Population experts demand funding for international family planning (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, May 30 (OneWorld.net) - A high-level population conference has appealed to international donors to step up financial support for family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries.

This call comes at a time when foreign aid for international family planning is one of the most divisive topics for US Congress to resolve in its FY2012 budget considerations. The US is the key global donor in this field.

Described by its organizers at University College London as the largest conference on population issues to be held this year, Population Footprints examined the capacity of the planet to sustain a human presence which is due to reach seven billion in October.

The six billion threshold was passed just 12 years ago. Earlier this month, the UN published an upward revision of its long term projections of global population.

Academics, campaigners and politicians attending the conference from around the world discussed what strategies might encourage a lower population trajectory. They addressed the troubling contexts of food security, climate change, migration and a skewed demographic profile in which richer countries have too few people of working age whilst the poorer countries have too many.

The debates were marked by disagreements between the participants, a point acknowledged in the closing summary by Professor Anthony Costello, Co-Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health.

"That doesn't matter," he said, "because what unites us is much greater. What unites all of us is that funding for women's health, maternal health, child health, fertility reduction, family planning - all the drivers for moving towards a stable population - is desperately needed."

Describing current global funding as "derisory", Professor Costello deplored that "the World Health Organization has seen its budget halved for reproductive health and family planning."

A downward trend in this area of funding was indeed a feature of the April compromise which saw Congress approve the US budget for FY2011. International aid for family planning and reproductive health was cut by 5% to $615 million.

The battle now turns to FY2012. President Obama's original request for $769 million will be subject to forces pulling strongly in both directions.

The objective to provide universal global access to reproductive health services by 2015 is included in the Millennium Development Goals, a set of commitments agreed by world governments.

There are 215 million women in developing countries with an unmet need for contraception. The cost of fulfilling this area of reproductive health alone is estimated at $3.6 billion.

Campaigners say that it is impossible to achieve the MDG target without significant new donor funding. They advocate that US support should rise towards $1 billion per annum.

However, many Republican members of Congress considered the FY2011 compromise to be too generous. They will press for further cuts for FY2012.

The UN Population Fund is a favored target. Its US support for FY2011 was slashed from $55 million to $40 million. Republicans are under lobby pressure to revert to the days of the Bush Administration when UNFPA was denied funding altogether.

The new Executive Director of UNFPA, Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, was a leading participant in the Population Footprints conference. Whilst he maintained a diplomatic silence on his budgetary relationship with the US government, Dr Osotimehin was unambiguous in his views about priorities for population policies. "If we protect women's rights, their ability to make choices, we will see a lot of difference in population," he told the conference.

The Ugandan Minister of State for Finance and Planning, Professor Ephraim Kamuntu, presented the same opinion in language designed to appeal to politicians, hard-pressed on delivering budgetary value for money. "We have done a study in Uganda which shows for every $1 you invest in reproductive health it saves you $3 eventually in health costs that result from non-spacing of children and complications in giving birth," he said.

Africa's rate of population growth is the highest of the world's continents, its numbers projected to double to 2 billion by 2050. But attitudes are changing, according to Eliya Zulu, Director of the African Institute for Development Policy.

"Unlike 15-20 years ago, more African people now want to limit their family size but they are not doing that because they do not have access to family planning," he said in a BBC World Service interview at the conference.

Several speakers referred to the long term decline in foreign aid for family planning. This trend was evidenced in a scrupulously factual presentation by Hania Zlotnik, Director of the UN Population Division. She demonstrated that, since 1996, donor assistance for family planning programmes has fallen by at least 50% in nearly all African countries.

"In most high fertility countries, contraceptive prevalence is increasing by less than 1% per year," she said. "At that rate it's going to take something like 30-40 years for them to meet the unmet need they already have."

Dr Mairo Mandara, a gynecologist from Nigeria, highlighted the extremes that exist in the poorest regions of the continent. In northern Nigeria, the average age at which girls are married is just 15. Only 3% have access to contraception. Nigeria's population of 158 million is the highest in Africa.

The Nigerian government has taken the initiative of embarking on its own programme of free family planning services. "Africa should fund family planning, not rely only on donors," Eliya Zulu told his followers on Twitter.

The share of funding between potential donors was not tackled in any detail but speakers were unwavering in their view of the priority for spending. Siri Tellier, former Director of UNFPA in Geneva, summed it up in population numbers: "the use of family planning will be the most important determinant in whether we go to 11 billion in 2050 or whether we go to 9 billion in 2050."

The Population Footprints conference was sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and The Lancet medical journal.

* More Information:

Population Footprints - archived videos of the UCL conference

OneWorld Population Guide

OneWorld Gender and Development Guide

Yahoo! News

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High court orders drastic prison population reduction in California

Inmates sleep on bunk beds in a gym modified to hold prisoners at the state prison in Chino, California.NEW: The state now has a two-year window to complyThe Supreme Court rules, 5-4, that California must reduce its prison population"Needless suffering and death" result from overcrowding, Justice Kennedy saysJustice Alito dissents, warning against "gambling with the safety of the people"

Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court has affirmed a federal order telling California to reduce its overflowing prison population, a situation the majority said "falls below the standard of decency."

