Invest in people

"If you worry about population, shift your concern to people."

 

I first encountered those words as a student at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam, graduating in 1999. They were the title of a Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs policy paper published that same year, capturing the rights-based thinking that had gathered momentum after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Its central message was remarkably simple: successful population policy is, above all, about investing in people.

Nearly three decades on, this year's World Population Day carries the admirable theme of empowering young people to create the families they want in a fair and hopeful world. Yet it also exposes an uncomfortable truth.

We have become extraordinarily skilled at commemorating international days while investing far too little in the circumstances and prerequisites that make their goals achievable.

This is what I have come to think of as development hollowism: eloquent declarations, carefully designed campaigns, annual seminars and polished presentations standing in for sustained investment in human development.

The evidence, accumulated over decades and across continents, is remarkably consistent. Countries that have achieved sustained fertility decline have generally done so by combining voluntary family planning with investments in girls' education, primary healthcare, women's economic participation, child survival and gender equality. Human development drives demographic transition far more effectively than demographic targets drive human development.

Pakistan, however, has too often treated family planning as a stand-alone programme while persistently underinvesting in the very foundations that allow people and families to make informed reproductive health choices.

According to the latest UNDP Human Development Report, Pakistan ranks 168th out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index. The World Economic Forum continues to rank Pakistan last on its Global Gender Gap Index. These are not merely development indicators. They are population indicators too.

A viral reel can raise awareness. A slogan can inspire. Neither can empower. Nor can either create hope. Hope is not manufactured by commemorative days or clever campaigns. It is created when public investment allows young people to imagine a future worth planning.

Empowerment begins when a girl completes school, accesses quality healthcare, finds dignified work, moves safely through public spaces, and enjoys full autonomy over her body, her reproductive choices and her future. That is why population policy is ultimately education, health, employment, youth and transport policy.

Yet another omission continues to reduce our national discourse. We still behave as though sexual and reproductive health is exclusively a women's issue. Girls and young women unquestionably deserve greater investment and protection. But boys and young men also need age-appropriate, evidence-based education about respect, consent, shared responsibility, healthy relationships, contraception and parenthood.

Male involvement, however, must never become male control. Women's autonomy over their own bodies and reproductive choices remains non-negotiable. Engaging men is about creating equal partners, not additional gatekeepers.

Perhaps the question Pakistan should begin asking is not only how to empower women, but how families, schools, religious leaders and the media can stop reproducing misogyny across generations. Boys are not born believing girls are inferior; they learn it. They can also learn respect, equality and shared responsibility.

Violence against women, "child marriage" which is in reality child abuse, reproductive coercion, harassment and resistance to girls' education are overwhelmingly rooted in the socialisation of boys. Whether through education, public health, social policy or a dedicated national strategy, investing in boys' development and constructive masculinities deserves to become a mainstream social development priority rather than an afterthought.

There is another difficult conversation we rarely have. Health systems respond to incentives. Preventing an unintended pregnancy through thoughtful counselling is one of the most valuable interventions in reproductive healthcare, yet institutional priorities, workloads and financing often reward pregnancy, childbirth and managing complications more visibly than prevention itself.

This is not a criticism of obstetricians, midwives or frontline health workers. Many are committed advocates of family planning. It is simply a reminder that systems reward what they measure. If prevention matters, prevention must be recognised, financed and valued accordingly.

As World Population Day approaches, I already know what we are likely to see: conferences, speeches, media campaigns, policy dialogues and renewed promises of commitment. None of these is objectionable. The problem is when they become substitutes for action. If this day is to have meaning, let it become a day of accountability rather than ceremony.

Let governments publish annual district-level investments in girls' education, youth employment, primary healthcare and reproductive health services. Let us ask how many adolescents girls and boys alike received accurate, age-appropriate reproductive health education. Let us measure success not only by contraceptive targets but by whether young people are healthier, better educated, economically secure and genuinely free to make informed choices about their futures.

The Cairo vision recognised in 1994 that people are not instruments of population policy; they are its purpose. That lesson remains as relevant today as it was when I first encountered it as a public health student in Amsterdam.

Perhaps the most meaningful question to ask this World Population Day is not how many fewer babies will be born next year. It is whether, by the time the next World Population Day arrives, one more girl has completed school, one more boy has learnt that respect is part of manhood, one more young woman has found dignified work, one more couple has received honest contraceptive counselling before an unintended pregnancy rather than treatment afterwards, and one more government has chosen to invest in people instead of performances.

When we finally make that shift, smaller, healthier and better-planned families will no longer be the objective of policy. They will be its natural consequence.

Nearly three decades after first reading those words in Amsterdam, I find them even more compelling today. If we truly worry about population, the answer is remarkably simple: invest in people.