3 billion people.

It helped avert billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions. But the policy has exacerbated a gender imbalance, where access to ultrasound tests and gender-selective abortions have resulted in there being 118 boys born for every 100 girls. This is threatening social stability as more men have difficulty finding wives.

The parliament of central Hunan province discussed a draft amendment that would raise fines to as high as eight times the violator's annual income.

Nearly 2,000 officials and celebrities had breached the policy including a lawmaker who had four children by four mistresses.  rw

Between 1996 and 2006 the population grew by 341,000 every year.

Women make up 52% of the population. The urban population, has multiplied by eight, with the highest density found in the capital Ouagadougou.

Activists are using the data to lobby for more attention to birth control, which they say has been ignored because health services are focused on preventing HIV, even though it has shrunk from 7% in the early 1990s to 2%.

Family planning must be restarted, by bringing back community-based activities in villages, districts, and by sensitising the activists that to get behind family planning. The situation is “alarming”,and if we do not control the growth rate, living standards will not improve.”

Family planning is about progress for all groups, including women who need fewer children to be healthy and economically productive.

In Burkina Faso, 14% of people use contraception, down to 9% in some rural areas. Last month, the government launched a US$7 billion program, which addresses HIV/AIDS, family planning and female genital cutting, with family planning at the centre of the project.

The government believes contraception will also help reduce the maternal mortality ratewhich is among the highest in the sub-region: 484 women die for 100,000 children born. Surveys have shown that the lower the use of contraception, the higher the maternal mortality rate.  rw

Women are 52% in Burkina Faso, while the urban population, has multiplied by eight, with the highest density found in the capital Ouagadougou.

Birth control has been ignored because reproductive health services are focused on preventing HIV, even though prevalence has shrunk from 7% in the early 1990s to 2%.

Family planning must be restarted, by bringing back community-based activities in villages and districts, and to get them back behind family planning.

If we do not control the growth rate and make it compatible to our resources, living standards will not improve.

Authorities need to understand that family planning is all about progress for all groups, including women who need fewer children to be healthy and economically productive.

After 20 years of family planning activities we have not done much and we need to step up efforts. ThenBurkina Faso government launched a US$7 billion programme, which addresses HIV/AIDS, family planning and female genital cutting, with family planning at the centre of the project.

The government believes contraception will also help reduce the maternal mortality rate. In Burkina Faso 484 women die for 100,000 children born.

The lower the use of contraception, the higher the maternal mortality rate. To promote contraceptive use the government, adopted a 10-year (2006-2015) six billion CFA strategic plan to ensure the availability of contraceptive products country-wide.  rw

With the shift of the campaign to natural family planning, it does not follow that they will also abandon the scientific method.

The shift was due to the fact that most of those who are adopting the family planning and reproductive health approach were coming from the poorest sectors and, with the pull out of the USAID, could not afford to buy one.

Popcom's emphasis on natural family planning methods will have the Roman Catholic Church as an ally.  rw

The State Department estimates there are roughly 600,000 to 800,000 people who are trafficked globally in virtual slavery; 80% are female. It is stomach-turning to hear the stories study of Nepalese girls who were 14 or younger trafficked to India.

Maiti Nepal's records revealed that the youngest of the prostitutes were most at risk for contracting HIV.

The youngest girls experiences were different, they were moved around more, hidden and restrained. They seemed to be forced to sexually serve larger numbers of clients than older girls or women.

More than a third of the youngest girls were forced to work in multiple brothels, compared with 12% of older girls and women. The youngest girls spent more time in brothels. Two-thirds of the girls 14 or younger were held in brothels for more than a year, compared with 43% of older sex-trade workers.

Another reason for high HIV rates among the youngest sex slaves is because girls' genital tracts are more sensitive to trauma, and provide greater pathways for infection. The youngest of the Nepalese prostitutes often were the most sought after.

These youngest girls bring in the most money for the brothel managers. Clients are willing to pay more to have sex with a young girl. Some of it is based on the mythology these girls will be cleaner. They were often portrayed as virgins.

