Regional celebration of world population day set on July 11

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Commission on Population III (Popcom-3) is set to commemorate the annual World Population Day (WPD) this July 11.

The event will be highlighted through a series of modern family planning (FP) strategies.

Popcom-3 Director Eleanor M. Cura stressed the importance of modern family planning in this year’s WPD celebration themed “Family Planning is a Human Right”.

“Access to safe, voluntary family planning is a human right. The right to decide on the number, timing, and spacing of one’s children is viewed as necessary to the exercise of the more basic and enforceable rights and to achieve and sustain zero unmet need for modern FP mandated by Executive Order 12-2017 signed by President Rodrigo Duterte. Family planning is necessary for the equal protection of law as well as essential for the enjoyment of some classic civil and political rights, since at present we have more than six million unmet needs for modern FP,” Cura stated.

Cura also mentioned that the WPD for 2018 “is a good opportunity to advocate modern FP among policy-makers and planners, focusing on modern FP’s significance and benefits to the family and to the community since family planning is not just a privilege, but a right but still many are denied of this basic human right.”

Popcom-3 has a lineup of activities set in celebration of the WPD which include information dissemination through IEC distribution, demand generation and possible service delivery among the clients availing of services in different national government agencies regional offices located in the government center.

“By strengthening partnerships with regional agencies and local government units, we are ensuring that demand generation and service delivery of modern FP commodities will be available to couples and individuals of reproductive age who have an unmet need for modern FP will be answered since access to contraception shouldn’t be taboo, or considered as a luxury or a privilege. It is time to acknowledge that family planning is a fundamental human right,” Cura added.

A yearly event observed every July 11, WPD aims to increase the knowledge of everyone on issues directly and indirectly related to the rapid increase in the global population. Established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, WPD was inspired by the public interest in Five Billion Day on July 11, 1987, the estimated date on which the world’s population reached a total of five billion people and as of June 2018 the world population already reached 7.6 billion.

Today, WPD is observed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the lead UN agency whose goal is to deliver “a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.”