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Poverty
Women's Empowerment
Environment |
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The Programme of Action
recognizes that population growth and movement are inextricably linked to the full range
of human development concerns --including poverty alleviation, women's empowerment, and
environmental protection. It also notes that with current wasteful patterns of
consumption and production, widespread poverty, and a world population growing by 85 to 88
million people a year, many of the resources future generations will depend on are being
depleted rapidly, and pollution is intensifying.
POVERTY.
Poverty is closely connected to poor health and high birth rates and reducing poverty
helps to lower birth rates. For example, women who can afford to see a doctor or
visit a clinic are also able to use family planning services, but even where clinics are
free many poor women cannot use them because they have neither transportation nor the time
to spare. Rural isolation can keep people unaware of both modern family planning and
modern health practices, and in cities many poor people live without the means of planning
even their next meal, to say nothing of planning their families.
WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT.
Women's empowerment will allow women to earn more, to have more control over their own
fertility, to delay marriage and childbirth if they wish, and to take better care of their
childbirth if they wish, and to take better care of their children and live healthier
lives. Women often are poorly educated or, in some places, educated not at all,
which cripples their ability to climb out of poverty. This must change.
Advances in women's legal position and civil rights are critically important, too.
Without civil and legal rights, women have no power to secure these benefits to
themselves. And the national infrastructure (water, sanitation, fuel) must be vastly
improved to lighten the load of their 16 to 17-hour workdays.
ENVIRONMENT.
The environment will benefit from slower population growth and more balanced distribution.
people suffering from grinding poverty are poor stewards of the land. The
current problems of soil depletion, lower food production, and firewood and water
shortages can be greatly alleviated by human-centered development policies. People
who are assured of their survival today can consider their plans for tomorrow.
Reducing widespread poverty and establishing sustainable development remain the primary
challenge. And the problems of poverty and development cannot be addressed without
the advancement of women.
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