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ity, and thereby establish guidelines for the release of wheat now being acquired by the Commodity Credit Corporation.

Ibid., pp. 114, 160-162; Dept. of State Bulletin, Vol. 80, No. 2035, Feb. 1980, pp. Special F-G.

See, further, the Agricultural Act of 1980, P.L. 96-494, Dec. 3, 1980, 94 Stat. 2570, title III of which constituted the Food Security Wheat Reserve Act of 1980, 94 Stat. 2578. Sec. 302(c) authorized the President to release stocks of wheat designated or acquired for the reserve to provide, on a donation or sale basis, emergency food assistance to developing countries, under the conditions therein stated, including the provision of urgent humanitarian relief in any developing country suffering a major disaster.

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United States Population Policy and Programs

In hearings on United States population policy and programs, held by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 29, 1980, Ambassador Richard Eliot Benedick, Coordinator of Population Affairs in the Department of State's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, discussed the implications of excessive population growth in developing, low-income countries, and the United States approach to the foreign policy issues it created.

The United States had accepted a leadership role in the worldwide effort to limit population growth and, also, to carry out the World Population Plan of Action adopted by the 1974 World Population Conference at Bucharest, Ambassador Benedick said; it exercised its role by working with and through other nations and organizations, rather than by seeking to impose its own views directly upon foreign populations. The United States envisaged population control and economic development as proceeding together, and assistance was made available by the Agency for International Development on a bilateral basis to foreign governments directly, as well as through multilateral (primarily United Nations) and nongovernmental organizations.

Portions of Ambassador Benedick's prepared statement follow: Population and U.S. Foreign Policy

Both the Secretary of State and the President's national security adviser have emphasized the fundamental linkage between population developments, foreign policy, and national security. Secretary of State Vance, in a letter to all U.S. Ambassadors in December 1978, noted that excessive population growth in many areas of the world complicates and makes more difficult U.S. and international efforts to address a broad range of global issues, including economic development, political stability, unemployment, poverty and malnutrition, migration, inflation, the environment, and energy and resource scarcities.

U.S. Policy

U.S. international population policy fully supports the expression at the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest of the basic human right of individuals to decide on the number and spacing of their children and the corollary responsibility of governments to provide the information, education, and means to do so.

It has been U.S. policy during recent Administrations to respond promptly and fully to requests from developing countries for assistance in dealing with their population growth problems. U.S. policy emphasizes encouraging leaders of developing countries to establish and actively promote, in cooperation with multilateral institutions and other donors, national programs to reduce fertility levels. We believe that such programs, to be more effective, should be fully integrated into a country's development strategy. Finally, we hold that both donors and recipient countries should emphasize programs, in the context of development, which enhance motivation for small families as well as provide a full range of family planning information and services.

**

U.S. international population policy is predicated on the fact that the demographic situation is obviously serious, but it is not hopeless. . .

The keys to success generally include commitment of government leadership, effective delivery of family planning information and services, local community involvement, and an enhanced status of women, including education and employment opportunities. Improvements in health and economic conditions and hope for future progress appear to be important factors in motivating couples to desire smaller families.

Conclusions and Recommendations

It is evident that, as Secretary of State Vance has said, "it would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of this problem." Current demographic projections convey a clear message that the future consequences of complacency and delay in reaching replacement fertility levels will be billions of individuals added to an overpopulated and overstrained future world. But strenuous efforts will be required to reach the two-child norm. It has been estimated that, in order to reach a replacement level of fertility, two-thirds of all couples must practice family planning; currently, however, only about one-quarter to one-third of couples in developing countries (apart from China) are estimated to do so. And many more women are entering the reproductive age each year than are leaving, which means that more people must be reached just to stand still in terms of birth rates.

Yet, despite these considerations, population policy is not a dominant theme, with very few exceptions, in the affairs of nations or at international meetings. . . .

