Showing posts from category education.
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Iran: A Seemingly Unlikely Setting for World’s Fastest Demographic Transition
›January 11, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenThis is the second post in a series profiling the process of building political commitment in countries whose governments have made strong investments in family planning. Read the first post, on Rwanda’s recent rapid demographic changes, here.
To date, only 11 countries outside of the developed world, China, and a handful of small island states have reached the end of the demographic transition, with fertility rates declining from more than four children per woman to replacement level or lower.* Of these, only two countries have completed the transition in 15 years or less – and both might surprise you. One is Cuba, whose government dispensed family planning services to its relatively small population in the 1970s through accessible primary health care facilities and legalized safe abortion eight years before the United States did. The other: Iran.
Following the 1979 revolution, Iran’s new theocracy adopted a socially conservative, pro-natalist outlook. Half of the population lived in rural areas, which typically constrains access to health services. In addition, abortion was illegal in most circumstances. According to the UN, Iranian women had an average of 6.5 children each in the early 1980s and the population was growing nearly four percent annually, a rate high enough for it to double in 19 years.
But, by the early 2000s, Iran’s fertility rate had dropped below two children per woman. The swift changes can be attributed to the efforts of government officials concerned about meeting the employment needs of a growing population, supported by public health experts who wanted to rebuild the eroded family planning program.
A Dramatic Policy ShiftThe turning point came after the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in 1988. With military demands high – several hundred thousand people were killed during the war – population growth was viewed positively. But as the war ended, policy directives did an about-face.
Although public health officials had framed the need for reinvigorated family planning programs in health-related terms for years, the motivation for government officials to change policy appears to have been economic. The national budget agency informed the prime minister that after nearly a decade of conflict, the country lacked adequate funding to both rebuild and to meet the needs of its people. The prime minister responded quickly, directing that demographic factors be integrated into the new development plan and stating that “Iranians’ standard of living was being eroded by the growth of the country’s population.”
“Pragmatism Has Prevailed Over Pure Ideology”
After convincing their superiors, Iranian government officials who supported family planning faced the added challenge of garnering the backing of the influential religious establishment. Shortly after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini officially sanctioned the use of contraception, though his perspective was not universal among clerics. Once the prime minister decided to introduce a national family planning program, officials sought support from additional religious authorities. Opposition was minimal after two key institutions offered endorsements. The High Judicial Council determined that there was “no Islamic barrier to family planning” in late 1988, and the Expediency Council approved the government’s plans soon after.
By late 1989, a new family planning program had been officially introduced. The program’s aims were to lengthen spacing between births; limit pregnancies in the early and late reproductive years; and lower fertility by educating the population and ensuring access to free and diverse contraceptive methods. By the mid-1990s, the government had fully integrated family planning into the existing primary health system.
Iran thus followed the example of other majority-Muslim countries where religion was not an impediment to family planning, including Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Oman. Just as in countries where highly Catholic populations have low fertility rates (Italy, Poland, Spain, and many others), religious guidance has been interpreted in varying ways in different settings and is not necessarily a central factor in individual fertility decisions. As Akbar Aghajanian and Amir H. Merhyar write in a summary of Iran’s family planning program, “Pragmatism has prevailed over pure ideology when necessary.”
The Contributions of Women’s Education and a Strong Health System
A new policy orientation was the critical first step, but successful implementation was necessary for Iran’s demographic trajectory to change in response. Fortunately, the government had some advantages in rolling out its new program, namely a strong existing health system, a history of past efforts to promote family planning, and an educated female population among whom demand for contraception was high.Rural development became a priority of the government after the revolution and resulted in improved access to an array of services. In rural areas, community health workers receive two years of training to provide family planning services along with other preventative care and treatment. Services are also available at rural health “houses,” urban clinics, and higher-level centers around the country.
The status of women has also played a major role. A research exercise conducted by IIASA estimated that improvements in educational attainment among women were responsible for about one-third of Iran’s fertility decline between 1980 and 2005. Women’s literacy was already rising during the period of the revolution and reached 74 percent by 1996, while attitudes toward female employment became more supportive. By the late 1990s, new classes of university students included more women than men. The response to the 1989 program indicated that women clearly had an unmet demand for family planning. Use of modern contraception jumped from 31 percent in 1989 to 51 percent just five years later, then rose more slowly over the subsequent decade.
