The world population is now made up of eight billion lives, the possibilities are infinite: a question of choices and rights

ROME – We are eight billion. Too many or too few? A wrong question or at least not the only one to ask, scrolling through the pages of the 2023 Report on the state of the world’s population. The new edition is in Rome at the center of a meeting-presentation at the Foreign Press Association. A venue that is also a message, this choice by the organizers, the NGO Aidos and the United Nations Population Fund (Unfpa): beyond the numbers there is the world.

What’s behind the estimates. “We look a lot at the figures but little at their substance”, warns Elena Ambrosetti, professor of Demography at La Sapienza University, interviewed by theDire agency. “The numbers in themselves say nothing: how and where do these people live? How old are they, and what level of education?”

But let’s start with what we know. We passed the eight billion number last November. It is possible that the goal has been exceeded in the Philippines but in the Report there is a more general point: “Sometimes, when you take a census of populations and focus only on the numbers, the rights and possibilities of people are relegated to the background” . The United Nations wrote it in black and white in the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: sexual and reproductive health must be promoted, i.e. the ability to choose when to have children and how many to have, to imagine the well-being of one’s family, to live free and free from physical, cultural or psychological violence.

Cooperation opportunities. According to Maria Grazia Panunzi, president of Aidos, an NGO committed for over 40 years to the rights of women and girls in the world, the added value of the Report lies in the perspective. “It starts from people and not from numbers, whether they are judged ‘positive’ or ‘negative'” underlines the activist. “Today we need to seize the opportunities that so many young people offer, many of them in disadvantaged countries that need sustainable development policies”. Panunzi’s is also a call for international cooperation: to understand needs, mobilize resources, strengthen alliances and elaborate interventions together. All the more, it is written in the Report, that the demographic dynamics are by no means the same everywhere: it is estimated that in the coming decades, half of the global population increase will be concentrated in a few African and Asian states: Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and India (the demographic “overtaking” by the subcontinent was expected in mid-April, after two centuries of supremacy by China).

Fewer births to underage mothers. But what is happening in these countries and in neighboring ones? Experts certify that, albeit slowly, things are improving: from 2000 to 2021, births to underage girls decreased from eight to about five million a year. However, there are still over half a million cases of births from mothers under the age of 15, often concentrated in the sub-Saharan area, where the incidence is no less than five out of a thousand.

Free from violence. The interpretations are different and intertwined with each other. At the center are rights. According to research conducted in 68 countries, 44 percent of those interviewed report that they cannot make autonomous choices with respect to their husband or partner about their health, sexuality or contraception. “The result?” ask the report’s authors. “About half of all pregnancies are unintentional and are therefore a violation of women’s fundamental right to be able to decide freely and responsibly on the number of children or on the spacing of their births”. The meeting at the Foreign Press Association is titled ‘Eight Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities’. Illustrates the data Mariarosa Cutillo, an expert at Unfpa, convinced that it is right to dwell “not only on the challenges but also on the opportunities”.

Challenges and hopes, with the decline in infant mortality. The debate is animated. According to Laura Aghilarre, deputy director at the Farnesina for development cooperation (DGCS), it is necessary to “invest in people, through education and training, and put in first place the full protection and promotion of women’s and girls’ rights, the promotion of gender equality and female empowerment, education of girls and the fight against all forms of discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence”. There is talk of the decline in pregnancies of minors.

The sign that the Cooperation works. “It is a fact that I learned with hope”, underlines Sandra Zampa, Italian senator, member of the parliamentary working group on Global Health and women’s rights: “It is the sign that the Cooperation works and produces and that we must continue, so that the exercise of choice about the future of one’s lives is ensured”. Commitment and opportunity return in Ambrosetti’s speech. “We have reached these eight billion thanks to a success” underlines the professor. “We have managed to eradicate infant mortality or in any case to ensure that it is greatly reduced even in the most disadvantaged countries of the sub-Saharan area: this result should not be diminished”.