In some parts of India and Africa, HIV-infected men believed that having sex with a virgin would cure them of the disease. The Nepalese sex slaves were trafficked to Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, and Kolkata, often enticed by assurances of well-paying jobs as domestics or restaurant workers.

Greater efforts are necessary, currently, few such efforts exist.

The US official, said international authorities also should focus on the men who seek prostitutes, especially those who want to have sex with minors.

It's important to look at the awful economic and political situation that makes people vulnerable, and at the demand that creates this situation.  rw

Under-resourced hospitals, a lack of clinics in remote areas, poor transport and poverty are blamed. In many cases, rural dwellers seek a traditional healer to deliver babies in a "natural" way. Qualified doctors or nurses took part in less than half of births in Tanzania between 2000 and 2004.

An acute shortage of trained health care professionals has seriously compromised the level of hospital care with only about 1 doctor for every 20,000 patients.

Women can be a hundred kilometres from a hospital and it costs too much to drive or take a taxi. Community leaders should be taught to recognize warning signs of an unsafe pregnancy and birth complications.

Another factor is gender inequality. Males often rule household decision-making which means women cede control over their own health decisions.

Tanzanian President said tackling the high maternal mortality rate is a top priority on a par with efforts to fight the 7% AIDS rate and to reduce unemployment, which affects more than 1 in 10 people.

The government is aiming to halve the maternal mortality rate by 2010, to 265 deaths every 100,000 live births.

More efficient care, better hospital equipment and improved coordination between clinics and ambulance drivers were promised.  rw

In Kenya, contraceptives were within reach of nearly 90% of the population by the late 1980s. The 2003 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) showed that 96% of married women and 98% of married men could name a modern method of contraception, but only 31.5% were using a method.

The top reason for non-use of family planning is the desire for more children. There are about 3 billion people of reproductive age, half of whom are using contraceptives, there are about 1.3 billion non-users, of whom about 100 million have an unmet need. The other 1.2 billion are intentional non-users.

There are four reasons: 1) fear of the medical side effects of contraceptives; 2) male opposition; 3) religious opposition; and 4) fatalism. These are all issues that are best responded to by information and communication, and cannot be solved just through increased access to medical services as important as access is.

In 1991 about half the women having an "unmet need" have no intention of using contraceptives even if they are freely available. It is not possible to "meet" more than half of the remaining "unmet need" in the developing world without changing people's minds.  rw   Karen Gaia says: while visiting Bangladesh, I found a successful 'persuasion' strategy was to offer a women birth control when the woman came for a postnatal checkup, so that she could space her children and therefore her children would be healthier.

Men's reluctance to use condoms was startling in the light of Guyana's prevalence of HIV infection of 2.5% as of 2004. Over 65% of male out-of-school youth were sexually experienced and the median age at first sex for out-of-school youth was 16 years.

The consistent use of latex condoms has been proven to be highly effective against transmission of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV.

A larger number of males from urban areas were more knowledgeable about sexual and reproductive health issues as opposed to their rural counterparts.

Men have reservations about their partners using contraceptives and they defined their sexuality by finance, good physical appearance, the number of women they had, sexual prowess or a combination of the above.  rw

It's estimated there are 120,000 HIV positive children in the country. Between 40,000 and 50,000 need ARVs. Nyanza Province, which has the highest HIV prevalence, records only 2,448 children - 5.7% - on the drugs.

The Government was developing strategies to address the problem. Efforts to put more children on ARVs have been hampered by high cost of syrup and paediatric tablets.

ARVs cost $500 (Sh31,500) per child per year as compared to $200 (Sh12,600) for an adult.

Difficulties in diagnosing HIV in children less than 18 months old has also been a challenge since diagnosis requires use of DNA as they might still have the maternal anti-bodies, which will result in false positive results. Poor handling of children ailments is due to lack of skills by health workers.