A Dividend Squandered?
The rapid changes in Iran’s age structure, thanks to declining fertility, have opened a window of opportunity for the country to boost economic growth through lower dependency ratios – a phenomenon called the demographic dividend. However, the dividend is not an automatic bonus, and Iran’s capacity to capitalize on its demographic change is questionable.
The unemployment rate among young people today is over 20 percent, indicating that the economy is not generating sufficient jobs, which is a prerequisite to improving productivity. This inopportune climate may even contribute to a further decline in the fertility rate: Some observers have suggested that the country’s economic troubles and rising costs of living have motivated young people to delay marriage and have smaller families. “Unemployment and high costs of living, coupled with social and political restrictions, have made [life] increasingly difficult for young Iranians,” Farzaneh Roudi of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) explained in a blog post last year.
Given Iran’s challenges in producing adequate jobs and other economic benefits for its population, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent unusual pronouncements on population issues are especially puzzling. Last year, Ahmadinejad introduced a pro-natalist policy offering direct payments to each child born, continuing until they reach adulthood, and later suggested that girls should marry at age 16 or 17.
But despite a high level of international media attention, most observers expect the policy to have little impact. Widespread adoption of family planning has become entrenched in society: 60 percent of Iranian women now use a modern contraceptive method. As PRB’s Roudi wrote in response to Ahmadinejad’s proposal, “Iranian women and men have gotten used to exercising their reproductive rights and would expect to be able to continue to do so.”
*The 11 countries that have achieved replacement fertility or lower outside of developed regions, China, and small island states are Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Thailand, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group.
Look for related analysis on the political implications of Iran’s changing age structure by Richard Cincotta on New Security Beat soon.
Sources: Abbasi-Shavazi, Lutz, Hosseini-Chavoshi and Samir (2008), Abbasi-Shavazi (2002), Aghajanian and Merhyar (1999), Christian Science Monitor, GlobalSecurity.org, The New York Times, Noble and Potts (1996), Population Reference Bureau, Roudi-Fahimi (2002), UN Population Division, World Bank.
Image Credit: “بیست و پنجم خرداد ۸,” courtesy of flickr user Recovering Sick Soul (Nima Fatemi); charts arranged by Sean Peoples and Elizabeth Leahy Madsen. -
Jon Barnett: Climate Adaptation Not Just Building Infrastructure, But Expanding Options
›“I think it’s appropriate to think about [climate change] adaptation or investments in adaptation as investments to open up the range of choices available to people to deal with an uncertain future,” said Jon Barnett, associate professor of geography at the University of Melbourne, in an interview with ECSP. “In some circumstances it might be appropriate to build infrastructure and hard options where we’re very certain about the nature of the risk…but in other cases, expanding the range of choices and freedoms and opportunities that people have to deal with climate change in the future is perhaps the better strategy.”
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Three New Reports Highlight Ongoing Significance of Youth Demographics in Global Trends
›January 2, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy MadsenAmidst world population reaching seven billion and last year’s Arab Spring, which in some nations is continuing into this winter, it can be easy to miss emerging pieces of research that tell us something relatively objective about youth and instability. Three new studies give practitioners and policymakers a stronger foundation of evidence to highlight the challenges and opportunities facing the world’s largest generation of young people.
Results of a recent UNICEF staff survey indicate that the people responsible for the UN’s efforts targeting children and youth are seriously concerned about demographic and economic dynamics. Asked to review a list of 20 “global trends,” UNICEF staff rated “growing disparities” and “youth bulge and youth unemployment” as the most significant to children. The results, which the agency will soon publish in a paper on “The Next Generation and Global Trends,” also indicate that staff members feel that UNICEF has a strong capacity to influence the future of these trends.
UNICEF’s recent “Child Outlook” report on global trends discusses the issues highlighted in the survey. The report notes that although many countries are moving toward middle-income status, poverty rates remain stubbornly high, indicating that economic development does not benefit all equally. Income and consumption in such countries tend to be concentrated among the wealthiest households. “While many families will prosper, others are being left behind,” the report explains.
