World Population Day is celebrated annually on 11th of July to increase awareness of the people towards population issues.
Resolution 45/216 of December 1990, of the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the decision to continue observing World Population Day to enhance awareness of population issues, and how they relate environment and development.
The Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1989 recommended that every 11th of July should be observed globally and celebrated as the World Population Day to raise awareness among public, with a view to finding solutions to population challenges.
This followed the interest generated when the world population hit five billion on 11th July 1987.
The attention of the World was drawn to “Universal Access to Reproductive Health Services.” This started by the theme of 2012th World Population Day, when the world population was approximately 7,025,071,966.
Since then, the campaign of the World Population Day every year increases the knowledge and skills of the people worldwide towards their reproductive health and family planning/child spacing.
The theme for this year (2017) is ‘Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations’
It is estimated that about 225 million women want to space their child birth delivery, but are not using safe and effective child spacing methods, for reasons ranging from lack of access to information, or services to lack of support from their partners or communities.
Most of these women with an unmet demand for contraceptives live in 69 of the poorest countries on earth.
Some of the objectives of celebrating the world population day are mentioned below:
- It is celebrated to protect and empower youths of both gender like girls and boys.
- To offer them detail knowledge about the sexuality and delay marriages till they become able to understand their responsibilities.
- Educate youths to avoid unwanted pregnancies by using reasonable and youth friendly measures.
- Educate people to remove the gender stereotypes from society.
- Educate them about the pregnancy related illnesses to raise the public awareness about dangers of early childbirth.
- Educate them about STD (sexually transmitted diseases) to get prevented from various infections.
- Demand for some effective laws and policies implementation in order to protect girl child rights.
- Make sure about the access of equal primary education to both girls and boys.
- Make sure the easy access of reproductive health services everywhere as part the basic primary health for each couple.
Through the celebration, people are encouraged to take part in discussing population issues like importance of family planning/child spacing, population management, maternal and child health, poverty, human rights, right to health, sexuality education, reproductive health, adolescent pregnancy, girl child education, child marriage, and sexually transmitted infections, among others.
It is important that countries identify with the objective towards making life on planet earth more comfortable and conducive as planned by the almighty creator. This could be achieved by adhering strictly to the methods adopted towards ensuring better development of the family, community and the society at large.
World Population Day is celebrated through variety of activities and events like seminars, discussions, educational competitions, educational information sessions, essay writing competition, public contests on various topics, poster distribution, songs, sports activity, speeches, poems, artwork, slogans, themes and messages distribution, workshops, lectures, debates, round table discussions, news distribution through press conferences, TV channels and news channels, relay of population related programmes on radio and television and so many.
This year’s Day has coincided with the London Family Planning Summit, which aims at expanding access to voluntary child spacing to over 120 million additional women around the world by year 2020.
Nigerian government need to take concrete steps towards promoting issues like child spacing through provision strengthening of health facilities – this would go a long way in addressing high maternal and infant deaths in the country.
Traditional and religious leaders should be involved in the campaign for better understanding of child spacing and its benefit.
It is only when steps are taken in the right direction that population management will be understood in Nigeria, especially in line with the dream and vision of the annual celebration of World Population Day.
