World Population Day Celebrated in Tashkent

The theme of this year’s World Population Day is “Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations”, and it is intended to highlight the need to invest more in in the health and rights of women and couples worldwide. Achievement of universal access to sexual and reproductive health services is one of the Sustainable Development Goal targets. In addition, achievement of many of other Goals depends in part on the ability of women to exercise their reproductive right with universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, as a key to success.

On 11 July UNFPA and Women’s Committee of Uzbekistan joined hands to celebrate the World Population Day with an open-air event at one of the children’s summer camps of Tashkent region.

The celebration featured various kinds of contests and sports activities among young people, including swimming competition, quiz contest related to the World Population Day theme, healthy lifestyle and family planning issues, drawing and chess tournaments, and marathon among camp tutors and young leaders. Winners and participants of the contests received awarded with souvenirs. Participants of the event and guests also enjoyed performance prepared by children.

UNFPA Representative in Uzbekistan, Ms. Mieko Yabuta, highlights the importance of this year’s WPD theme: “We would like to use it as an opportunity to emphasize on the joint Government and UNFPA achievements in this area. The rights of women and girls to decide freely and for themselves, on whether, when and how many children to have, brings women and girls more opportunities to realize their aspiration in life by fully developing their potential, become wage earners and contribute to their family’s and country’s development. Although Uzbekistan has achieved a lot in ensuring universal access of the population to reproductive health services, including family planning, there are areas where even more can be done. This is especially true for making family planning information and services more accessible for young people.”

World Population Day is celebrated annually on 11 July. This important observation is an outgrowth of the Day of 5 Billion, which was observed on 11 July back in 1987. It was later recommended that 11 July be observed as World Population Day. World Population Day seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, particularly in the context of overall development plans and programmes, and the need for collective actions.