Population

This week’s Voices & Views on What Population Growth Means for Development raises important questions about how international donors can meet the challenges posed by a global population estimated to reach between 8 billion and nearly 11 billion by 2050. 

In the article, Roger Martin from the UK charity Population Matters argues that there is a taboo among donor agencies, which hinders frank discussion and concrete action on population issues. But this is not the whole story.

Though a taboo may have existed in the past, in recent years there have been a number of positive changes, including by the European Commission, to attract donors in the vital areas of family planning and sexual education.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is dedicated to population and family planning issues. A high level meeting in London in 2012 between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UNFPA and the UK government, saw US $2.6 billion pledged for family planning, with the aim of enabling 120 million more women and girls to use contraceptives by 2020. An organisation called Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) is now following the implementation of these pledges. Since 2004, the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalitions - a global partnership of public, private and non-governmental organisations - has convened stakeholders to make family planning methods accessible to the world's poorest people. 

There are currently 222 million women who would use family planning methods and services but who do not have access to them for various reasons such as unavailability and stock outs in health facilities, high prices, or cultural barriers hindering access to contraception for adolescents and those who are unmarried. This is the so-called 'unmet need for family planning'. Simply responding to this unmet need would do a great deal to reduce population growth.

Through EuropeAid the European Commission also conducts a number of programmes touching on family planning.

The EU supports comprehensive and quality health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, in partner countries. More attention has been paid recently to ensuring that family planning is an integral part of these services and this issue is regularly raised with partner governments. Yet there remains much work to do on this front, especially in reaching poor and hard-to-reach people. 

One country embracing family planning through the 11th European Development Fund is Burundi, where the government is very committed to these measures, despite being a majority Catholic country. 

EuropeAid will also continue to finance the UNFPA Global Programme to Enhance Reproductive Health Commodity Security (GPRHCS), which aims to make contraception available for the world's 46 poorest countries.

The EU supports several other projects run by non-governmental organisations around the world that provide advocacy, sex education and awareness-raising on sexual and reproductive health. Family Planning has a big role in these projects. They are funded through different instruments but the major part comes from the health component of the Investing in People programme as well as via non-state actors’ programme.

Some of these projects boost advocacy aimed at decision makers, opinion leaders and religious leaders in order to influence norms and create more favourable approaches towards sexual health and family planning. For example in Burundi there is a dedicated programme with World Vision, urging religious leaders to allow family planning. 

Aside from these health programmes, the EU does a lot in other areas of development - particularly education and women’s empowerment - that are extremely important for reducing population growth.

We can do a lot in the health sector but the real control of population growth comes through educating girls, providing income opportunities for women and in changing the norms and attitudes related to women's roles and family size.  When a girl stays a bit longer at school and when early and forced marriage is forbidden, girls have their first child later. And when women are educated and have livelihood opportunities to earn income, they tend to have fewer and healthier children. 

We need multisectoral/multifaceted actions involving all sectors of society, including environmental and economic sectors, to curb the population growth. In fact, when people realise the advantage that smaller family sizes can bring to their lives in terms of:

• improved food security
• reduced poverty and stress on land
• improved possibility for women to earn income outside home
• and ability to provide better for fewer children

the more motivated people will be to drive for their own change. We need to provide them with the knowledge and means that can be catalytic to this effect. But this must be done while respecting human rights and an individual’s right to choose how many children to have.