Brazil
Georgianna Sandilos and Kevin Li
21 November 2011
In an increasingly interconnected, rapidly growing global society with over 7 billion human inhabitants, population growth has emerged as one of our most pressing collective concerns. Fundamentally, limited natural resources and unlimited, indeed exponentially increasing human wants are at odds; moreover, population growth tends to be highest in regions with least abundance of capital. Well-coordinated and multilateral political planning is necessary in order to achieve successful equilibrium between supply and demand.
With a current population of 203,429,773, Brazil is the 5th most populous country in the world. Its annual population growth rate is 1.134%, which marks a significant decrease over the past several decades. In our country, emphasis on reproductive health combined with improved medical care and social conditions, such as increasingly accessible education for women, have enabled drastic declines in infant mortality since 1990 (from 47.1 deaths per thousand births to 19.3). Birthrates have dropped sharply across all social classes as contraceptive awareness and use become ever more widespread.
Over the past two decades, female participation in public discourse has increased markedly, to positive effect. Given greater ability to choose, women are better able to engage in family planning. Moreover, contraceptive use, mostly in the forms of sterilization and hormonal treatments, has greatly increased. Perhaps even more importantly, BEMFAM (the Brazilian Society for Family Welfare) and PAISM (Program for an Integral Assistance to Women’s Health) have enabled education about birth control while providing a greater array of community and medical service options for women and prospective mothers.
Instead of attributing poverty and unsustainable resource consumption to a neo-Malthusian construct, our government has identified the real causes of poverty as inefficient distribution of resources and land concentration. We strongly support the reduction of human population growth worldwide through a multifaceted strategy, the focal point of which is the guarantee of efficient, fair public policies that respect social and civic human rights, especially by enhancing opportunities for women to acquire education and income. Despite objections from religious sectors of our voting base, we as a non-theocratic polity support the provision of voluntary sterilization and abortion gratis, as well as the dissemination of reliable, unbiased contraceptive information to the general public. As a member of the United Nations Security Council, Brazil looks forward to assisting in constructive progress toward equitably limiting population growth in the best interests of the global community.