PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH ‘STATE OF THE WORLD POPULATION REPORT 2005’

PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH ‘STATE OF THE WORLD POPULATION REPORT 2005’

Fulfilling the promise of equal rights for women and girls held the key to solving many of today’s global challenges, Mariá José Alcalá, author of the State of the World Population Report 2005, said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

Noting the tremendous gap between that promise and the reality faced by millions of women and girls living in poverty, she said that more than half a million women in the developing world died every year –- one every minute -- from pregnancy-related complications.  Millions more suffered injuries like obstetric fistula, which was virtually unheard of in industrialized countries.  “Invest in gender equality, invest in young people, invest in reproductive health, and the world will be on a faster track towards prosperity and development”, she added, pointing out that tens of thousands of the women displaced in the Pakistan and Guatemala natural disasters were pregnant and in need of care.

She went on to highlight the persistence of one of the most widespread and socially tolerated human rights violations in the world -- violence against women.  It was a silent epidemic of alarming proportions, and impunity for violators remained the norm, rather than the exception.  There was also a “limited response” to HIV/AIDS.  “Today the face of HIV/AIDS is increasingly female and increasingly young, and while marriage is considered safe, a great number of them were infected by their only partner:  their husbands”, she said.  The AIDS epidemic was a clear example of the tremendous cost of failing to address gender inequities.  “We’ve done too little, too late for the millions affected”, she added.

Poor reproductive health and violence against women took a huge toll on female health and productivity, she said, citing statistics that illustrated their central role in development.  Gender inequality was economically inefficient.  However, there was good news in that many countries and communities were waking up to those realities and mobilizing to end discrimination and violence against women.  The report was full of promising initiatives and testimonies, but most remained small in scale and in urgent need of expansion.

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For information media • not an official record