Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
millions of couples the world over often face this question: Is there an ideal period between the birth of the first and second child? It is known in medical circles that having babies too close together can be bad for an infant's health as the mother's body does not get …
The United Nations' Population Fund (UNFPA) has denied reports that the emergency reproduction health kits sent to Albanian women, running away from the war in Kosovo, contained abortion pills. The executive director of UNFPA, Nafis Sadik, denied that health kits contained RU-486 pill, which is often used for abortion. Sadik …
Compelling evidence has been found that the Peruvian government health workers used threats, physical coercion, misinformation and promises of food to meet sterilisation quotas among the poor, rural and illiterate women. The issue has rocked the nation and caused an international outcry. At least 15 women undergoing sterilisations have died …
Teenagers in Brazil gave birth to a staggering 900,000 babies in 1997, thus accounting for 26.5 per cent of all live births in the country. According to the ministry of health, girls between the age of 10 and 14 gave birth to 1,3 per cent of babies, while teenagers aged …
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are at a critical turning point in their effort to address the problems of rapid population growth and poor reproductive health, says a study of Population Action International (pai). The economic growth of countries such as Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe largely depend on …
Family planning restrictions in some urban areas of China have been eased allowing many of the parents of the one-child policy to have two children. The two-child rule, envisioned years ago, but phased in quietly in selected areas only recently, is designed to tackle a new problem in China: too …
In an attempt to check deaths from illegal operations, Cambodia has legalised abortion. The new law, passed by the National Assembly, states that girls under the age of 18 must seek parental permission to have an abortion. Under the new law, unqualified doctors will be fined up to 10 million …
THE United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) report on the global populace was released by Wasim Zaman, representative of the UNFPA in India, in New Delhi on May 28. The State of World Population 1997 focuses on the reproductive rights and reproductive health of every man and woman. While the report …
An elephant story, and that of family values gone haywire! Cow elephants in the Kruger National Park were introduced to contraceptive pills to cut down their population into small and happy families. But the outcome was a mammoth problem - elephantine free love resulted in a jumbo-sized social and sexual …
The country is planning to re-target its family planning programme in the rural areas to stem population growth and reduce the wide economic chasm between urban and rural citizens, announced Premier Li Peng recently. In an address to the national People's Congress, Li said that the government's one-child policy, which …
Caught in the debate over that thin boundary line between life and void is a promising Indian birth control vaccine. The National Institute of Immunology's (nii) unique vaccine "immunises" women against human chorionic gonadotropin (hcg) hormone, which is produced by the cluster of cells that develops from a fertilised egg, …
A FEW zealous social rehabilitators attempted to cheer up the lives of those women who lost their male offsprings in the Latur earthquake. In the past they had adopted family planning measures (tubectomy), and is no longer capable of bearing children. A male child would put the smiles back on …
Bangladesh's family planning programme has succeeded with a bang, claim officials. "We have been able to make quite a headway in birth control despite the fact that all the variables necessary for the success of a family planning programme are absent in Bangladesh," asserts Mizanur Rehman, director general, Family Planning …
THE Indian fertility graph mirrors the falling rate. Urban women who have 1 child less, on an average, are spearheading the fertility downslide. Women in their 40s have an average 5 children each, but childbearing women now produce at an average only 3.4 children each. While in the rest of …
THE Cairo conference turned into yet another example of the governments of rich countries bullying the poor ones into accepting their self-centred perception of how the world's natural resources should be matched with people all over the world. Nobody argues for not keeping the world's population in check; nobody, also, …
ACTION-packed days seem lined up for delegates at the 9-day International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo early this month. Although there is general unanimity on overall objectives - the management of rapid population growth, increasing environmental degradation and pervasive poverty - dissensions that marred the preparatory committee …
"WE HAVE to find ways of creating an environment in which the individual most affected (by population control measures), in this case woman, is also part of the decision-making process," Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told the press in New York, on the eve of …
AMIDST the opulence of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) annual meeting, the representative of at least one government -- a large, poor country in South Asia -- was discovered staying in a hotel room that cost over $1,000 a night. The big prize, more than anything else, was Power. The …
Several women's activist groups and research organisations have decided to step up their agitation against the proposed amendment to the Maternity Benefits Act, which seeks to limit maternity leave and related benefits to two children. This follows the dismissal of their objections by the Union deputy minister for health and …
With the increasing importance of birth control in the national family welfare programme, contraceptive research in the country is bustling. A whole range of new contraceptives, from plant-based creams to surgical methods and vaccines, could make conventional birth-control practices such as sterilisation and condom-use obsolete. And, though they have yet …
