World population day: Stakeholders raise concern over population management

Stakeholders in the Population sector say Population is a critical concern as the world’s resources are being used up at an unsustainable rate.

Every July 11 is set aside as the world mark world population day to create awareness on population issues.

The need to have access to family planning, gender equality, and maternal health care is more important than ever, because of the expanding population’s impact on maternal health and family planning issues.

The major purpose of this day is to raise awareness of all the negative impacts that population growth has had on the steady development of nature.

It was founded in 1989 by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme.

On July 11, 1990, the day was first observed in more than 90 nations. Since then, a number of UNFPA national offices as well as other organizations and institutions, in collaboration with governments and civil society, have observed World Population Day.

To fulfil its mandate, UNFPA collaborates with a wide range of parties, both inside and beyond the framework of the United Nations, including governments, non-governmental organizations, civil society, faith-based organizations, leaders of the religious community, and others. There are around 8 objectives to celebrate World Population Day.

The Nigerian National Population Commission said this year’s theme speaks to the realities facing the African continent but particularly the sub-Saharan Africa region.

In a statement issued by the Director Population Management Ms Margaret Edison said, “This year’s theme is a call for reflections and a need to demonstrate resilient in addressing the challenges and to put up a common front by harnessing the opportunities embedded in each individual (person/people) that makes up the numbers in the population.”

The commitments made at Cairo in 1994, reaffirmed in Nairobi in 2019, to shift the conversation from quantity to quality and from liability to creating assets of the people that make up the respective sovereign populations.

The Commission added that, “The importance of the centrality of age-structure of the population and the dynamics shapes the conversation more aptly this year.”

Ms Edison said, the occasion is ment to educate, inform and enlighten people at all levels to embrace the benefits of having fewer manageable children, keeping Girls in Schools, abolishing child marriage inorder to end the dreaded teenage pregnancies, these will lead to achieving Population Management in Africa.

She added According to Dr. Kanem, ED UNFPA, “Societies that invest in their people, in their Rights and Choices, have proven that such investments’ creates the road to enduring peace and prosperity that everyone desires and deserves.”

The Commission added that there is need to united in purpose to change the narrative in Africa by putting the People first before the numbers.