This Sunday marked the United Nations' (UN) 23rd World Population Day (WPD), which the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) used to highlight the “relationship” between population control, “maternal health”, which includes the promotion of contraception and birth control, and the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The theme of this year’s WPD is “Everyone Counts” which, according to the press release by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, will help “to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.”

It is admirable that the UN supports the recognition of every human person, “especially women, girls, the poor and marginalized." Indeed, the use of census data to alert nations of such situations as sex-ratio imbalances in Asia, poverty, and infant mortality is commendable. 

However, even though the overall intent appears good, Obaid’s desire that this census is conducted  “to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted” raises concern. It is troubling to find that the UNFPA’s understanding of the dignity of the human person is not that it is an inherent consequence of existing, but dependent on the desires of other people.  What is more worrisome, though, is that the organization sees access to abortion as central to “improving” people’s lives: by eliminating some of the world’s impoverished and “unwanted,” worldwide census data can “show progress towards improving maternal health, which is one of the Millennium Development Goals."   This makes contraception and abortion the cornerstone of their development plans, ignoring the rights of unborn persons are because of their birth status. 

Thus, it is regrettably clear that while UNFPA claims to protect the dignity and human rights of all people, not everyone counts; abortion and other “reproductive health” services aimed at actively decreasing population are central to the UN's misconception of human dignity, and ignore the rights and worth of the unborn. 

Yesterday at the United Nations, the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development (DIIFSD) launched a new research tool aimed specifically towards families and children. The Global State of the Family Index provides the latest cross-national indicators on the staus of families around the world including: rates of infant mortality, maternal mortality, marriage and divorce as well as economic indicators.

The Qatar-based DIIFSD conducts research and promotes scholarship on "the legal, sociological and scientific basis of the natural family as the fundamnetal unit of society."

On Tuesday, 22 members of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly made a motion to discuss a resolution condemning sex selection as "gendercide." The resolution was sponsored by Mr. Luca Volonte of Italy. Notably, the parliamentarians call gendercide a "serious threat to global security."

A new article from the Associated Press is reporting that China is considering easing up on its draconian one-child policy because of fears that the country will soon run out of young workers to support its aging population, thereby slowing or even reversing the economic growth of the country.

According to AP, the government remains "officially" committed to the one-child policy. But that it also commissioned feasibility studies last year on what would happen should it eliminate the policy or do nothing. AP reports that an official with the National Population and Family Planning Commission said privately that "the agency is looking at ways to refine the limit without getting rid of it."

Another concern stemming from the one-child policy is the surplus of males, due to the practice of sex-selective abortion and a preference for sons. Experts fear that the resulting gender imbalance will create a frustrated generation of men unable to find spouses and could fuel the trafficking of women and girls to be sold as brides.

A new article is highlighting the growing demographic crisis in China which has resulted in the deaths of millions of baby girls.  As a direct result of the draconian one-child policy and a resulting prejudice in favor of sons, a generation of Chinese males will be unable to find wives because of the gender imbalance.

According to the article:

"By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in this giant empire, so large and so different (its current population is 1,336,410,000) that it often feels more like a separate planet than just another country. Nothing like this has ever happened to any civilisation before."

Social scientists are alarmed at how the Chinese "gendercide" might affect the country in future - speculation of increased wars and aggression, a rise in crime - particularly in human trafficking, as well as a rise in prostitution.

Dolly Parton is credited with asking why is it that one woman can raise ten children but those ten people can't take care of one woman in her old age. Or words to that effect. Hopefully the CEDAW committee will draw from the well of Dolly's wisdom when creating the new general recommendation on the rights of older women.

One of the CEDAW experts, Ferdus Ara Begum, recently outlined the committee's plans for the new GR. She called CEDAW a "living instrument to protect the human rights of older women." It is encouraging that she began by explaining that global aging is to blame for the fact that women will be left to face the hardships of poverty and old age alone more often than men. What was not apparent in her remarks is acknowledgement of the role of fertility decline -- fewer children -- in causing that loneliness and hardship.

While the committee is apparently attentive to such important issues as health care, literacy, and refugee status -- and to details such as witch trials in one country, and a mandate to wear ugly clothing during mourning in another -- there seems to be no indication of how they will help women raise children, strengthen marriages, and preserve family bonds.  

And it is not apparent in Begum's remarks that the same committee which has glorified fertility decline, even to the point of pressuring more than 90 nations to liberalize abortion, will take responsibility for its own role in causing that loneliness and hardship on poor women.

The latest report from UNFPA, "Adding it Up: the Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health," conflates maternal and newborn health with population control.