Health workers have problems in identifying potentially infected children as this relies on willing parents to bring their children for tests.  rw

Female sterilisation tops the options given to couples. There are over 3.74 lakh tubectomies against 766 vasectomies, the no-scalpel procedure with neither blood nor stitch. While the number of tubectomies is intact, the number of vasectomies has declined over the last five years.

They don't even want to try condoms. Newlyweds are advised to delay the first child, those with one child are advised to give adequate interval before the second. Couples with two children are pushed to take up permanent or temporary methods of contraception.

We give each couple at least 10 condoms a week but most women come back with complaints that men are not comfortable. Female condoms have been launched a year ago but they are more cumbersome and expensive. The options are intrauterine devises and pills. There were 2.91 intra-uterine devices users and 1.71 lakh pill users.

Pills are safe but many fear side effects. The device usually stays intact for 10 years once inserted but there are many myths.

The government spends Rs 300 per tubectomy, of which Rs 175 is given to the woman as compensation and the rest goes into medical services.  rw

In some cases, women complained that they are not user-friendly and that they make a lot of noise during sexual intercourse. A female condom lines the vagina and prevents pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

Anti-AIDS campaigners expressed their concern about the unpopularity of female condom.

One reason why female condoms were not popular is because of lack of women empowerment. Some condoms have been rejected because of their bad smell.  rw

Average life expectancy in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland will be two years less for women than for men by 2005-2010. Women are likely to contract the infection for several reasons. Unequal power relationships disadvantage women and young girls. Because school is an important site for education on HIV/Aids, gender disparities in school attendance disadvantage girls.

Access to treatment for men and women differs. In Ghana, women account for a smaller share of treatment than predicted, but in South Africa and Tanzania they account for a larger share.

National governments should put girl education, high on the agenda. But practices like widow inheritance, polygamy and forced marriages also have to be reviewed.  rw

They live in conditions akin to slavery. Research in Guinea showed that thousands of girls spent their childhood and adolescence cleaning, washing and taking care of small children, often for no pay.

The girls were vulnerable to sexual abuse and many were beaten. They are trapped in this cycle of abuse because they are deprived of an education.

Most of the employers in Guinea are women from the middle class who demand a girl from poorer relatives.

Ending abuses against these girls should be a priority. The new government in Guinea faces other challenges - the result of decades of misrule that fuelled the widespread poverty.  rw

"We would not introduce sex education because it is being opposed by several groups. We do not want to take any decision in haste," said the state school minister. "We have formed a committee to submit its recommendations. We will see what can be done for next year after receiving the committee's report."

The Union human resources ministry has advised all states to introduce sex education at the secondary and higher levels. But no state has included sex education in he high school level.

The Board of Secondary Education had last year planned to introduce HIV/AIDS education in class nine, but backed out following resistance from some quarters.  rw

The monsters from overpopulation are numerous, from illiteracy to a collapse in Oceanic fishing, from the destruction of natural parks to inflation, from climate change to urban crowding. Most of today's tragedies are produced by the fact that the available resources in terms of food, water, urban space, arable land, oil, forests and jobs are inadequate to the need of crowded and growing populations which, however, almost nobody asks to control.

The mass exodus from underdeveloped to industrial countries, threatens to destroy liberal societies and is a shock wave of the population bomb in the Third World, although none of our experts dares say it.

The impact of the population bomb on many social and international problems is the gravest threat for human liberty and peace. The stubborn refusal to listen to the voice of science and common sense is an irrefutable evidence of a refusal to acknowledge a feared emotion or reality. The crucial tragedy is not the population bomb, but the refusal of some religious leaders to admit its terrible effects and to avert them by adequate birth control measures. And this refusal was rapidly imitated by political and scientific opportunists.

In many Islamic countries, poverty forces a lot of poor and prolific families to enroll their children in the thousands of Koranic schools which give them free food and shelter thanks to the financial support of the pious sheiks including Bin Laden but brainwash them with the fanatic ideas of their fundamentalist teachers.

