World Population Day observed to highlight global issues

World Population Day is being observed on Saturday all over the world including Pakistan to raise awareness of global population issues.

The day aims to increase people’s awareness on various population issues such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and human rights. The day was first marked on 11th July 1990 in more than 90 countries.

According to the United Nations, the COVID-19 crisis has taken a staggering toll on people, communities and economies everywhere but not everyone is affected equally. Women, who account for the largest share of frontline health workers, are disproportionately exposed to the coronavirus.

Supply chains around the world are being disrupted, impacting the availability of contraceptives and heightening the risk of unintended pregnancy.

As countries are on lockdown and health systems struggle to cope, sexual and reproductive health services are being sidelined and gender-based violence is on the rise.

UNFPA research highlighted that if the lockdown continues for 6 months with major disruptions to health services, 47 million women in low- and middle-income countries may not be able to access maternal care.  There are a further expected  31 million cases of gender-based violence.

Moreover, women disproportionately work in insecure labour markets and are harder hit by the economic impacts of COVID-19. Nearly 60 percent of women worldwide work in the informal economy and are at greater risk of falling into poverty. Women’s unpaid care work has increased as a result of school closures and the increased needs of older people.

Global population has increased grew sevenfold in the last 200 years. In 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark, and today, it stands at about 7.7 billion, and it’s expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.

This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.

The recent past has seen enormous changes in fertility rates and life expectancy. In the early 1970s, women had on average 4.5 children each; by 2015, total fertility for the world had fallen to below 2.5 children per woman. Meanwhile, average global lifespans have risen, from 64.6 years in the early 1990s to  72.6 years in 2019.

In addition, the world is seeing high levels of urbanisation and accelerating migration. 2007 was the first year in which more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas, and by 2050 about 66 percent of the world population will be living in cities.

These trends have far-reaching implications and affect economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty and social protections. They also affect efforts to ensure universal access to health care, education, housing, sanitation, water, food and energy.

To more sustainably address the needs of individuals, policymakers must understand how many people are living on the planet, where they are, how old they are, and how many people will come after them.