Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-028"
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"en.20011004.2.4-028"2
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"Mr President, despite global growth over recent decades, progress remains inadequate and unequally distributed. Poverty, injustice and appalling conditions, from both a social and a health point of view, are still the bitter reality for many developing countries.
Africa, in turn, has seen a population explosion, mainly due to the fall in infant mortality. This trend seems today to be more contained, not because population policies have been successful but because of epidemics, especially, as has been said, of AIDS, TB and malaria. Africa challenges us and moves us, but Africa is not the whole world and is itself diverse in its various parts. It certainly has more need than any other region of a population policy more concerned with the condition of women.
Throughout the rest of the world, not only in the rich countries, population growth has slowed down somewhat over recent decades, but if you look more closely you will see both that the birth rate has fallen and that life expectancy has increased, and that means a population that is continuing to grow and which, in most situations, is ageing, as well as cases of overpopulation in certain regional and local areas.
In conclusion, if we want to be more effective in fighting poverty, we cannot avoid or ignore the matter of population control. It is true that it is linked to economic and cultural growth, but we are not without suitable tools and appropriate experience in the field of prevention and contraception. History teaches us that there has never been so much growth and so much poverty. Experience shows that it is no use trying to dry out a flooded room without turning off the taps.
Thirty per cent of the world’s population live in conditions of extreme poverty, a situation exacerbated by continuous population growth and the inadequacy – or, rather, the decline – of policies for development aid, assistance and cooperation. Europe is a relative exception, but not to the extent of correcting a worldwide downward trend.
New challenges in the developing world, such as urbanisation, environmental degradation and pollution, local warfare and the scourge of AIDS, together with the previously unthinkable resurgence of malaria and TB, threaten to drive us back.
In general, I am suspicious of statistics, which all differ, anyway, between the various Directorates-General of the Commission, as we have seen, and not uncommonly seem subservient to ideological prejudices. There is no doubt, however, that the explosive growth of the richest countries has left the poorest countries even farther behind.
Among the indicators of poverty, that of women’s poverty stands out: the majority of poor people, the poorest of the poor, are women, just as most illiterate people are women and women continue to work more and to earn and count for less.
It would be difficult to deny or underestimate the importance of the link that still persists between poverty, disease, illiteracy and population growth, a link which has its most obvious proof in the scale of women’s poverty, the suffering of women and gender inequalities.
On the other hand, the reports of both the Commission and Parliament seem to me to be evasive, not to say reticent, on the subject of population. The reports concentrate on the fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, going at length into sophisticated technical analyses and proposals for reforms, which may serve to improve our measures for combating poverty – especially on the question of drugs and health services – but do not propose any measures to improve the effectiveness of policies on population control, healthy and sustainable fertility, or free and informed maternity, as if this subject had disappeared from our view. Yet this is still the crucial issue.
Let us consider the facts: in purely numerical terms, never have so many people been torn by poverty as this year. Yet, because of the continuing population growth, today there are more poor people in the world than all those that have ever lived throughout history. Since the end of the last century, the world population has grown fourfold, from one and a half billion to six billion. The greatest growth has been in Asia: India, China, Indochina and, in particular, Indonesia.
The population trend in the rich countries is, conversely, now stationary, but the balance achieved depends on a longer life expectancy, which makes up for the slump in the birth rate."@en1
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