Population taboo stokes doubt over Millennium Development Goals
by Agence France-Presse.
PARIS—Of all the issues that will be aired from the pulpit of the U.N.‘s development summit this week, one is likely to stand out by its absence: What should be done about the world’s population explosion?
To many campaigners, demographic growth is the gorilla in the U.N.‘s living room, a blindingly obvious problem interlinked with poverty and environment that gets carefully ignored whenever leaders meet.
“When the Millennium Development Goals were adopted, there was not a single target on population or family-planning access,” said Alex Ezeh, executive director of the Africa Population Studies and Health Research Center in Nairobi. “It was a huge mistake. The world is only now just waking up.”