World Population Day is an annual event to raise awareness of global population issues. The day is observed on 11 July every year since first observed on 11 July 1990. Observation of World Population Day was established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989. The Day was inspired by the public interest when the world’s population reached five billion on the day July 11, 1987.
As of June 2022, the world population is 7.95 billion. As per the United Nations projections, the most likely scenario is a population of 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion in 2100.
World Population Day aims to make the general masses aware of various population issues such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, human rights, etc.
World Population Day 2022 will create awareness about the global population issues including overgrowing population and measures to control it. According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), its focus this year is on how to safeguard the health and rights of women and girls. The COVID-19 pandemic disturbed and staggered people, communities, and economies everywhere. But everyone is not affected equally.
UNFPA and the governments of Kenya and Denmark will be convening a high-level conference in Nairobi to quicken the efforts to achieve the goal of sustaining world population.
Did you know?
Only 55% of women have the power to make their own decisions about their bodies. It should be a wake-up call to governments, policymakers, and development institutions.
Despite constitutional guarantees of gender equality in many countries, worldwide, on average, women enjoy just 75% of the legal rights of men.
Quantitative surveys suggest that between 4% - 29% of women who use contraception do so without their husbands’ or partners’ knowledge.
An estimated 58% of female victims of murder were killed by an intimate partner or member of their own family, amounting to 137 women every day. This has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Violence against women has been deemed the “shadow pandemic”.
At the current growth rate, three earths will be needed for survival by 2050. Only the population in Europe is expected to be smaller in 2050 than in 2017.
“By improving health, empowering women, population comes down” – Bill Gates