Beyond Europe: Rhetoric of Reproductive Rights in Global Population Policies

Abstract

The world is still witnessing a fast population expansion. The United Nations’ State of World Population Report 2004 from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, estimates that the population will grow from the current 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050. The increase of 2.6 billion is equivalent to the combined populations of China and India today (UNFPA, 2004). However, while population grows fast in poor countries, which are already struggling to feed their people, the numbers are stagnating in rich nations. In many of the developing countries growth rates tend to be between 2.1-2.5 per cent (from the average of 1.5-1.7) — and sometimes they are even higher than this. In fact, populations in the poor regions have more than quadrupled in less than 50 years, while in many affluent European countries the population is further declining.