Birth rates “must be curbed to win war on global poverty”

report published in late January in the United Kingdom challenges world leaders to put contraceptive pills and condoms at the centre of their efforts to alleviate global poverty, tackle starvation and even help to avert global warming.
Published by the all-party parliamentary group on population, development and reproductive growth, the report makes the point that the population surge presents a massive stumbling block for tackling global poverty. It warns that the Millennium Development Goals will be missed unless world leaders do more to stop the soaring birth rates.

The report warns that the earth’s population will approach an unsustainable total of 10.5 billion people unless contraception is put back at the top of the agenda to alleviate global poverty.

The Labour Member of Parliament Christine McCafferty, who chairs the group, said there would be a 50 per cent rise in the world’s population by 2050 unless family planning was made more freely available in the developing world, where 99 per cent of the growth is expected to occur.

Richard Ottaway, the Tory vice-chairman of the group, said: “This is not the developed world telling the underdeveloped countries what they ought to be doing. None of the poorest 50 countries think that their populations are too small and 80 per cent think they are too high”.
(Source: The Independent, 31 January via enews@ippf.org)