Dogmatic religions realized that hunger and poverty were formidable incentives for enrollments in religious schools and, after years of indoctrination, in the clergy. In the 1950s, Pope Pious XII stated that the Catholic Church appreciates prolific families because “they are the gardens of Christian vocations” a delicate way to say that poor families are happy to get rid of the children they cannot feed and educate by throwing them into religious schools, where they can be transformed into priests and nuns (or, in the madrasses, into kamikaze). When poverty was defeated in Italy and Europe, the Catholic Church discovered a gigantic “latifundium of vocations” in Third World hungry countries.

The superiority of this psycho-political approach is demonstrated by the support the negation of the population issue found in the most different religious and political groups from Nazis to Communists, from Islamic to Catholic fundamentalists.

This approach can also give us, with motivational psychology, an effective and “soft” solution to the problem of a generalized acceptance of birth control, as evidenced by my Italian popular photo-stories in 1975 and by Ryerson's and Sabido's soap operas in Latin America, Africa and Asia from 1977 up to now.  rw   Ralph says: This article needs to be reviewed in full -- by everyone.

In areas where the family planning schemes were implemented, the growth in the population has been50% although large numbers of migrants from the Valley of Kashmir have settled in Jammu areas.

The population of Valley of Kashmir has almost doubled during the past 25 years, despite migration of over five lakh people. About 30,000 were killed and 7000 women were widowed because of terrorist violence.

This abnormal growth in the population is due to various reasons but the religious fundamentalism has played its major role with a design to harm India, and defeat its family welfare schemes.

The announcement of certain incentives including increments to employees opting for sterilization, many availed such incentives.

Several government employees availed the incentives but later produced children. They blamed doctors, alleging that their operations were not successful.

After the militancy in 1989, the staff linked with the family welfare schemes were openly threatened with dire consequences if they implemented the government schemes.

Several ultras including foreign terrorists also increased the growth of population by forced marriages, illicit relations etc.

There are still many areas where the staff did not dare to carry out implementation of family planning programs.

No target is being achieved even after spending huge sums from the Indian exchequer.

Population growth in the Kupwara district between 1981 to 2001 was 94% and Baramulla it was 83%. During the past five years there has been no implementation of family planning programs. About 20% increase has been recorded in these areas during the past six years.

Where the family planning schemes were implemented, the growth in the population has been recorded about 50% with large numbers of migrants from the Valley of Kashmir.

The lowest population growth is in the Hindu dominated district of Kathua at of 46% between 1981-2001.

The growth in the population is adversely affecting the development activities and increased the demand for foodstuffs.

It is clear aspersion on the authority of the government. It is also creating doubts about the bonafides of certain ruling leaders.  rw

Officials attributed the decline to child immunisation and better awareness amongst parents.

Four out of five children between 12 and 23 months were immunised against tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio and measles.

While the war ended last year the survey of nearly 11,000 people said improving children's nutritional status remained a "challenge".

Half of children under five suffered from malnutrition. The number of women dying in child birth every year had dropped to 281 per 100,000 from 539 in 1996.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent listed Nepal among the "deadliest" places to give birth with more than 90% women have no access to skilled health workers.

One third of the country's 26 million people live on less than a dollar a day.

There are 1,000 doctors and less than 100,000 poorly trained health workers working in Nepal's 1,000 health centres and hospitals.

Poverty, illiteracy, cultural taboos, discrimination against women and poor access to skilled health workers continue to plague women's health.  rw   Karen Gaia says: about 50% of Nepalis live in roadless areas where people with medical problems would have to be carried on someone's back to the nearest airport - perhaps 2 days away.

There are signs that Democratic leaders don't want to get into the fight.

Democrats are preparing a draft of their foreign-aid spending bill and appear reluctant to enact a measure that deletes the abstinence language. Democrats seem likely to push the issue off until later this year, when Congress will have to reauthorize the president's AIDS initiative. Behind the fight over spending is a debate over whether abstinence delay the onset of sexual activity among young people or draw funding away from more-effective approaches.