By the world's actions, by its relative budget priorities, and by its silences, it would seem that, even now, many would prefer not to agree with World Bank President Robert McNamara that, "short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue that the world faces over the decades immediately ahead." Public attitudes toward population lack a sense of urgency, even though the gradual and accumulating effects of population growth threaten to undermine efforts to solve a broad range of other problems.

Against this background, U.S. international population policy now needs increasingly to focus on the extension of familyplanning information and services to all peoples as rapidly as possible, combined with programs to increase motivation for smaller families. By virtue of experience and resources, the United States cannot relinquish the leadership role in this area.

Unfortunately, there are no quick and easy solutions. Many things must be done simultaneously. For purposes of simplicity, I would divide my policy recommendations into three categories: diplomacy, assistance, and biomedical research.

Diplomacy. Understanding and awareness of the problem are essential preconditions for action. There is a continuing need for educating new policy-makers-and their constituencies.

Building on the World Population Plan of Action and the Colombo Declaration of International Parliamentarians, the United States should seek to keep the population problem at the forefront of the world's agendas, as a matter of urgent global priority. The objective is a strong and sustained international consensus which can support, and influence, national leaders in their approach to population issues.

The major themes of these efforts should be the inescapable relationship between fertility reduction and the potential for meaningful economic development and the need for coordinated and expanded population assistance and research by industrialized countries in support of Third World efforts.

• The United States should seek opportunities for public statements by senior U.S. officials and for diplomatic contacts with national leaders on these subjects.

The United States should promote meaningful resolutions on population in U.N. and other international forums, including the international development strategy for the third development decade and the North-South global negotiations.

The United States should consult with other donor governments at highest policy levels, e.g., the economic summit meetings.

To reinforce these efforts, it would be desirable to assign or designate a population officer in the staffing of every Embassy where population factors are important.

Assistance..

Many observers, including the Brandt Commission, have noted a flagging of donor support at precisely the time when the need is most urgent and when LDCs are becoming more receptive. The International Conference of Parliamentarians at Colombo last fall called for urgent world attention to the population growth problem

and proposed an increase in international assistance from current levels of approximately $450 million to $1 billion by 1984.

I am certainly aware of the very tight current budgetary situation but nevertheless feel obligated to renew the National Security Council's recommendation of 1975 for a "major expansion" of U.S. funding for both bilateral and multilateral population programsan expansion I believe essential to reflect the priority of the population growth issue. Both AID's bilateral assistance program and the U.N. Fund for Population Activities have significantly more requests for help than they can handle with current budgetary

resources.

*

World Population Trends: Hearings before the Sen. Comm. on For. Relations, 97th Cong., 2d sess. (1980), pp. 65, 69-72; Dept. of State Bulletin, Vol. 80, No. 2042, Sept. 1980, pp. 58-60; Dept. of State, Current Policy No. 171, International Population Policy (1980), pp. 4-5.

In regard to the World Population Plan of Action, see the 1974 Digest, pp. 586-592. A National Security Council Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy, comprising eighteen United States Government departments and agencies, was established in 1975 "in recognition of the special problems posed by . . . rapid global population growth for United States foreign policy objectives of peace and stability, economic and social progress, and enhancement of human rights and dignity." The Ad Hoc Group's Fourth Annual Report, issued Apr. 1980, stated in part:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

* * *

During the nineteen-seventies, much of the economic gains and increased food output of the Third World were cancelled out by the steady rise in population. For hundreds of millions of people, the UN's "Second Decade of Development" was a decade of virtual stagnation. On a per capita basis, the income gap between rich and poor nations has not narrowed.