“Tensions and discouragement arising from youth unemployment, combined with higher food prices and fiscal contractions, may have contributed to increased civil unrest, protests, and political instability,” UNICEF asserts. In many developing countries, the number of young people entering the labor market far surpasses the number of available jobs. Although some youth are not working because they are enrolled in secondary or tertiary education, low rates of youth participation in the workforce often are not a matter of choice. Young people, especially those with low levels of education and from poorer families, are often unable to find secure, decent jobs. More than one-quarter of all young people with jobs worldwide live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day.
Economic Pressures on Youth in East Africa
Two other research projects – one published, one still underway – provide additional context to the combination of demographic and economic challenges that face the world’s young people. In the first, part of a recent special U.S. Institute of Peace series on South Sudan, Stephanie Schwartz and Wilson Center fellow Marc Sommers probe the expectations of and obstacles faced by youth in the newly created country.
According to the incipient government’s statistics agency, 72 percent of South Sudan’s population is younger than 30, which places it among the 20 youngest age structures in the world. Only 40 percent of youth ages 15 to 24 are literate, and nearly 80 percent of households depend on agriculture for their income. Based on interviews conducted with urban and rural youth in three areas of South Sudan, the authors find that the pressure of paying rising dowry costs is the most salient issue facing young men, while young women are treated as economic assets with no influence in their own future. The authors’ research suggests that “some young men join armed gangs, at least in part, because they believe it will help them pay dowries.”
Although many young people in South Sudan aspire to the stability of government work, the limited number of jobs and shortage of relevant skills inhibit their aspirations. With an underdeveloped private sector, few opportunities for training, and nepotistic practices in hiring, there is little work for those living in towns and urban areas beyond manual labor and selling goods. The authors recommend that education and job training be expanded, with a focus on equitable access among young people from varied geographic backgrounds.
Across the border in northern Uganda, Chris Blattman, an associate professor of political science at Yale, has been studying the social effects of the government’s youth employment program started in 2007. The program offered grants to small groups of young people for vocational training or to fund the costs of starting a new business. Although a full paper has not yet been published, preliminary findings indicate strong economic benefits of the program which in turn improve social cohesion and community participation while diminishing aggression and “disputes with authorities” among young men. If they bear out, the results may well confirm the oft-repeated policy recommendation that focusing on youth employment is critical to improving national development as well as reducing the likelihood of instability and conflict.
In the year of seven billion, we heard much about the need to invest in young people and the tremendous potential they embody, for demographic dividends as well as overall development. Yet 2011 was also a year of tremendous upheaval, much of which was driven by young people – and their older counterparts – seeking representative and democratic governance. This should serve as a reminder that youth can be a remarkable force for positive change, but in too many places – South Sudan among them – their opportunities, prospects, and contributions are constrained. As the UNICEF survey results reiterate how important this issue is to development programming, the Uganda research may be another important piece of evidence that direct investment in young people reaps tangible results not only for them, but also for society.
Elizabeth Leahy Madsen is a consultant on political demography for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and senior technical advisor at Futures Group. She was previously a senior research associate at Population Action International.
Sources: Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Chris Blattman, ILO, Sommers and Schwartz (2011), South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics, UNICEF, World Bank.
Photo Credit: “UNAMID Peacekeeper Speaks with Sudanese Youth,” courtesy of UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran. -
From Dakar: Explaining Population Growth and Family Planning to Environmentalists
›December 19, 2011 // By Sandeep Bathala“There is a growing recognition that population is a key driver of environmental, development, governance, and security challenges; however, family planning is not a traditional tool, nor is it often considered an ‘appropriate’ one, for responding to food, water, climate, or conflict,” said Roger-Mark De Souza at a November 30 panel discussion at the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar, Senegal. “This presents a challenge for us: How can we change perceptions of family planning so that it becomes part of the solution to wider problems, including natural resource scarcity, lack of economic development, gender inequity, and instability?”
De Souza, vice president of research and director of the climate program at Population Action International (PAI), was joined by Sandeep Bathala, program associate with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program; Robert Engelman, president of Worldwatch Institute; and Daisy Magaña, fellow with the GoJoven Program, for a session on “Reaching Out at Rio: Explaining Population Growth and Family Planning to Environmentalists.”
Population Dynamics Part of Climate Vulnerability
“Advocates…need to communicate that empowering women to make their own reproductive choices will improve both their individual well-being and our collective environment,” said Engelman. According to research conducted on behalf of Americans for UNFPA, messages that focus on women – their health or empowerment – resonate well with American environmentalists, as they do with broader audiences.
