An appeal to the EU on World Population Day “It’s time to find a common position on population issues”

By Neil Datta - New Europe

EU Member States and MEPs must enter the 21st Century and tackle the challenges facing the world’s population together. Regardless of political allegiance, the solutions are simple and in the interests of society and all its members.

Population growth is central to all areas of development: it has an impact on the natural, social, cultural and economic conditions affecting humankind. It is posing a global challenge, and yet within Europe this challenge was recently described by a Commission official as being “more divisive than the conflict between Israel and Palestine.”

At the moment 78 million more people are added to the world’s population every year. This equates to all the inhabitants of Canada, Australia, Greece and Portugal combined, who are nearly all being born in the world’s least developed countries. For countries that already struggle to feed the needs of their citizens, the burden that a burgeoning population places on the resources around them is insurmountable. Conversely, many rich and middle-income countries are concerned about low fertility, declining populations and ageing. But these instances of demographic decline are doing little to slow the overall growth of global population, which will reach 7 billion later this year – twice what it was thirty years ago.

Population growth is a modern-day emergency which requires modern solutions: solutions which are unrelated to anyone’s political allegiance, which have the backing of the scientific and human rights communities. It will not be solved by imposing a one-child policy and coercive abortion on women, or by forcing outdated religious views onto people for whose lives such philosophy is wholly inappropriate.

For full article: http://www.neurope.eu/articles/An-appeal-to-the-EU-on-World-Population-Day-/107585.php#ixzz1RnkyNkAe

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http://www.neurope.eu/articles/An-appeal-to-the-EU-on-World-Population-Day-/107585.php

Neil Datta is the Secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (www.epfweb.org), an independent network of MPs from across Europe who are committed to improving the reproductive health and rights of women around the world.