Current campaigns

We call on governments and the international community to recognise the role that population size plays in the issues facing humanity and to incorporate consideration of population in discussions over biodiversity, climate change, conflict, migration, poverty reduction and resource security. We are seeking to make the point in our representations to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012 that a key factor in sustainable development is addressing the continuing growth in human numbers. In emerging discussions on Sustainable Development Goals, we should seek to include a reduction in population growth.

What you can do: Contact your government and NGOs you support now and ask them to raise the fact that population growth limits sustainable development. You can also contact other governments, either directly or via their embassies.

We ask governments to acknowledge the undesirable consequences of increasing population density, consequences which include housing shortages, falling residential property sizes, traffic congestion, transport overcrowding, loss of amenity and unspoilt areas, pollution and water, food, energy and mineral security issues. We also call on the government to assign responsibility for population to a nominated individual. Where these issues arise in your profession, community or elsewhere, ask your representatives to raise the contribution which lowering population growth would make to solving them.

What you can do: Ask your political representative to raise the question of population and to call on the government to adopt a sustainable population goal.

International aid - We are calling for governments to use their influence to ensure that reproductive health in general and family planning in particular is a priority for multilateral aid from bodies such as the EU and UN. The EU currently spends very little on overseas development aid for family planning.

What you can do: Ask your MEP what (s)he is doing to make reproductive health aid a focus of EU support for developing countries. Background information is available from analysts — see Countdown to 2015 Initiative and Euromapping 2010. You can find out the name of and contact details for your MEP on the Writetothem website.

Aid by the UK government - The aim of United Nations Millennium Goal 5b United Nations Millennium Goal 5b is universal access to reproductive health by 2015. Currently, 215 million women lack access to modern methods of contraception. We are calling for the Government to keep its promise, which is supported by the opposition, to make a legal commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign development aid by 2013. At the moment, the legislation is promised but not timetabled. Consider writing to your MP to maintain the pressure.

The UK's Department for International Development has made gender empowerment and reproductive health in general, and family planning in particular, a priority within the programme.

Child marriage – Child marriage contributes to a lack of women's rights and can contribute to larger families. We support the campaign to eradicate child marriage.

Abortion – We support the right of women to decide whether and when to have children. Effective contraception is always preferable but we believe abortion has to be available where contraception has failed. Around four in ten pregnancies worldwide are unplanned. Abortion continues to be illegal in many countries under most circumstances.

What you can do: Ask your government to press the UN to make access to safe and legal abortion a human right.

Sexual orientation – In a crowded world, we must separate the instinctive desire for sex from the consequences of ever more children. We support the right of people to have consensual sex with other adults. Same sex relationships are still a crime in 76 countries.

What you can do: Write to your government to urge that consideration for human rights, including the right to consensual sexual relations, be taken into account in bilateral relations.

Schools - We call for investment in sex and relationships education to ensure that all schools perform at the level of the best performers. In particular, we want those teaching the subject to have received specific training.

In January 2012, Nadine Dorries withdrew her bill requiring schools to promote abstinence to teenage girls. While abstinence should always be included as an option, it is unrealistic and counterproductive to focus on it. See a background briefing on the subject.

What you can do: Support the Brook Sex Positive campaign for 21st Century Sex and Relationships Education. Also, write to your MP and ask them to support Chris Bryant's bill, which extends the subject of sex education to relationships and responsibility for provision to academies and city technology colleges, while removing from parents the right to withdraw their children from sex education. To help you, here are Chris Bryant's view and a background briefing.

Teenage pregnancy - While births to those under 20 account for only around 5 percent of all births in the UK, births to teenage mothers can disrupt education and reduce career prospects, and potentially result in disadvantage and larger families. Early births also accelerate population growth. The Guardian has reported that Teenage Pregnancy Coordinator posts are being cut.

What you can do:Ask your local authority how they are protecting teenage pregnancy services and contraceptive services — sexual health is becoming the responsibility of local authorities in the UK from April 2013. Ask your local authority what plans they have to ensure good reproductive health in their area. Point out that an avoidance of teenage pregnancies reduces the much more significant social and support costs of unwanted births.

IVF - More than 10,000 children a year are born in the UK by IVF. Entitlement criteria vary by PCT. We believe that free IVF should not be provided to women with a healthy living child. Over one-fifth of treatment cycles result in multiple births and we support the One at a Time campaign to reduce this proportion.

Abortion rights - We oppose all attempts to weaken women's access to abortion services.

We call on the government and other organisations concerned with the environment and sustainability to incorporate the call for smaller families in their messages. We believe that, while governments should ensure that children are not brought up in poverty, it should not provide automatic child related subsidies to all parents, however well off and however many children they have. We need to send a clear message that large families are unsustainable.

What you can do: Please ask your representative to call for automatic support to be limited to the first two children, with further support limited to those in genuine need.

Women are typically disadvantaged politically, socially, economically and sometimes legally. Empowering women would make a major contribution to enabling them to freely decide on their family size.

Extreme inequality is incompatible with a sustainable future. We support measures to reduce gross inequalities in income and wealth.

High birth rates and migration are justified by the alleged need for more workers, yet many people are unemployed or underemployed. We urge genuine training and apprentice schemes to match the existing population to employment opportunities. As people live longer, the retirement age should rise in parallel.

Large families are often associated with low incomes. Those in poverty may be unable to afford contraception or feel that they need to use child labour to supplement household income. We support efforts to raise the poor of the world out of poverty.