The global population has been growing for hundreds of years at a rate that has dipped and recovered with booms and busts. To focus solely on inconstant waves pushed and pulled by forces that are often out of our control is to lose sight of the shore, of the human rights that are our solid ground.

Population policies today are about people, not numbers, and about the rights of individuals and couples to freely decide whether, when or how often to have children. But it has not always been this way.

Shortly after the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, we spoke to 10 ten-year-old girls from around the globe, asking them what their one wish was. Their answers affirmed what the American poet Maya Angelou once wrote: We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.