UN calls on world leaders to meet challenges of growing population

MANILA, Philippines - The United Nations has called on world leaders to meet the challenges that a growing population poses, from ensuring adequate food and clean water to guaranteeing equal access to security and justice after the world population reached 7 billion recently.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world’s population reached 6 billion in 1998, only 13 years ago, and it is expected to reach 9 billion by 2043.

Ban said “the world today is one of terrible contradictions,” noting that there is plenty of food but 1 billion people go hungry; lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others; huge advances in medicine while mothers die everyday in childbirth; and billions spent on weapons to kill people instead of keeping them safe.

“I am one of 7 billion. You are also one of the 7 billion. Together, we could be 7 billion strong by working in solidarity for a better world for all,” he said.

Ban said that as the world population passes 7 billion, “alarm bells are ringing.”

He said that the meeting later this week in France of the Group of 20 leading and emerging economies (G-20) is taking place against the backdrop of growing economic uncertainty and mounting inequality.

Ban said leaders should agree to a concrete action plan that advances the well-being of all nations and people, not just the wealthiest and most powerful.

The President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said the milestone is a reminder of how the world’s poorest - the so-called bottom billion - are rendered vulnerable with little or no access to basic needs.

He said opportunities could be harnessed to reach global anti-poverty targets, to invest in youth and women, and to rethink the approach to sustainable development.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) cited some of the challenges in an expanding global community that include promoting the rights and health of 7 billion women, men and children.

“We must ensure that, in areas of the world where population is growing fast, we raise the status of women and young girls to be able to access education and make choices for themselves,” said UNFPA executive director Babatunde Osotimehin.

“We also owe it to the 215 million women worldwide who require family planning and are not getting it to make it available,” he said, adding it is also necessary to ensure safe pregnancy and delivery for every woman that wants to give birth.

He said that the aging populations in many parts of the world should be given a life of dignity and the problem of rapid urbanization and migration should be resolved.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that the 7 billionth child is, by virtue of her or his birth, a permanent holder of rights, with an “irrevocable” claim to freedom.

“But she or he will also be born into a world where some people, given the chance, will trample on those rights and freedoms in the name of state security, or economic policy, or group chauvinism,” Pillay said.

“If she was born a girl, she will have fewer choices. If born in the developing world, she or he will have fewer opportunities. If born a descendant of Africans in a non-African country, or as an indigenous person, member of a religious minority, or as a Roma, she or he is likely to face discrimination and marginalization, with a childhood rife with vulnerability, and a future adult life hedged in by exclusion.”

‘Media hype’

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III criticized the Department of Health (DOH) for drumming up the birth of a symbolic seven billionth baby in the world last weekend.

Sotto said the DOH and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) just created media hype to give an impression that the world is already overpopulated in a bid to push for the passage of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

Sotto said the move was another strategy by RH bill supporters to discourage the people from producing more babies as the world is already overcrowded now that the world’s population has reached seven billion.

He said the scheme was designed to scare the public that the world is overpopulated, and that this will become a “gargantuan” problem in the near future.

“That’s misleading, so what if we reach 10 billion, even 20 billion, they should not pretend to know more than God,” Sotto said.

Sotto said that out of the 94.9 million population of the Philippines, about 313 people could be covered in every one square kilometer compared to the tiny state of Singapore where 19,000 persons are living in every one square kilometer. – With Christina Mendez