World Population Day 2017 to be Observed on July 11 With The Theme Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations

Family planning, the theme of the World Population Day 2017, aims at providing safe, voluntary family planning.

Mumbai, July 4: The World Population Day theme this year is ‘Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations’. This year, 11th July 2017, marks 17 years of World Population Day. The theme this year aims at providing safe, voluntary family planning. The UN website mentions that around 225 women in the work want to avoid pregnancy. However, they are unable to use safe and effective family planning methods because of lack of access to information or services to lack of support from their partners or communities.

The World Population Day 2017 coincides with the Family Planning Summit. It is the second meeting of the FP2020-Family Planning 2020–initiative. This FP2020 initiative aims to expand access to voluntary family planning to 120 million additional women by 2020. So, this year, they want to take steps for effective control of the population by doing investments in making family planning available. This will help to yield economic and other gains that can propel development forward mentions the UN website. The UNFPA website mentions this year’s World Population Day is also central to gender equality and women’s empowerment and is a key factor in reducing poverty.

What is World Population Day and how did it begin?

The first World Population Day was celebrated on July 11, 1990. As mentioned on the UN website, by resolution 45/216 of December 1990, the United Nations General Assembly took a decision to continue observing World Population Day to encourage awareness of population issues, including their relations to the environment and development.

This day focuses on the urgency of the importance of population issues in the world. It was established by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989. It is an outgrowth of the interested that’s generated by the Day of Five Billion that was observed on July 11, 1987. The first World Population Day was followed in 90 countries.