More people will be added to the LDC labor pool between now and the end of the century than the entire current labor force of the industrialized countries. Many of the prospective unemployed will move to already overcrowded slums, contributing to a virtual urban explosion in the Third World. Population growth will also add to pressures on energy and raw material supplies, worldwide inflationary trends, and such environmental problems as water pollution, soil erosion, and deforestation. For many countries, the prospects for at least the next two decades are not promising: food scarcities and probable expansion of malnutrition, diversion of potential investment resources to maintain an expanding population, increasing underemployment and unemployment, growing numbers of landless poor people, and a tremendous growth in urban proletariat-all exacerbated by such global factors as inflation, higher-priced energy, and environmental degradation. Rapid population growth is a major contributing element to all of these conditions and, in addition, itself creates a large proportion of youth in the population. Recent experience, in Iran and other countries, shows that this younger age group, frequently unemployed and crowded into urban slums, is particularly susceptible to extremism, terrorism, and violence.

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On balance, these factors add up to a growing potential for social unrest, political instability, mass migrations, and possible international conflicts over control of land and resources. Demographic pressures will certainly reinforce the frustrations caused by absolute and relative poverty. The near certainty of at least a doubling of the populations of most developing countries within the next two to three decades has particular significance for the United States, which has been the goal of so many of the world's emigrants and refugees.

II. International Conferences and Statements

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[W]e examine a few significant landmarks of the past year. A. World Bank Annual Meeting

Perhaps the most comprehensive statement during 1979 of the current population dilemma facing mankind was made by World Bank President Robert McNamara at the Annual Meeting of the Bank's Board of Directors in Belgrade.... Highlighting major shortfalls in reaching all of the development goals established for the decade of the 1970's-the "Second United Nations Development Decade"-the World Bank President observed that, for the poorest countries, it was a decade of virtual stagnation. McNamara concluded that "excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world. . . for the population problem complicates, and makes more difficult, virtually every other task of development (emphasis added)."

McNamara characterized the population problem as "a central determinant of humanity's future, and one requiring far more effective attention than it is currently receiving." He outlined the direction of current demographic trends-an eventual stabilized global population of about 10 billion-and stressed the penalties, in terms of human suffering on unprecedented scale, of delay in reducing fertility: "we simply cannot continue the leisurely approach to the population problem that has characterized the past quarter century.'

B. United Nations Population Commission

Symptomatic of this approach were the findings of the 20th Session of the UN Population Commission, held in New York early in 1979. The Commission's first five-year review and appraisal of implementation of the World Population Plan of Action (WPPA), ratified in 1974 at Bucharest, clearly revealed that progress in facing up to the seriousness of population growth has been mixed. With U.S. participation, the Commission agreed on a resolution for consideration by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) containing specific recommendations for priority actions by national governments to promote more effective implementation of the WPPA. The main recommendations of this resolution were:

-establishment by all countries of a high-level government unit for population affairs,

-complete integration of demographic considerations in development strategies,

-further emphasis on improving the status of women,

-greater efforts to improve maternal and child health care,

-setting of national population goals,

-full recognition in the new International Development Strategy for the Third UN Development Decade of the interrelationships of population factors and social, economic, cultural, and political development, and of the need for full and urgent action to deal with population problems.

This resolution was adopted by ECOSOC at its spring session and subsequently endorsed by the 34th General Assembly. It remains to be seen whether its intent will be effectively realized by UN bodies and individual governments.

C. Bellagio Conference

The current state of population programs worldwide was also considered by a Bellagio Conference on Health and Population held in April 1979, the fifth such meeting of leading development assistance officials, organized by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The conferees, who included representatives of State and AID, noted a complacency in the international community regarding population problems which seems unwarranted by objective analysis of data and trends. . . . D. Parliamentarians' Conference

In August, over 200 parliamentarians representing fifty-eight nations, including the U.S., met at Colombo, Sri Lanka, for the International Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development. Co-sponsored by the UNFPA and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Conference was the most significant international meeting on population since the 1974 World Population Conference, and the first ever for legislators. In an atmosphere remarkable for absence of North-South confrontation, the participants concluded that the linkage between population issues and development objectives was inescapable and that not enough progress

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