Supporters say that programs advocating sexual abstinence until marriage and sexual fidelity would get shortchanged. The opponents point to scientific evidence to back up their claim that the abstinence provision inhibits progress against HIV. A new study concludes that congressional provisions dictating how the administration must spend AIDS money tie the hands of health professionals on the ground.

Another study, found that abstinence-only programs in the U.S. have had no impact on the sexual behavior of young people.

If the Democrats fail to delete the abstinence provision, "they'd leave themselves open to the charge of being public-health frauds."

Before winning control of Congress, Democrats attacked the Republicans for failing to complete spending measures on time.

In an email, Bush said, "We'll certainly fight to maintain a balanced approach" in HIV-prevention grants, in other words, to support abstinence and fidelity programs in addition to condom promotion.

Health activists are pressing for repeal of a controversial measure which requires grant recipients to have written policies opposing prostitution. AIDS advocates thought their efforts to repeal the prostitution-pledge requirement, but Congress shows less appetite for taking on the prostitution issue than it does the abstinence issue.  rw

There were varying accounts of injuries and deaths. A local government official confirmed the rioting but denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.

The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown to punish people who violated the country's birth control policy. Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest.

The central government has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China's hinterland remains volatile.

To limit the growth of its population, many parts of China rely on financial penalties and incentives rather than forced abortions and sterilizations.

But local officials who fail to meet annual targets can come under bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area or face demotion or removal from office.

Officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort to roll back population growth by mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort.

Several people said officials also slapped fines on families that had violated birth control measures since 1980. The new tax was collected even though the majority of violators had already paid fines.

According to an account officials in Bobai County of Guangxi boasted that they had collected 7.8 million yuan in social child-raising fees from February to April.

Witnesses said villagers were detained, their homes searched, and valuables, confiscated. They used hammers to destroy people's homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers. Local courts had declined to hear any cases related to the matter. Several villagers described an assault on the offices of Shapi Township, Bobai County, by thousands of peasants who broke through a wall surrounding the government building, ransacked the offices, smashed computers and destroyed documents and then set fire to the building. There were inconsistent reports of death and injuries and a subsequent crackdown by riot police.  rw

GE stresses emphatically that the machines aren't to be used for sex determination. The skewed sex ratio is an example of how India's strong economy has, in unpredictable ways, exacerbated some nagging social problems, such as the preference for boys. Prosecutors brought a criminal case alleging that companies knowingly supplied ultrasound machines to clinics that weren't registered with the government and were illegally performing sex-selection tests. Companies deny wrongdoing and say they comply with Indian laws. Blame should be pinned on unethical doctors, not the machine's suppliers.

India has been a critical market to GE. The company won't disclose its ultrasound sales. In India, which includes ultrasounds and other diagnostic equipment, reached about $250 million last year, up from $30 million in 1995.

Annual ultrasound sales in India from all vendors reached $77 million in 2006. India has long struggled with an inordinate number of male births, and the killing of newborn baby girls remains a problem. The abortion of female fetuses is a more recent trend, but it's poised to escalate as the use of ultrasound services expands.

In much of northwest India, the number of girls has fallen below 900 for every 1,000 boys. In the northern state of Punjab, the figure is below 800.

Only China today has a wider gender gap, with 832 girls born for every 1,000 boys among infants aged 0-4 years. Boys in India are viewed as wealth earners during life and lighters of one's funeral pyre at death. 90% of parents with two sons didn't want any more children. Of those with two daughters, 38% wanted to try again.

To boost sales, GE has kept prices down by refurbishing old equipment and marketed laptop machines to doctors who traveled frequently, including to rural areas. In 1994, the government outlawed sex selection and empowered Indian authorities to search clinics and seize anything that aided sex selection. Today any clinic that has an ultrasound machine must register and provide an affidavit that it won't conduct sex selection. To date, more than 30,000 ultrasound clinics have been registered in India.

