July 11 is World Population Day.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) set WPD in order to commemorate July 11 1987 when the global population reached 5 billion.
The theme for this year’s WPD is “25 years of the ICPD: accelerating the promise”.
The ICPD stands for the International Conference on Population and Development which was held in the Egyptian capital of Cairo in September 1994 with representatives from 179 countries in attendance.
With human beings at the centre of socio-economic development and on the basis of the common understanding that the settlement of women’s issues exerts great influence on resolving the issue of world population, the ICPD affirmed that respecting and empowering women and ensuring human reproductive health and rights are matters of key importance in solving the population problem.
At the ICPD, the direction of addressing the population issue shifted from the restriction of population growth to the formulation of policies and action programmes centring on human life.
At present, ever-growing attention is being paid to this issue, and to respect and ensure women’s rights has been brought into a strong focus in redressing the issue.
Although many international agreements such as the Beijing Declaration and Programme of Action and the Asia-Pacific Declaration on Population and Development have been adopted over the past 25 years since the ICPD Programme of Action, people’s demand for reproductive health for all including family planning is yet to be satisfied.
Annually, some 289 thousand women die from complications at the time of pregnancy and delivery across the world. And 13 percent, most of whom are teenage girls, die due to unsafe abortion.
Especially, in the least-developed countries, one out of three pregnant women does not receive proper pregnancy care and more than half of the deliveries take place somewhere outside healthcare facilities and with the help of those who have not been trained as midwives.
Inadequate family planning service results in numerous unwanted pregnancies and 500 000 cervical cancer cases are registered and half of them die every year, and half of the tens of millions of people infected by HIV are women under 24.
In reflection of the realities, the UNFPA set the theme for WPD for this year, which marks the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, in order to urge all governments to commit themselves to accelerating the implementation of ICPD action programme.
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