WORLD POPULATION DAY

Yesterday, 11^th July, 2013 was World Population Day. Commemorating the day, Zodiak Broadcasting Station, a local FM radio station, broadcast a live panel discussion today, 12^th July starting from 19:30 hours local time (17:30 GMT) from one of the leading hotels in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. The discussion that drew panelists from the Ministry of Health, some sexual and reproductive health NGOs, and the UNFPA, the sponsor of the programme, was lively and interesting. The audience comprised mainly local nursing and medical university and college students.

The theme of the discussion was “No Children by Children”. Discussants were asked to illuminate the problems Malawi is facing as a result of rapid population growth, in general, and adolescent child bearing, in particular. They also sought to suggest strategies that would address these challenges. It is important to mention that Malawi is a small poor country (118,000 square kilometers) with a population size of 14 million people and an annual population growth rate 2.8 percent.

I found the absence of a criminological perspective in explicating the consequences of teenage pregnancies and rapid growth intriguing, but not surprising, considering that the panelists and most of the audience came from nursing and medical professional and academic backgrounds. The common thread in their arguments was that teenage child bearing and rapid population growth generates violations of girls’ rights, exacerbates poverty and retards development. If I was present at this debate I would argue that teenage pregnancies reduce girls’ life chances by diminishing both their marriageability and employability. This predisposes girls to prostitution, an illegitimate way of meeting socially valued ends. Once girls choose prostitution as a means of livelihood, the likelihood of entering the criminal justice system and acquiring a criminal record, becomes high, which nearly dooms any chances of future employment and/or marriage. This entrenches such girls and their offspring into a vicious cycle of social deprivation, an acknowledged cause of criminality.

The discussants also failed to see that rapid population growth would result in increase in conflicts as resources became scarce despite all the evidence in the media. People have already started fighting over land, water and fishery resources in many parts of the country. Xenophobic violence against foreign business persons over economic opportunities has also been reported in the mass media. For instance, recently, Malawians working for a Brazilian rail construction company, Vale, attacked Thai nationals for taking up semi-skilled work which, they argued, should be done by Malawians.

It was surprising that although most discussants came from the health sector, none of them suggested the three-tier model of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention, which they have used for many years to control diseases. This, in my view, offers a clever organizing tool for a robust response to the problem of teen pregnancies. For instance, under primary prevention of early pregnancies we could include untargeted girl empowerment strategies such as compulsory girl education or a raised marriage age. Under secondary prevention would come interventions that target areas where the risk of teenage marriage and teenage sex is high. It is easy to isolate such areas by using mapping techniques and by analyzing cultural practices that fuel early pregnancies. In fact, in the case of Malawi such places are well known. Tertiary prevention would be exacted at young girls who become pregnant, men who make them pregnant or parents who force immature girls into marriage. These strategies would include sending girls back to school after child birth or stiff, swift and certain penalties for men who make girls pregnant. Indeed, this is the time to slow the population growth.