GE has educated its sales force about the regulatory regime, demanded its own affidavits from customers that they won't use the machines for sex selection, and followed up with periodic audits.  rw

In the latest survey, 52% say that a candidate's support for family planning will lead to victory.

The country is faced with overpopulation, hunger, and poverty, and we are calling on all candidates to prove their allegiance to the people of this republic by following our call.

The Catholic Church has urged not to support candidates promoting reproductive rights and family planning. Filipinos don't want the Church interfering in this decision between couples. 44% of Filipinos think the Church should not participate in the issue of family planning, against 33% who think the Church should.  rw

The three dozen high school senior girls, who wear white scarves to cover their hair and loose black tunics to hide their curves, absorb the finer points of computer programming without the benefit of computers or the Internet.

The students' enthusiasm energizes their principal, Niazi. For a second, the danger in being here is forgotten. So is her anguish over the killing of three colleagues in neighboring districts, or the torching last year of close to 200 schools nationwide. She explains no one at the school has seen the photocopied letters she pulls out. For the first time, she agrees to share them with a reporter. She says she gave the originals to Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week during his unprecedented visit to Lashkargah.

There are four letters. All are handwritten and stamped and signed by mullahs who claim to represent the Taliban. All threaten her, and one of them also threatens her two sons with murder. One letter warns: Your death is decreed by the holy book, and there's nowhere you can hide in Afghanistan.

She refuses to quit. The stakes are too high for Niazi, who risked her life secretly teaching girls in her home during the Taliban era when female education was banned.

The most dangerous part of going to school is getting there.

Taliban spokesmen insist they are not targeting any Afghan schools except for those that teach Christian values or serve American interests.  rw

In Ontario, 33 out of 94 hospitals performed abortions in 2006. Only one in Ontario provides abortions north of the Trans-Canada Highway, and many women face up to a 14-hour drive for the procedure.

A researcher called hospitals across Canada posing as a pregnant woman and inquired about receiving an abortion and 75% of staff members reacted with disbelief, confusion or a complete lack of knowledge.

Overall, Quebec's private clinics are a common destination for women from Ontario.

One of the reasons for the decline in abortion accessibility is a lack of trained providers.  rw

About 3.3 million unemployed are mostly the young populace, 50% children are unable to complete their primary education and 19% total maternal deaths are at the age of 15-19.

About 62% of the population of Pakistan is below the 25 years, 60% girls are illiterates and the socio-economic indicators are among the worst in the region while gender discrimination persists.

RHIYA organised 1400 events at federal, district and community levels and over 9000 people were trained. RHIYA reached one million people through advocacy and communication.

Poverty, illiteracy, unemployment overburdens opportunities and complicates the lives of the young people compelling them to shoulder the burden of large size poor families. Sometimes the young people join gangs or offer services to private forces and militant groups for violence, unlawful or terrorist acts. Awareness regarding adolescents reproductive health, fertility and family planning is low with an unmet need of 22%.

Education is vital while addressing the reproductive health of adolescents and youth and parents training is necessary and has helped in addressing issue of communication gap between parents and children.  rw

The fathers and daughters exchange vows, with dad signing a covenant to protect his daughter's chastity and the daughter promising not to have sex until marriage.

Many fathers slip "purity rings" around the finger of their daughters or offer them "chastity bracelets" that the girls can entrust to their husbands on their wedding night.

The father makes a pledge that he is going to keep his mind pure and be faithful to her mother. Some 1,400 Purity Balls were held in the US in 2006, mainly in the South and Midwest.

The first Purity Ball was organized in 1998 by Generations of Light, a popular Christian ministry in Colorado.

Randy Wilson, who runs the ministry said the idea was to celebrate the bonds between father and daughter.

Enquiries are pouring in from aboard with organizations or churches in New Zealand, Britain and other countries.

Critics say that it is just as essential to make them aware of sexually transmitted diseases and condom use.

Studies show that the majority of adolescents who take purity pledges break them within a few years. One study found that 88% of pledgers have sex before marriage.

