In less than 50 years, the world’s population has almost doubled and now reaches 7,000,000,000 people. This global milestone is both a great opportunity and a great challenge. In the world of seven billion, we all count on each other.
UNFPA’s work on population is central to the goals of the international community to improve living standards and achieve sustainable development. Population dynamics, including growth rates, age structure, fertility and mortality, migration and more, influence every aspect of human, social and economic development. Other core areas of UNFPAs work, including reproductive health and women's empowerment, powerfully influence population trends.
Linking population factors to designing of national development programmes is especially important in Uzbekistan, which has the biggest population in Central Asia, over 30 million, according to recent estimates. For the last two decades the country’s population growth has slowed considerably, from almost 2% in the 1990s to 1.3% in the period 2000-2007. The country faced significant decline in total fertility rate – from 4.6 in the beginning of the 1990s to the current rate of 2.6.
Another important factor that the country faces in recent years is external labour migration. In addition, despite strenuous government’s efforts to curb human trafficking, especially targeting women, it remains a serious problem.
Thus, UNFPA supports Uzbekistan in improving capacity of the government at central and local level to collect, analyze and use population data for formulation of socio-economic development strategies and promote understanding of the linkages between population issues and development.
Highlights from the programme
UNFPA-supported Survey Analyzes the Role of Families in Uzbekistan, in Times of Transition.
Since Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, the evolution of family relations during the transition to market economy has been closely followed. While new realities put new challenges in front of men and women, older and younger generations, the cultural traditions still greatly affect gender and age-based roles and responsibilities in Uzbek families.
The survey supported by UNFPA is first in quite a while to look at the issues of family relations, family and reproductive choices of young people, family budgets and distribution of incomes, as well as roles of men and women, parents and children in family-related decision-making. The survey was among the first to explore the sensitive issue of gender-based violence and analyze the typical causes and ways of settling family conflicts.
