The growing population of the world is cause for concern since the food and energy resources are not expanding fast enough to keep up with population growth. Strategies that reduce population growth are therefore welcome by the international community.
The United Nations has established a link between population and development with modest and sustainable population growths being favorable to the development of a nation. With these undertones, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) came up with a strategy for reducing population growth.
This strategy which was endorsed by delegations from 179 States proposed the empowering of women and giving them more opportunities in society (ICPD, 1994).
The rationale behind this proposal was that educated women were empowered and exhibited reduced birth rate than uneducated women. In the UN 1994 strategy, the role of women in developing nations was to be changed.
Women would no longer be seen as home makers and many of them would be provided with more choices to build careers by developing skills to gain employment.
It was projected that literate women would not only have fewer children; they would also be actively engaged in the socio-economic affair of the country therefore increasing the overall well being of their communities while at the same time curtailing population growth.
Focus was to be given to women who lived in rural areas where illiteracy rates were astronomical. The UN proposed to offer funds to developing nations so as to facilitate the increase in literacy levels by women in the respective countries.
Donor countries were supposed to offer complementary resources to deal with the increased expense that this strategy would incur (ICPD, 1994).
In my opinion, this strategy will help in population reduction efforts today. The 1994 UN strategy demonstrated a growing awareness that population, poverty, and consumption levels are interlinked and therefore, slowing population growth would have a reduce poverty and consumption.
Sapru (2010) reveals that while poverty rates in developing countries have decreased, the number of poor people has increased due to the population growth experienced in these countries.
If the current rate of population growth in developing nations continues uninterrupted, the food produced will not be enough to satisfy the whole population.
The 1994 strategy achieved success and the population growth rate reduced as female literacy rose. According to this strategy, the UN hoped to achieve a population of 7.2 billion in 2015 and have a stable population of 7.8 billion in 2050.
It is possible that this goal will be reached since the population currently stands at 7 billion. Even so, the number of illiterate women today is still high. The illiteracy level among women today is still markedly high.
The UN News Center (2010) reports that women make up two thirds of adults who cannot read or write. By increasing funding to literacy programs, this number can be reduced significantly.
Such a reduction will make the positive impacts of the population policy endorsed by the UN in 1994 even greater.
Almost 20 years after the 1994 conference, population growth remains a significant issue for the international community. A strategy for reducing population growth is still required today since the population is growing at an unsustainable rate.
By continuing with the 1994 UN strategy for reducing population growth, the world’s population can be stabilized therefore ensuring our future as the world’s resources are used in a sustainable manner.
References
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). (1994). Summary of the Programme of Action. Web.
Sapru, R.K. (2010). Public Policy: Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
UN News Center (2010). Literacy has empowering effect on women, UN officials say. Web.