Unfortunately they tend to have more partners in a shorter period of time and to use contraception much less than their non-pledging peers.  rw

The existence of SDM cycle-beads in Rwanda's 28 sites had elicited interest from providers and the community. Rwanda had over three thousand SDM cycle-beads users with over 90% first time users. The method has been included in contraceptive technology updates for service providers using the official curriculum for in-service family planning training.

This is done through collaboration USAID and will include technical assistance, training, monitoring and evaluation.

The efforts come on the heels of the government commitment to limit population growth, with three children per family as a move to fight persistent poverty in Africa's most densely populated country.

The SDM cycle-beads use is an effective method to control unplanned pregnancy. SDM cycle-beads, now applicable in over twenty countries, make it simple for a woman to clearly identify the days she could become pregnant.  rw   Karen Gaia says: I had two pregnancies on the birth control method and one was an IUD baby. If my experience is any indication, then with the cycle-beads method, one might expect failure in reaching the goal of only three children. Also, my first contraception method, contraceptive foam, required application at time of intercourse, which did not always happen when I was a young woman. Could it be that the cycle-beads are not always used 'properly', especially in the case of younger couples?

The head of a non-governmental HIV/Aids body said: "Over a billion condoms are being made under government contract 25%-40% above the market price."

Donors wanted international bidders involved in procurement, but quality was a critical issue.

Korean condoms are cheap, but they are suspect.

The government is expected to contribute about Dollars 1bn of the total Dollars 2.5bn cost. Spending on a condom access programme is budgeted at Dollars 56m in 2007/08.

Jeff Wilson, a UK spokesman in India, said procurement was "an issue" and DFID was not planning to finance condom procurement.  rw

Males accounted for 51.5%, the ratio of males to female newborns stood at 119.25 to 100 in 2006.

The gender imbalance is a growing problem and there will be 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years.

China's goal to limit growth of its huge population has had one side effect, a jump in gender selection of babies. Some women abort their baby if it is a girl.

The sex ratio was 110 to 100 in 2000. The average for industrialized countries is between 104 and 107 boys for every 100 girls.

China has 2% of the world's population.

Urban residents accounted for 43.9% of the population by the end of the year, up 0.9% from 2005.

The legal boundaries of big cities in China often include large areas of farmland.  rw

A mixture of tradition and superstition means that 2007 will witness a mini baby boom.

According to Chinese astrology, people born in Pig Years are polite, honest, hardworking and loyal.

Babies born in the 'year of the Golden Pig' are believed to have good fortune and will lead a comfortable and wealthy life.

2007 is the year of "Jin", meaning gold, according to the rotation of five elements of gold, wood, fire, water and earth. According to forecasts by the Shanghai population committee, the city will see over 1,37,000 babies born in 2007, almost double the number in 2006. Family planning officials in Beijing forecast that they could see 1,50,000 babies born there in 2007, compared to 1,29,000 last year.

The boom has begun to put strains on hospitals in major cities.

The Haidian Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital Beijing has received an average of 3,000 patients in January, far exceeding the hospital's capacity.

Maternity doctors in the cities of Harbin, Taiyuan, Fuzhou and Haikou have been working double shifts and struggling to find enough beds on the wards.

Soon-to-be dads and moms in Beijing have to make reservations six months before their children are due, and monthly salaries of popular maternity maids in Shanghai have tripled to reach about $774.  rw

Low birth rate and high mortality is the most acute problem for the country. In many regions up to twice as many people die than are born. Low standards of living, insecurity and uncertainty of the future give rise to violence in families, neurotic and psychiatric disorders and aggravate somatic diseases.

These problems demand adequate measures and mechanisms. The federal program for 2007-2011, will give an opportunity to concentrate resources on priority directions which includes reduction of illnesses and mortality related with diabetes, tuberculosis, a total of 22.5 deaths per 100,000 cases, HIV infection and cancer. Attention will be paid to treatment of mental troubles, sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, high blood pressure as well as vaccines.