PAI’s interactive mapping website shows that high levels of unmet need for family planning and rapid population growth rates are common in countries with low levels of resilience to climate change and high levels of projected decline in agricultural production, said De Souza. “Family planning services can be one element of a multi-pronged strategy to reduce especially women’s vulnerability to these interlocking vulnerabilities,” he said.
“Currently, population growth is viewed as a challenge to addressing climate change-related vulnerabilities, but family planning services are commonly left out of conversations about ways to reduce these vulnerabilities.” This is a lost opportunity, said De Souza: “We can integrate family planning into wider environmental, development, and peace-building efforts.”
At the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, a side event on reproductive health and climate was well-attended. However, as panelist Esther Agbarakwe of the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change noted, population was not part of the conference‘s official discussion, due to lack of knowledge and fears of population control. PAI is currently working with UNFPA to produce a series of training modules on population and climate change that will help environmentalists, climate change activists, and researchers better understand and explore these connections.
Tapping the Youth Base
Bathala, formerly the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program director, discussed how the Sierra Club, one of the only major grassroots conservation organizations with a population program, uses youth outreach to raise awareness on the links between the environment, reproductive health, and women’s rights.
Because young people constitute over half of the world’s population, the Sierra Club focuses on empowering youth leaders to make the connection between environmental issues and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Population and Environment Program reaches youth directly by organizing summits and multi-state campus tours featuring young people from around the world sharing compelling stories with their peers.
“The program provides youth and adult activists with materials, communication strategies, and leadership training,” Bathala said. “With these tools, the activists then educate their community members, campus, and decision-makers about the need for measures that increase access to family planning while addressing poverty, women’s empowerment, and environmental protection.”
In April, fellow panel member and Belize-native Daisy Magaña joined one of the Sierra Club’s U.S. tours to discuss the GoJoven program, which convenes and support youth reproductive health champions throughout Latin America. Through GoJoven, Magaña has worked to expand adolescent reproductive and sexual health choices, services, policies, and programs in Belize.
In a blog post, Magaña discussed how her message was simple: Don’t give up. “If you think being active on environmental and sexual rights issues is hard to do here, imagine doing it in a deeply conservative [Catholic] country like mine,” she told U.S. students.
Sierra Club also leads story tours to functioning population, health, and environment programs in the field, including a 2009 trip to Guatemala and Belize in conjunction with GoJoven. Through visits to 10 project sites, two U.S.-based youth advocates witnessed first-hand the challenges and opportunities associated with community-based sexual and reproductive health programs, significantly enhancing their ability to be pro-active messengers in their own communities. The tour helped the Sierra Club build an international network of young people committed to social and policy change in their countries.
Looking Forward: Finding Ways To Highlight Integration
While recognition of the connections between population growth and environmental impacts is growing, the experience of the panelists shows that it takes innovative methods to reach both the environmental and family planning communities. A similar panel later this winter at the Wilson Center will include representatives of Americans for UNFPA discussing their research on talking to environmentalists about reproductive health and population growth.
With the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) coming in June of next year, highlighting successful strategies is crucial in order to pave the way for better integration in the future.
Event ResourcesImage Credit: Roger-Mark De Souza/Population Action International. -
Gender, Family Planning Should Be Part of Climate Discussions, Says Mary Robinson
›December 6, 2011 // By Brenda ZuluSpeaking at a side event on “Healthy Women, Healthy Planet” in Durban, South Africa, Mary Robinson, chair of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health, said they were seeing more female leadership at this year’s UN climate change conference (COP-17).
But Robinson, who is also chair of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, said there needs to be more explicit gender language in the COP-17 text to ensure that green climate funds support gender equity and money gets to women on the ground for adaptation.
“Our foundation has been helping to bring out women’s leadership at the top level in this conference to match women’s leadership at the community level,” explained Robinson, pointing out that the heads of the last three COPs are women.
Though the role of gender in climate adaptation and mitigation will likely not be prominently discussed on the floor at COP-17, Robinson said she looked forward to side conversations about a stronger focus on these issues.
Family planning, she argued, should also play a larger role. “There have been so many attempts to deflect from commitments and get into other kinds of issues that bring about some kind of stigma in this area,” said Robinson. But “those of us on the Global Leaders Council on Reproductive Health fundamentally believe in the central role played by reproductive health, access to knowledge about how to space children, and having choices about number of children.”
