“Valuing women, paying greater attention to women’s rights – that’s the solution to our population growth issues and, I would argue, it’s also the solution to our food security challenges,” said Suzanne Petroni at the Thought for Food Summit in Berlin last year.

In July, thousands of people attended the 20th International AIDS Conference and the 2014 Girls Summit to work towards an AIDS-free generation and ending child and forced marriage. But such attention is rare; by and large, these girls are invisible to development efforts. [Video Below]

In 2012, as part of the Every Women Every Child movement, 13 vital health commodities were identified by a UN panel that could save the lives of more than 6 million women and children over the course of five years. There are often significant cultural and behavioral barriers to these commodities reaching people in low- and middle-income countries, but physical logistics is also a major problem.

Under international law, someone who flees their country because of conflict or persecution is a refugee, but someone who flees because of inability to meet their basic household needs is not. In the case of Somalia, it is increasingly difficult to make any meaningful distinction between the two.

When Dr. Ranu Dhillon stumbled upon baby Reena during a routine visit to a clinic in India, she was almost comatose and unable to get the care she needed. Dhillon traveled with Reena and her mother from hospital to hospital, but left again and again without finding treatment. [Video Below] 

“The greatest challenge we have today is that we have a world that is pushing back on rights,” said Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), at the Wilson Center. [Video Below]

As global environmental change accelerates, understanding how population dynamics affect the environment is more important than ever. It seems obvious that human-caused climate change has at least something to do with the quadrupling of world population over the last 100 years.