NHRC Colloquium on Population Policy
The National Human Rights Commission, in collaboration with Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and UNFPA, is organizing a National Colloquium on Population Policy – Development and Human Rights on 9 – 10 January 2003. The participants to the two-day Colloquium would be key administrators, policy makers from the state and central governments, human rights experts and representatives of important non-governmental organizations working in the field.
The main objective of the Colloquium is to initiate a dialogue from the perspective of development and human rights in the implementation of effective population policies at the centre and state levels as well as deliberate on the mechanisms to achieve the same. India’s National Population Policy (NPP), issued in the year 2000, has moved away from number-driven fertility control to a client-centred population stabilization goal. This was based on the premise that adequate and safe healthcare services as well as the overall empowerment of women would automatically bring down fertility rates. It also recognizes that population policies and action programmes needed to promote human welfare and development. Such an approach, it is alleged, is not reflected in the population policies framed by many of the State Governments. Some of the better-known State policies stipulate that those who marry before the legal age will not be eligible for government jobs, memberships of Panchayats and become ineligible for financial assistance from their State Governments. These State policies impinge on human rights of large and vulnerable sections of population.
The Colloquium will also discuss the existing legislative framework and the adequacy of law enforcement, which have immediate relevance to reproductive rights and population issues, such as, laws relating to births (amniocentesis, abortions), laws affecting reproductive choice (age at marriage), laws which affect women’s rights, and laws relating to compulsory registration of births and deaths and registration of marriages.
The Colloquium will deliberate on these and other issues from the point of view of evolving a consensus on what constitutes a balance between population and development from the perspective of human rights. The Colloquium will be inaugurated on 9 January 2003 by the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Mr. Shatrughan Sinha. Justice J.S. Verma, Chairperson, NHRC would deliver the keynote address.
At the end of the Colloquium, the body will consider the recommendations made in the Colloquium.
The main objective of the Colloquium is to initiate a dialogue from the perspective of development and human rights in the implementation of effective population policies at the centre and state levels as well as deliberate on the mechanisms to achieve the same. India’s National Population Policy (NPP), issued in the year 2000, has moved away from number-driven fertility control to a client-centred population stabilization goal. This was based on the premise that adequate and safe healthcare services as well as the overall empowerment of women would automatically bring down fertility rates. It also recognizes that population policies and action programmes needed to promote human welfare and development. Such an approach, it is alleged, is not reflected in the population policies framed by many of the State Governments. Some of the better-known State policies stipulate that those who marry before the legal age will not be eligible for government jobs, memberships of Panchayats and become ineligible for financial assistance from their State Governments. These State policies impinge on human rights of large and vulnerable sections of population.
The Colloquium will also discuss the existing legislative framework and the adequacy of law enforcement, which have immediate relevance to reproductive rights and population issues, such as, laws relating to births (amniocentesis, abortions), laws affecting reproductive choice (age at marriage), laws which affect women’s rights, and laws relating to compulsory registration of births and deaths and registration of marriages.
The Colloquium will deliberate on these and other issues from the point of view of evolving a consensus on what constitutes a balance between population and development from the perspective of human rights. The Colloquium will be inaugurated on 9 January 2003 by the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Mr. Shatrughan Sinha. Justice J.S. Verma, Chairperson, NHRC would deliver the keynote address.
At the end of the Colloquium, the body will consider the recommendations made in the Colloquium.