POPULATION POLICY - Between self-determined family planning and selective birth control

The between women’s health NGOs and the “population estab- term “population policy” refers to political measures aimed lishment” (see info box) – is regarded as a disruption to the at changing the size and composition of a country’s popula- purely quantitative and neo-Malthusian population policy of tion. [...] The 1994 UN Conference on Population especially in the Global South, for the supposed good of the and Development in Cairo marked the beginning of a para- (world) economy and the prevention of war. [...] For the first time, a controversy arose with regard to the extent to which the Global North should interfere in the population policy of countries in the Global South. [...] UNFPA) whose common goal is to reduce the birth rate in the Global South instead of addressing the unequal distribution of wealth and resources as the main cause of poverty in those regions. [...] Proponents of reproductive in controlling the population, and thus the bodies, justice (activists and intellectuals) therefore regard health, and life of those citizens, through the regu- population policy as a tool of reproductive oppres- lation of reproduction, mortality and immigration sion.