76.4 billion roubles are allocated for that five-year program, including 35.1 billion roubles from the federal budget. In 2005, an average life span was 58.9 years for men and 72.3 years for women.  rw

Do the needful within two weeks and let your son report back to school, said a letter to parents.

Circumcision is not obligatory, but a study said it reduced the risk of contracting HIV.

Circumcision is practised in many, but not all, of Kenya's ethnic groups.  rw   Karen Gaia says: Male circumcision often has a female counterpart in a culture. Practiced as a rite of passage under less than sterile conditions, and often on adolescents rather than infants, circumcision under these circumstances should be discouraged, especially when the circumcision results in obstruction of the birth canal, health problems, or lowered self esteem.

Tribal elders defended the move, which has infuriated many women and health activists.

An elected administrative body of tribal leaders in Meghalaya works with the state government on development issues.

The community is worried about an unabated influx of migrants from outside the state, but some in the state decried the program. It is for the authorities to check the influx or settlement of outsiders in traditional land belonging to our people. Increasing our community's population is not the answer.

"A woman's body is not a machine that she can go on having babies."

Meghalaya is one of the seven states in India's remote northeast where fears of migration from other parts of India and neighboring Bangladesh have helped fuel separatist revolts.  rw   Karen Gaia says: what will people do when the land they live on can no longer support their growing numbers? Migrate somewhere else?

Some women's groups have expressed outrage that an institution which is opposed to abortion should be given public money to counsel women. The federal Health Minister said he was confident that a Catholic agency was capable of providing independent advice.

He has promised that Centacare's helpline would be monitored to ensure impartiality.

Australia's abortion rate of 84,000 cases a year is too high and Centacare's 24-hour pregnancy counselling hotline was the best way to help women.

President Howard has promoted 'Christian family values' through public initiatives such as laws against gay marriages, government funding for chaplains in the school system, tax rules that favour families over singles, support for the Iraq war, questioning the credibility of Muslim asylum seekers and restrictions on the access of single women to IVF treatment.  rw

10,000 people have already left another 45,000 waiting to leave the internal strife is not helping to keep investors in the West Bank.

The American and European blockade affected the area as has the closure of Israeli boundaries and the stop-payment on tariffs. These factors, coupled with the security chaos and Israeli invasions and closures have led to an increase in the rate of poverty that is over 60% with unemployment at 35%. He reiterated that the Israeli attacks have been ongoing for the past six years, which negatively affects all sectors of society.

Israeli forces imposed closure on the Nablus District leading to a limitation of freedom of movement. The UN reported 57 closures for August 2006 alone. The district was inaccessible from the rest of the West Bank.

Hijawi said that restriction of movement from Israeli checkpoints has as negative an impact as the US-led blockade. All sectors are affected and an economic catastrophe is imminent.

As production plummeted, many factories have been forced to close their doors. Obtaining materials and manufactured products has become increasingly difficult and it is impossible to be competitive.

The agricultural sector is suffering. Production is down due to inaccessibility to farm lands or their outright confiscation, and access to markets is severely hindered. Transport costs are a major factor.

The siege has rendered tourism virtually nonexistent. Ancient buildings are demolished and riddled with bullet holes. Foreigners are often prevented by Israeli forces from reaching the West Bank at all. Investment has declined with no stability and many with investments have got out, or are attempting to do so.

Streets, electrical and telephone, sewage and drainage and lights are are severely damaged. Resources for repairs are limited, and the knowledge that the incursions will continue deem repairs difficult at best.

Transportation is afflicted by checkpoints, closures and bad roads, while costs have become prohibitively expensive for many. Unemployment and poverty are on the rise while the per capita income is in decline. Health and educational capabilities are hindered.

Environmental concerns have resulted from the closures and inaccessibility to existing waste management facilities.

Nablus is facing damage due to the blockade and many parties on the local, Arab and international levels must lift it so that Nablus can rebuild its economy and environment before they become irreparable.  rw