UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan told a UN panel of the progress it has achieved in reducing child, infant and maternal mortality, and said efforts were being made to align population trend with economic growth potential through better coordination between federation and provinces.
"Today Pakistan can proudly claim that it has halved the maternal mortality rate, doubled the proportion of births by skilled attendants, tripled the contraceptive usage, and quadrupled the antenatal consultations since 1990/91," Zakia Shahnawaz, Pakistan's chief delegate to 47th Session of Commission on Population and Development, said on Friday.
The week-long session at United Nations Headquarters will assess the action taken over the past 20 years to improve people's lives and address population issues amid changes in ageing, fertility, mortality, migration and urbanization. It will also take stock of the progress and challenges since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994.
That conference established that increasing access to health and education, and protecting human rights, especially those of women and adolescents, would help secure a better social and economic future and lead to more sustainable population trends.
Mrs. Shahnawaz, who is Punjab's minister of population welfare, said Pakistan firmly believes in the ICPD principles, objectives and ideals. With a population of 188 million, Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, it's population growth rate of 2%, results in annual net addition of 3.6 million people. Pakistan's population is projected to reach 210 million by the year 2020, and 227 million by 2025.
Pakistan has also "leapt forward" in promoting gender equality and reproductive health through effective legislative measures, she said, while citing Anti-Women Practices Act; Protection against Harassment of Women in the Workplace Act; Laws against domestic violence in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan; Fair Representation of Women Bill 2014 in Punjab; and Land allotment measures for women in Sindh and Punjab. A bill to increase the age of marriage for girls and to end child marriages was being debated in the national parliament.
The minister said Pakistani women have called for establishing a stand-alone international goal on women empowerment and gender equality to holistically tackle all forms of violence, including sexual and gender based violence; promote access to justice; promote socioeconomic equality and economic justice for women and girls.
Pakistan, Mrs. Shahnawaz said, had taken several legislative steps to integrate empowering women in its financial sector.
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