There are about 215 million women in the world who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraception. Family planning and reproductive health services help build up a woman’s resilience to climate changes, Robinson explained.
These services are vital to improving women’s health and enable women to seek educational and work opportunities, unleashing their potential to help solve problems associated with climate change.
Brenda Zulu is a member of Women’s Edition for Population Reference Bureau and a freelance writer based in Zambia. Her reporting from the COP-17 meeting in Durban (see the “From Durban” series on New Security Beat) is part of a joint effort by the Aspen Institute, Population Action International, and the Wilson Center.
Sources: World Health Organization.
Image Credit: “Mary Robinson and Constance Okollet” at COP-17, used with permission courtesy of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ). -
Jeanne Nyirakamana, PHE Champion
Reaching Rural Rwandans With Integrated Health and Livelihood Messages
›This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, with more than 11 million people in one of Africa’s smallest countries, most of whom depend on the land as subsistence farmers. The country has diverse mountain, lake, and savannah landscapes, and the Virunga Mountain chain in the northwest part of the country is home to one-third of the world’s threatened mountain gorilla population. At the same time, the population throughout the country suffers from high rates of unmet need for contraception, and three percent of the adult population lives with HIV/AIDS. In a land under such intense pressure on natural resources, rural livelihood initiatives are critical to ensuring people have options for meeting their daily health and well-being needs.
For the past three years, Jeanne Nyirakamana has served as head of the health program for the Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD) Project. Supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development through Texas A&M; University, the SPREAD Project is integrating a dynamic coffee production and quality improvement program in Rwanda with health outreach to improve community well-being. The health component works to improve the lives of coffee farmers and cooperative members by providing them with health information and services related to family planning, maternal and child health, prevention of sexually-transmitted infections (including HIV), and water and sanitation.
Training Peer Educators
Working closely with the coffee program, Nyirakamana’s team has trained more than 540 men, women, and youth peer educators who have reached more than 95,000 coffee farmers with education and services. Key communication messages highlight the links between sound decision-making and health-seeking behaviors, productive farms and agribusinesses, and strong and healthy families.
The program also leverages and supports local health resources through referrals to existing public health services, organization of mobile clinics, and community-based distribution of a socially marketed water purification solution (Sur Eau) and condoms (Prudence). According to Nyirakamana, one of the project’s greatest successes is the increased acceptance of family planning by farmers and their families and the more than 7,500 farmers who have been tested for HIV. In order to draw in as many coffee farmers as possible, many of the health and livelihood activities take place at the stations where the coffee beans are washed, at other buildings used by the coffee farmer cooperative, or during combined community meetings or home visits. At the washing stations, Nyirakamana’s team supports local health center staff to provide voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) and de-worming services while at the same time SPREAD-trained peer educators and coffee/health extension agents disseminate family planning information.
The cooperatives’ buildings have clean water, hand-washing stations, and small kiosks where condoms and Sur Eau are sold. These community health agents work with SPREAD to ensure that the greater community, not just the coffee farmers, has access to health knowledge and services. They learn how to teach the community about a range of health issues and each month they submit reports showing how many people they reached and with what kinds of messages. They are also becoming increasingly engaged in coffee and agribusiness activities. Through the success of their health activities, these agents are seen as vital community resources.
Integrated Results
By implementing this integrated population, health and environment (PHE) approach, the SPREAD Project staff is ensuring the health of the people and environment and success of the agribusiness. “You cannot care for the environment without first caring for the people who live and use that environment, so when you transmit dual messages [agriculture and health] you are able to hit two birds with one stone,” said Nyirakamana.
According to a 2010 evaluation of the project, farmers and their families reported improvements in personal and household hygiene; an increase in understanding and acceptance of family planning; uptake of HIV and VCT services; and use of condoms and other local health services. As well, they noted shifts in gender norms affecting household revenue use, alcohol, and reproductive health. The agribusiness stakeholders value the integrated approach as a means to more holistically meet farmers’ goals of increased incomes and improved lives and livelihoods.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: BALANCED Project. -
STATcompiler: Visualizing Population and Health Trends
›World population is growing – earlier this week, the global community symbolically marked the arrival of the seven billionth person. But the unprecedented growth in global population over the last few decades has not affected everyone equally – in 1950, 68 percent of the world’s population lived in developing regions; today that number is 82 percent. MEASURE’s latest version of their STATcompiler tool helps visually highlight areas simultaneously experiencing the most demographic change and poor health indicators.
