World Population Day, a day to celebrate humanity and not its curbing
Ezana Habte-Gabr,
The United Nations Fund for Population Activities observed World Population Day on July 10 under the slogan of “Family Planning: It’s a Right; Let’s Make it Real”. While the organization recognizes the right of individuals to determine the “number and the spacing of their children”, the organization, continues asserts that family planning is an essential component of the development process. Development is largely viewed from a numerical process whereby, it occurs when there is an astute calculation based on numbers of individuals in relation to existing resources. Resources, have generally been considered to be exhaustible should there be an increase in world population. Hence countries around the world commended for their development process often based on efforts to curb population or meet set fertility rates. This has resulted in what I would consider to be a whole paradigm of development, centered in the issue of population growth, paralleling it to a dinner party obstructed by uninvited guests. Of course in the last two decades, the colossal reductions of fertility rates in Europe and its effects on development have resulted in this paradigm having to rethink its basic premise.
There is a tendency on the part of those who study population demographically to be soothsayers based on their own knowledge and not on a broader range of information, resulting in development being based on demographic adjustments brought about through policy and evading any broader discourse about development. Hence the issue of population is always linked to how growth is controlled in order to foster development schemes, generally based on exogenous perceptions of the community.
In the last two years, I attended two population conferences one in Tanzania and more recently in Colombia. In both cases, the conferences were forums for scientific reporting on the process of controlling birth control for three major reasons – 1) limiting the number of mouths to feed given the perceived notion of limited resources and 2) empowering women so that their destiny would not be impeded by having to care for many children and 3) combating AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases through the use of contraception. Paper after paper and poster after poster reported success rates and studies which measured these processes by comparing and contrasting these countries which have made the greatest strides. Interestingly, the presenters were generally demographers and public health experts generally concluding with how possible doom had been avoided through their educational programs.
What is of utmost concern is the context under which these analysis and discussions are held, one devoid of a broader socio-political and anthropological context, reduced and limited to the Malthusian postulate of population growth outstripping economic resources and generating family chaos. Of course, the declining population growth rate of Europe generally, calls for modifying the postulate to “this not being the case everywhere.” It seems that the three problem areas mentioned above must be scrutinized beyond mere numbers and control. First, the analysis is based at national levels, without understanding the interrelationship between economies when it comes to food production and consumption. Each country of the world appears to be an independent dinner party which could easily be ruined by additional visitors. An articulated economy in Europe or in North America has access to the best nutrition, when its citizen opt to, not because they are declining in population but because of their access to nutrients throughout the world, irrespective of climate and local availability. Developing countries which are growing at the fastest rates do not have the above mentioned articulated economies and therefore, many demographers while agreeing with my point about the developed countries, would suggest that the poorest countries place emphasis on controlling their population growth in order to foster development. However, to what extent does population growth account for really holding back development? Should we shed ourselves of the traditional Malthusian premise of development and accept that poverty could be generated by an array of factors and are willing to look at the social context of each country, we will discover that poverty and underdevelopment are actually associated with political stability and global economics visa vie population growth.
Afghanistan, Somalia, East Timor and the Democratic Republic of Congo which are amongst the poorest countries in the world according to GDP per capita have been subject to endless internal civil conflicts which have literally brought the delivery of health and other social services to a halt. Several of these countries also top those experiencing the fastest growth in population, leading the Malthusian to establish a relationship between population growth and poverty. Somalia for example experienced the fastest population growth last year. Was it this growth which impeded development or the war? Kuwait had the fifth fastest population growth last year but is far from being amongst the poorest in the world, given its oil based economy and ability to reconstruct itself after the war of the early 90s.
The issue of female empowerment through having fewer children is also debatable given its based on the experience of the developed world as opposed to the developing. The cultural and social logic is completely omitted from the debate as the context is limited to “the fewer the better”. When there exist educational policies for genders and ones which accommodate maternity, women need not be limited. European countries such as Germany and Italy for example, are resorting to policies which simultaneously promote fertility and participation in the formal labor market. On the other hand, female education in Afghanistan was not impeded by high fertility rates but rather by Taliban policies which restricted women to the house.
While World Population day should continue to be celebrated annually, the population and diversity of analysts should also be broadened, making the area of population studies one transcending mere demography and traditional Malthusian theory.