European Parliamentary Forum on population and Development

EU Member States and MEPs must enter the 21st Century and tackle the challenges facing the world’s population together. Regardless of political allegiance, the solutions are simple and in the interests of society and all its members.

Population growth is central to all areas of development: it has an impact on the natural, social, cultural and economic conditions affecting humankind. It is posing a global challenge, and yet within Europe this challenge was recently described by a Commission official as being “more divisive than the conflict between Israel and Palestine.”

At the moment 78 million more people are added to the world’s population every year. This equates to all the inhabitants of Canada, Australia, Greece and Portugal combined, who are nearly all being born in the world’s least developed countries. For countries that already struggle to feed the needs of their citizens, the burden that a burgeoning population places on the resources around them is insurmountable. Conversely, many rich and middle-income countries are concerned about low fertility, declining populations and ageing. But these instances of demographic decline are doing little to slow the overall growth of global population, which will reach 7 billion later this year – twice what it was thirty years ago.

Population growth is a modern-day emergency which requires modern solutions: solutions which are unrelated to anyone’s political allegiance, which have the backing of the scientific and human rights communities. It will not be solved by imposing a one-child policy and coercive abortion on women, or by forcing outdated religious views onto people for whose lives such philosophy is wholly inappropriate.

The key to reducing the pressure placed on our natural, social and economic resources by an oversized population is in educating and empowering women in the developing world in their reproductive choices, and promoting their equality with men. Women must fully understand how and why they become pregnant, how they can avoid it if they want to and the consequences that their participation in economic activities can have on them and their family. And they must be given the means to put these theories into practice, such as access to modern forms of contraception, sexuality education and empowerment that frees them from the ritualised victimisation they suffer at the hands of men across the world.

It is only then that women can choose to have fewer children, to invest more in their children’s nutrition, health and education, to have time to have a paid form of employment and to benefit to and from society as a whole. To put it simply, the key to defusing the demographic bomb lies in protecting women’s human rights, promoting their gender equality and making sure that they have children by choice rather than by chance.

Yet there are some 215 million women in developing countries who lack access to effective family planning methods, and development assistance for contraception has stalled at 400 million dollars per year; half of what was given by the international community in 1995. And in the political arena advocates for the rights of women in the developing world also still face vociferous opponents from within Europe, at both EU and national level.

Within the European Parliament the opponents of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are often members of the same political groups as some of the most ardent supporters of female empowerment. For national governments at the EU’s Council of Ministers the opponents of the cause are also often close allies in all other areas of activity. The opponents believe that their own personal religious convictions should have the power to dictate whether women across the world have the right to understand and gain control over their fertility. Simply put, there are political forces at work across Europe who believe in denying women all over the world their human rights.

On World Population Day we, the secretariat of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, make a simple plea to the EU community on behalf of the hundreds of millions of women in the developing world who must have the right to control their bodies, their fertility and their destinies. Regardless of your political allegiance, or personal religious beliefs, it is our simple duty to protect and support women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in developing countries. It is their human right to enjoy the same freedom, equality and empowerment that we have in Europe. And we will all benefit as a result.