To increase people’s awareness about various population issues such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and human rights, World Population Day is celebrated every year on July 11.
World Population Day was instituted in 1989 as an outgrowth of the Day of Five Billion, marked on July 11, 1987. The UN authorized the event as a vehicle to build an awareness of population issues and the impact they have on development and the environment.
There are several objectives to celebrate World Population Day. The prime objective is to protect and empower youths of both male and female genders about the ill effects of population explosion.
“Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made”– Pope Benedict XVI
“Close to a billion people – one-eighth of the world’s population – still live in hunger. Each year 2 million children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve” – Jonathan Sacks
“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day”– Jacques Yves Cousteau
“As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women’s issues, in bringing down the population growth rate… as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension – that of a mother”– Benazir Bhutto
“The combination of population growth and the growth in consumption is a danger that we are not prepared for and something we will need global co-operation on”– Maurice Strong
World Population Day: All you need to know