Number of African child brides to soar by 2050 as population grows: U.N.
Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters
NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of child brides in Africa will more than double by 2050 if current trends persist because of rapid population growth and limited social change, the United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.
Africa will overtake South Asia as the region with the largest number of child brides, their number soaring to 310 million, more than 40 percent of the global total, in 2050, from 125 million, 25 percent of the total, today.
"The sheer number of girls affected - and what this means in terms of lost childhoods and shattered futures - underline the urgency of banning the practice of child marriage once and for all," UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said in a statement at the start of a two-day African Union summit on ending child marriage.
"Each child bride is an individual tragedy. An increase in their number is intolerable."
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/number-african-child-brides-soar-2050-population-grows-012150427.html
merrily
(45,251 posts)These are not 14 year olds who fell madly in love and married young, as Jerry Lee Lewis's first bride/cousin supposedly did. These are victims of human trafficking. Why we use some adorable euphemism for that is beyond me.
mpcamb
(2,871 posts)written about it. What the hell happened? The world population hit 5 billion around 1990 and everybody gave up it seems. We desperately need to stop producing more people. I doubt there's much disagreement, even from the fundies.
Why no movement; why no outcry?
(O.K. I know there's the 'god will provide crowd', but they surely don't want those 'other people' to reproduce.)
Reter
(2,188 posts)I guess it didn't work, they just ended it.
progree
(10,908 posts)Now they allow couples to have 2 children, i.e. allow replacement level for those couples who have children. Actually, below replacement level since there are always women who can't or won't have children.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/29/china-abandons-one-child-policy
That said, something like this can only be done in a strong dictatorship. I don't think most African countries have governments that have strong enough and intrusive enough control of their people to bring about the same kind of population growth reduction that China has
bananas
(27,509 posts)Once we understood what causes population growth, we enacted policies which will level off the population around 10 billion, which is a sustainable level.
We've been doing this for decades.
The policies involve things like empowering women and improving peoples quailty of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Education, economic development, and cultural changes leading to the empowerment of women are absolutely necessary. But it would be horrible and hypocritical and supremely racist for the developed world to say to Africans "We will not let you reproduce".
mpcamb
(2,871 posts)I support rational discussion about what this finite planet might support without recourse to war, exiles and over-running nearby countries. 5 billion in 1990 and 7.3 Billion today. At the risk of sounding insulting, are you seeing a pattern, a problem here?
If not, I think this discussion is done.
Industrial societies are going to have a lower birth rate. That's a component in China's withdrawal of 1 child (better be a boy) per family.
I agree that "Education, economic development, and cultural changes lead... to the empowerment of women", but poverty, bad circumstances and (dare-I-say-it) religion, all work against women's opportunities.
Further, I don't see 10 bill as a reasonable number of people for this planet at this time.
I think it's naive to think population's momentum wouldn't over-run that anyway.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)Every institution we've built requires more people. Governments needs more taxpayers, and businesses need more customers. Japan has a problem. Europe has a problem. The U.S. would have a problem, but we import a lot more people.
We have 4 options:
1) more people doing more
2) more people doing less
3) fewer people doing more
4) fewer people doing less
#4 isn't really an option, as society would collapse. #3 is basically the developed world, #2 is basically the developing world, and #1 is the world as a whole. So #1 is our only option at this point, as it's really the only fair one. Fair is always a tough concept in a finite world. If the planet is indeed finite, and that's what we hear when we talk about climate change, we can do #1, but it will come at the expense of something.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)But we also don't like to play by those rules. That's why we, like any good corporation, try to write the rules which govern us.
The earth doesn't really need any specific species though. If we happen to kill a few off for our progression, the planet will still keep spinning.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)You seem to champion our human species, which is nice and sweet.
I personally think humans are like a blight on the planet, sort of like cockroaches can be a blight in your apartment.
lobodons
(1,290 posts)The future Child Bride's grandparents are not even born yet.
progree
(10,908 posts)that child brides could double by then.
The UN's 2015 population projections:
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/files/key_findings_wpp_2015.pdf
and those population growth figures assumes a reduction in the fertility rate, but at a slower rate of reduction than prior forecasts.
In some African countries, the TFR decline appears to have stalled.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3192285/World-s-population-soar-11-billion-2100-HALF-live-Africa-claims-report.html
Also many countries in the water-poor Middle East are rapidly growing.
The failure of fertility rates to fall as much as expected has caused the U.N. to raise its world population forecasts recently.
http://www.populationconnection.org/
muriel_volestrangler
(101,320 posts)It's a slightly confusing way of putting it.
The report: http://www.unicef.org/media/files/UNICEF-Child-Marriage-Brochure-low-Single%281%29.pdf
page 7:
Number of women aged 18 and older who were married or in union before age 18 if:
Prevalence remains at todays levels: 310 million
Observed decline continues: 215 million
Progress is accelerated: 150 million
(currently, 34% of African women now aged 20 to 24 were married before they were 18. In 1990, that was 44%, so if the decline continues, that will be 23% by 2050. However, the overall population is growing, so all those figures are larger than Africa's percent 125 million)
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Except, lamentably, this tragedy is largely ignored.
Spacedog1973
(221 posts)Lack of options for parents with children they cannot afford to support, lack of education of the parents and access to contraception - in addition to empire-strength religious education combine to produce a result that is inevitable. This is pretty much the same wherever poverty and lack of opportunity arise across the world. It really shouldn't happen in the most resource-rich continent on the planet, nor elsewhere, but consumer-lead societies can't see the end result of not paying a fair rate for a days work. Cheap resources, clothing, produce, materials and gadgets have a consequence.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)Quantess
(27,630 posts)Nothing left in your crotch but an opening for urination.
Ready to be sold into "marriage"