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Youth Bulge, Public Policy, and Peace in Pakistan
›October 26, 2012 // By Payal ChandiramaniWhile Pakistan’s demographic challenges are perhaps well known – two-thirds of the population of 180 million is under 30 years old – increasing security concerns have prompted discussions about exactly how much the country’s youthfulness is affecting its prospects for peace. On October 10, the U.S. Institute of Peace and George Mason University’s School of Public Policy hosted a day-long conference on “Youth Bulge, Public Policy, and Peace in Pakistan” to tackle this question.
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Kathleen Mogelgaard on How Malawi Shows the Importance of Considering Population, Food, and Climate Together
›October 24, 2012 // By Carolyn LamereQuantifying the role population plays in food security is “an incredibly powerful piece of information,” said Kathleen Mogelgaard in an interview with ECSP. Malawi is a case in point.
Mogelgaard saw the connections between food, population, and climate change firsthand on a recent trip to the southeast African country, whose population of 15 million is largely dependent on subsistence, rain-fed agriculture. “One in five children in Malawi is currently undernourished,” Mogelgaard said, and climate change paints a bleak picture for the future.
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Programmatic and Policy Recommendations for Addressing Obstetric Fistula and Uterine Prolapse
›Obstetric fistula is “not just a medical issue, but a human issue,” said Dr. Luc de Bernis, senior maternal health advisor at UNFPA, during a September 27 panel discussion at the Wilson Center. Obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal that can develop between the vagina and the bladder and/or rectum during prolonged labor without proper medical intervention, is preventable and treatable but continues to affect more than two million women worldwide, mostly in developing countries where women lack access to cesarean services. Women stricken with it face severe pain and suffering, social stigmatization, and usually give birth to a stillborn child.
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Gwen Hopkins, Next Billion
Family Planning as an Investment? The Aspen Institute at the 2012 Social Capital Markets Conference
›October 16, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffTwo weeks ago, 1,600 venture capitalists, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs gathered at the 2012 Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP) to discuss the question at the heart of impact investing: How can investments do well while also doing good? Consistent with the in-depth nature of SOCAP, panels examined every aspect of capital flows, including how to structure a business, how to move an idea from a prototype to scale, and where to invest for maximum impact. The resulting conversations gave rise to multiple technical suggestions – and one paradigm shift. In order to do well and do good, multiple conference participants argued, investors must incorporate a gender lens into their portfolio.
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International Day of the Girl Child: Recognizing the Unique and Complex Vulnerability of Young Girls
›October 11, 2012 // By Schuyler NullToday is the first “International Day of the Girl Child” – a day established last year by the United Nations to acknowledge the rights and unique challenges faced by young girls around the world.
The latest UN projections put the number of women under the age of 19 at about 1.18 billion today. Especially in developing countries (though not only) these young girls often face outsized barriers to happy, healthy, and productive lives.
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Hillary Rosner, Momentum Magazine
Bridges and Bicycles in India
›October 8, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThis is part of a seven-part “environmental challenges and opportunities” series featured in the University of Minnesota’s fall issue of Momentum magazine.
As world population careens toward nine billion, all the planet’s systems will be strained. Lowering fertility rates is a complex endeavor, and no one path leads directly there. Poverty, access to contraception, education, job prospects, cultural mores – all of these influence family size. So addressing any of them, or a combination, can help. Solutions abound, at least on a relatively small scale, such as conservation programs that include family planning components.
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The Role of Renewable Natural Resources and Gender in Conflict
›Devesh Kapur, Kishore Gawande, and Shanker Satyanath open their Center for Global Development working paper, “Renewable Resource Shocks and Conflict in India’s Maoist Belt,” with a crucial question: “Is there a causal relationship between shocks to renewable natural resources, such as agricultural and forest lands, and the intensity of conflict?” While the connection between the environment and conflict has been the focus of much study, Kapur et al. say that previous attempts have been plagued with “failure to address reverse causality and a failure to systematically control for alternative explanations for conflict.” Their report analyzes the relationship between the availability of resources and conflict by measuring rainfall, vegetation prevalence, and deaths due to the Maoist conflict in India. They find “a strong and substantively large relationship between adverse renewable resource shocks and the intensity of conflict,” and conclude that protecting the livelihoods of residents of the Maoist belt can help reduce violence. “Giving tribals greater access to forests and a range of forest products, whose consumption is the only available option during times of distress, can provide them with a critical self-insurance mechanism.”
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Kate Gilles and Marissa Pine Yeakey, Behind the Numbers
World Contraception Day
›The original version of this article, by Kate Gilles and Marissa Pine Yeakey, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.
World Contraception Day “centers around a vision for a world where every pregnancy is wanted,” with a goal of enabling “young people to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.”
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