The revised STATcompiler – released in September – provides new ways for users to visualize data by generating custom data tables, line graphs, column charts, maps, and scatter plots based on demographic and health indicators for more than 70 countries. Users can select countries or regions of interest, and relevant indicators, including for family planning, fertility, infant mortality, and nutrition. Tables can be further customized to view indicators over time, across countries, and by background characteristics, such as rural or urban residence, household wealth, or education. In some cases, sub-national data is available. User-created tables and images are then exportable so that they may be easily used in papers or presentations.
Since STATcompiler is still in active development, certain functions are still being added. HIV data has not yet been integrated into the program, nor has the express viewer function, with customizable, ready-made tables for quick access. Additionally, updated information is not available for all countries, in all categories – for instance, the most recent data available for Mexico comes from a 1987 survey. If preferred, the legacy version remains available to users in the meantime.
MEASURE DHS – the Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results Demographic and Health Surveys project – provides technical assistance for data collection on health and population trends in developing countries. Their demographic and health surveys, funded by USAID, provide data for a wide range of monitoring and impact evaluation indicators at the household level in the areas of population, health, and nutrition. They have become a staple data source for researchers, and the addition of better analysis functions and dissemination tools, via STATcompiler, will hopefully help advance understanding of demographic and health trends.
Image Credit: Map from STATcompiler, arranged by Schuyler Null. -
Sajeda Amin on Population Growth, Urbanization, and Gender Rights in Bangladesh
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“One of the reasons why population grows very rapidly in Bangladesh is women get married very early and have children very early,” the Population Council’s Sajeda Amin told ECSP in a recent interview. “So even though they are only having two children, they are having them at an average age of around 20. As demographers would say, women ‘replace’ themselves very rapidly.”
Largely through the promotion of contraceptive use, family planning programs implemented over the past 35 years by the Bangladeshi government and a variety of NGOs have helped lower the country’s total fertility rate to 2.7 from 6.5 in the mid-1970s. To build on this progress, the Population Council has joined a consortium of other organizations – including the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, Marie Stopes International, and We Can End All Violence Against Women – to launch the Growing Up Safe and Healthy (SAFE) project in Amin’s native Dhaka and other Bangladeshi cities.
Currently nearing the completion of its first year, the four-year initiative has several aims, among them increasing access to reproductive healthcare services for adolescent girls and young women and bolstering social services to protect those populations from (and offer treatment for) gender-based violence. The project also looks to strengthen laws designed to reduce the prevalence of child marriage – a long-standing Bangladeshi institution that keeps population growth rates high while denying many young women the opportunity to pursue economic and educational advancement.
A Focus on Gender and Climate
Amin says the SAFE project boasts several qualities that collectively set the initiative apart from similar-minded programs in Bangladesh dealing with gender and poverty. These include a strong research component incorporating quantitative and qualitative analysis; the holistic nature of the program, which incorporates educational outreach, livelihood development, and legal empowerment; a commitment to working with both male and female populations; and an emphasis on interventions targeting young people, with the hope that such efforts will allow adolescents to make better-informed decisions about future relationships and reproductive health, thus reducing the likelihood of gender-based violence.
Finally, while many existing gender-based programs focus exclusively on rural communities, Amin points out that the SAFE project also stands apart because of its focus on the country’s rapidly expanding urban areas. To date, the initiative is focusing many of its early interventions in a Dhaka slum that has seen an influx of rural migrants in recent years due to climate-change impacts in the country’s low-lying coastal areas.
“A lot of the big problems in Bangladesh now are climate-driven in the sense of creating mass movements out of areas that are particularly vulnerable or have been hit by a major storm,” Amin said. “Usually these are people who, once they lose their homes and their livelihoods, will have no choice but to move to urban areas, and that’s a process that is kind of a big outstanding issue in Bangladesh now.”
By building programming around girls and young women in such communities, the SAFE project is looking to spark change from the bottom up, prioritizing the unmet health and social needs of some of Bangladesh’s most vulnerable populations.
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes.
Sources: Global Post, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (Bangladesh), Shaikh and Becker (1985).
