Creating a New Consensus on Population

This book is about the politics of reproductive health, reproductive rights and women's empowerment. The author is an expert in the field in which he has been involved for several decades, even before the landmark Cairo population conference in 1994. Among the important clusters of issues are the integration of population and development strategies, population growth and structure, reduction of mortality and morbidity, and population distribution and migration. The book traces the history of major conferences on population and the implementation of their recommendations. As the subtitle suggests, there is a particular emphasis on women's empowerment and the real accomplishment of these meetings, which were carefully prepared in advance and followed up. Of particular interest is the Holy See view on the 1994 deliberations. There is no doubt that the empowerment of women combined with family planning advice is absolutely key to containing population increase, as I have also learned first hand from this year's winner of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment, which integrated reproductive health with conservation. It is also important to put all this within the wider context of the Millennium Development Goals.