The latest United Nations medium-level projections indicate that world population will reach 8.5 billion by the year 2025 and 10 billion by 2050.
Population Growth: But population growth could be slower. There is a low projection, which assumes more rapid fertility decline, resulting in a population of 7.5 billion by 2050. The difference between medium- and low- growth scenarios in the year 2050 is 2.2 billion, which is near the total world population in 1950.
Population is growing fastest in Africa at an annual rate of 2.8 per cent, followed by Latin America (1.8 per cent) and Asia (1.64 per cent). These levels of growth explain the shift of the global distribution of population since the 1950s when Asia accounted for 55 per cent of the world's population, Europe 16 per cent and Africa 9 per cent. By 1993 Asia's population reached 60 per cent of the world's total while Africa replaced Europe in second place.
Urbanization: Within countries, migration to urban areas increases the need for urban housing, water, sanitation, energy, health, education, social services and food supply. The urban population will be 50 per cent of the total by 2000. By that time 391 cities will have populations over 1 million, compared with 288 in 1990.
In 1994 over 125 million people live in a country other than their own, either by choice or as refugees.
Poverty: As a result of development efforts, the proportion of people in developing countries living below the level of absolute poverty has declined. In the 55 poorest countries there has been significant progress over the last 25 years, including an increase in life expectancy from 53 to 62 years; lower infant mortality, from 110 to 73 per thousand births; and increasing access to safe water, from 33 to 68 per cent of the population.
However, because of population growth, the absolute numbers of poor are going up. Some 1.1 billion people, about 30 per cent of the developing world's population, are living on about $1 a day.
Reproductive Health: At the core of any population programme are the individual's well-being, reproductive health and the freedom to make an informed choice. International conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, have confirmed the basic right and responsibility of individuals to make choices about the number and spacing of children. Societies have the responsibility to help them achieve their reproductive goals.
Family Planning: While the users of family planning continuously grow in number, it is estimated that 120 million women--approximately 15 per cent of all married women of reproductive age--would use family planning if it were available. Their needs are unmet. This figure does not include the substantial and growing numbers of sexually active unmarried individuals who want and need family planning information and services but do not have access to them. To satisfy this unmet need, reproductive health care services must build upon the solid base of existing family planning programmes.
Education: Education is critical to empower women with the knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to participate fully in the development process. More than one third of the world's adults--about 960 million people, and most of them women--have no access to printed knowledge, to new skills or to technologies that would improve the quality of their lives and help them adapt to change.
Sustainable Development: Population issues are at the heart of balanced and sustainable human development. Countries are urged to integrate population into their development plans in order to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the potential ability of future generations.
With the 1990 World Summit for Children, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) and the World Conference on Human Settlements (Istanbul, 1996), it takes its place as one of a series of global discussions on socially equitable and environmentally sustainable human development in the aftermath of the cold war.
The ICPD's 20-year Programme of Action, adopted by consensus on 13 September 1994, builds on the World Population Plan of Action adopted by the World Population Conference (Bucharest, 1974) and on recommendations added at the International Conference on Population (Mexico City, 1984). The specific nature of the Programme of Action, its emphasis on women and the integration of its recommendations into other aspects of development mark it as a milestone in international discussion and action in the population field.
Not all countries will be in a position to implement all of the Programme's wide-ranging recommendations. However, if the Programme is widely implemented between now and the year 2015, and its basic targets for health and education are met, families will be stronger and healthier and women worldwide will be able to enter the mainstream of political and economic affairs. As a result, most countries will be in a position to complete the "demographic transition" to lower birth and death rates, a condition always associated positively with economic development.
Preparations: The involvement of virtually all countries and social groups, including a very wide variety of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in the preparations for the ICPD and at the Conference itself sets it apart from all previous world meetings on population.
Recommendations: In preparing the Programme of Action, the Conference Secretariat drew upon formal recommendations from five successive regional population conferences (i.e., Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Europe and North America, the Arab States, and Latin America and the Caribbean); a number of subregional preparatory meetings; six expert group meetings on priority issues; and a series of ad hoc round tables on key ICPD themes. Important input also came from national population reports prepared in more than 150 countries and suggestions sent in by several hundred local, national and international non-governmental organizations.
Scope: The Conference itself was the largest meeting on population and development ever held, attracting over 10,750 participants from 180 countries. Included in this number were over 4,000 journalists and some 4,000 representatives from 1,500 non-governmental organizations. Never before has so much public attention been focused on these important global issues. Never before have so many of the world's people been a part of the debate.
Delegations from 179 States plus 7 observers took part in eight days of painstaking negotiations to finalize the Programme. Adopting the spirit of "rigour, tolerance and conscience" called for by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his opening address to the Conference on 5 September, they reached a number of crucial agreements on outstanding issues, including abortion, reproductive health, the family and the rights of migrants.
In addition to the 10,757 registered participants in the Conference, nearly 4,000 people attended the NGO Forum '94, an independent gathering held alongside the Conference. Millions more followed the proceedings via the news media. In fact, this Conference received an unprecedented level of TV, radio and press coverage. The interest in population and development issues generated by the Conference indicates that the global discussion is only beginning.
The 16-chapter document strongly endorses a new strategy for addressing population issues, one that emphasizes the numerous linkages between population and development and focuses on meeting the needs of individual women and men. Rather than seeking demographic targets, the Programme of Action concentrates on the actions needed to allow all people to make their own choices with regard to child bearing.
The key to this new approach lies in empowering women and providing them with more choices through expanded access to education and health services, and promoting skills development and employment. The Programme of Action advocates making family planning universally available to all by 2015 or sooner as part of a broadened approach to reproductive health and rights.
The Programme of Action also includes goals for education, especially for girls, and for the further reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality levels. It addresses issues relating to population, the environment and consumption patterns; the family; internal and international migration; prevention and control of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; information, education and communication; and technology, research and development. For the first time in such a document it calls on Governments to address unsafe abortion as a leading cause of maternal mortality and a "major public health concern".
National Policies and International Cooperation: Each country is called upon to formulate and implement human resource development programmes in a manner that explicitly addresses the needs of its population and development strategies, policies, plans and programmes.
The implementation of all such programmes is estimated at $17 billion in 2000, $18.5 billion in 2005, $20.5 billion in 2010 and $21.7 billion in 2015. Of the estimated costs, the international community anticipates bearing about one third, that is, $5.7 billion in 2000; $6.1 billion in 2005; $6.8 billion in 2010; and $7.2 billion in 2015.
For further reading:
- ICPD Programme of Action (A/CONF. 171/13)
- Annual State of World Population Report
- Populi magazine
Contact persons:
Mr. Alexander Marshall, Chief
Editorial, Publications and Media Services Branch,
Information and External Relations Division, UNFPA
220 E. 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA
Fax: (212) 557-6416