The 5-4 ruling Monday from the justices come in a classic battle over state versus federal authority, focusing on whether U.S. courts can step in and essentially run state prisons when officials have repeatedly violated basic constitutional guarantees afforded inmates.

The issue came down to a sharply divided debate between public safety concerns and individual rights, a debate that goes into how the three branches of government should balance competing state interests.

The swing vote was Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote of the "continuing injury and harm resulting from these serious constitutional violations," including as many as 156,000 people crammed in correctional facilities designed to hold about half that many.

He noted "needless suffering and death have been the well-documented result. Over the whole course of years during which this litigation has been pending, no other remedies have been found to be sufficient."

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito warned any mass release of inmates to alleviate overcrowding would be "gambling with the safety of the people of California."

The state now has a two-year window to comply, with the clock starting Monday. Officials have not fully explained how their ongoing inmate reduction plan will need to be modified to meet the federal order.

In a statement issued Monday afternoon, California Gov. Jerry Brown said he would take "all steps necessary to protect public safety" in implementing the order.

Brown, a Democrat, signed legislation in April that was aimed at cutting the state's prison population by tens of thousands, largely by housing non-violent felons with sentences less than three years in county jails. In his Monday statement, Brown said the court's ruling recognized that law as "key to meeting this obligation," but said the plan still needs "full and constitutionally guaranteed funding."

Prison overcrowding is a nationwide problem, but California's dilemma is unique in its massive scope and time frame. There is general agreement that the prison conditions across California are disturbing.

Prisoners are stacked three deep in 6-by-9-foot cells designed to hold only one. Open spaces meant to be gymnasiums and clinics have been transformed into crowded encampments with bunks and unsanitary conditions. Suicides occur once every eight days on average.

California has the nation's largest prison system, and the state says it has reduced the prison population to meet overcrowding concerns. But a special federal court panel had ordered 36,000 to 46,000 more inmates released or transferred quickly, about a quarter of the total.

Despite some recent drops, the prison population in the state has increased by about 75 percent in the past two decades.

Two lawsuits -- one filed in 1990, the other in 2001 -- say overcrowding is the core cause of what has become a domino effect of unsafe and unhealthy conditions for those on both sides of the iron bars.

State legislators and corrections officials have admitted the prisons violate the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" contained in the Constitution, and have organized more than 20 panels and commissions to address the crisis.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who left office in January, had blamed the legislature for not approving more money to build new prisons, or reforming the way defendants are punished and sentenced, particular repeat offenders.

"I don't blame the courts for stepping in to try to solve the overcrowding crisis," he said three years ago. "The fact of the matter is, for decades the state of California hasn't really taken it seriously and hasn't really done something about it."

The special federal court in 2009 had ordered the state to shrink the prison population from the current 200% over capacity to a maximum of 137.5%, and to accomplish that in two years. The state was given wide latitude to meet the goal, but the court was adamant the state do it without delay and without excuse.

The task was made more difficult by the state budget crisis and a national economic downturn that has created turmoil over funding solutions not just in prisons, but also in education, transportation, and social programs.

Kennedy spent most his 52-page majority opinion affirming the right of federal courts to step into the situation.

"This extensive and ongoing constitutional violation requires a remedy, and a remedy will not be achieved without a reduction in overcrowding," he wrote. "The relief ordered by the three-judge court is required by the Constitution and was authorized by Congress in (federal law). The state shall implement the order without further delay."

The state has already begun to comply; about 9,000 inmates have been released since the 2009 trial stemming from the lawsuits.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan supported Kennedy's conclusions.

Two tough dissents followed the majority's ruling. Reading from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling represents "the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history." He said it "takes federal courts wildly beyond their institutional capacity." Justice Clarence Thomas backed him.

In a separate dissent, Alito spoke of the potential impact of the decision.

"The prisoner release ordered in this case is unprecedented, improvident, and contrary" to federal law, he said. "I fear that today's decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years we will see."

Chief Justice John Roberts added his support to Alito's dissent.

The case is Brown v. Plata (09-1233).

CNN

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China's online population rises to 477mn (AFP)

BEIJING (AFP) – The number of Internet users in China, already the world's largest online market, hit 477 million at the end of March, a senior government official was quoted by state media as saying Monday.

The official from the Telecommunications Administration Bureau, which falls under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, announced the figure at a meeting in Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The number of people using the Internet in China had hit 457 million at the end of 2010, meaning that more than one-third of its 1.3 billion-strong population were online.

China's spiralling online numbers have turned the Internet into a forum for citizens to express their opinions in a way rarely seen in a country where the traditional media is under strict government control.

The growing strength and influence of the web population has prompted concern in Beijing about the Internet's potential as a tool for generating social unrest, and authorities have stepped up surveillance in recent years.

The government blocks web content that it deems politically sensitive in a vast system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Yahoo! News

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