The 44-page report deserves close scrutiny and critique by the maternal and child health research and policy community because UNFPA helps set the agenda for global funding on the issue.

Specifically, it confuses the evidence showing the need for better international maternal health care with unverifiable and unsubstantiated claims purporting to show the need to fund the global family planning industry.

The report makes sweeping claims that if UN member states just invest another $12B a year (for a total of $24.6B per annum) into UNFPA's population agenda, the world-wide result will be:

• cost savings for poor countries on health, water, sanitation, and social services
• 2/3 reduction of unintended pregnancies
• 70% drop in maternal deaths
• 44% drop in newborn deaths
• 73% reduction in "unsafe" abortions
• 60% reduction of disabilities

The reader concludes that cost savings on social and public services, not to mention on help for disabled people, would result from reducing the number of people born into these societies.

One of the many problems with this is that it perpetuates a theory that has never been proven in practice: the idea that fewer people means more development.

What is more irresponsible about the UNFPA report is that it makes virtually no attempt to reconcile this approach with the latest, plentiful data coming out of the UN Population Division and other reputable sources. In particular, the UN Population Division's latest report on global aging demonstrates the negative consequences of global fertility decline for women of the developing world.

UN member states should see the new UNFPA report for what it is: a fundraising campaign. And UNFPA's executive board should demand higher standards in future campaigns.

A new document from the UN Populatiom Fund (UNFPA) gives us a window into the strategy for garnering major development funds. UNFPA links its funding of condom and abortion promotion (such as International Planned Parenthood Federation which receives most of its income through these services in various regions) to "mandates" in UN documents and targets to target a new generation of consumers.

UNFPA bases its campaign on a non-binding 2009 Commission for Population Development (CPD) resolution, and on MDG 5 target b. The target was never accepted by UN member states in open debate and the last time it was debated in 2005, it was rejected. Arguably this is flimsy basis for a UN campaign, especially a controversial one.

The means is "evidence-based advocacy with national governments to increase their investment" - getting governments to declare UNFPA services a core part of health systems. Since UNFPA distributes funds to developing countries, it is hard not to see in this strategy a form of implicit coercion or at least pressure. After all, if nations were clamoring for UNFPA's agenda, there would be no need for UNFPA to "advocate" or use UN documents as a tool.

The goal, and what's so troubling about the document, is to target children. Like many global corporations, UNFPA seeks to gain market share among adolescents.

Rather than promoting universal education for girls, UNFPA says they are indifferent to whether they get new users in or out of the classroom. They seek to "Ensure that programmes meet the needs of young people, a large and diverse population group, by ensuring access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education, for both in-school and out-of-school youth; providing youth friendly services."

Rather than seek to improve basic health systems and fight top killers of women, they instead seek to promote abortion (often cloaked in the term "sexual and reproductive health services") at the very center of health systems. They argue that: "Family planning and sexual and reproductive health services must be acknowledged and positioned as core components of basic health services."

Rather than supporting local traditions and cultures, UNFPA seeks to enforce their agenda by using legal means: "Financial, legal, and other barriers to access, especially for disadvantaged groups and individuals, should be identified and eliminated."

In stark contrast, the UN Population Division just released its latest fertility chart showing how fertility is already plummeting across the globe. The division also recently released a report showing the dire consequences for developing nations, especially women.

The question is whether target nations will offer up their own youth to help fulfill UNFPAs ill-fated agenda.

The UN Population Division has just released its latest World Fertility Chart.  It is not a surprise that across the globe, women today are having fewer children than women in the 1970s, but the latest statistics are showing alarming figures for the developed countries.

Bearing in mind that replacement level fertility is 2.1 children to offset mortality, the latest statistics from the Population Division show that Europe, Northern America and even Eastern Asia fall below that mark.

"Northern America" - which includes Canada, the United States, Bermuda and Greenland are coming in just under replacement level at 2.0 children per woman. Europe as a whole is averaging a 1.5 fertility rate, with Eastern Europe at only 1.3 children per woman. The statistics show that low birthrates are not exclusive to the Western world. In Eastern Asia - including China, Japan, North and South Korea are also experience a "bearth dearth" with total fertility levels at only 1.7 children per woman.

Today the UN Development Program released a report on women in Asia that emphasizes sex selective killings of baby girls. Some 96 million girls are "missing" due to the enduring and pervasive nature of the problem. The Economist ran an excellent story covering the report this week, and the Wall Street Journal covered it as well.

It is encouraging that most news stories report the hideously common problem of sex selective abortion as the cause of the sex imbalance and not just a general preference for sons.

As I a queried in a previous blog: will any of this overwhelming data influence the Commission on the Status of Women, now convened at UN headquarters, to condemn sex selective abortion?