United Nations building in New York with flags of member states
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Population Connection has special consultative status with the United Nations (UN) through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This status, reserved for non-governmental organizations whose work “has direct relevance to the aims and purposes of the United Nations,” allows us to attend UN conferences, deliver written and oral statements, and comment on drafts of important publications.
Stabilizing population through voluntary family planning and other empowering solutions is relevant to all of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are meant to be achieved by 2030. That’s because population growth is an exacerbating factor when it comes to every challenge the SDGs seek to address, from ending hunger and poverty to achieving gender equality to combating climate change and protecting ecosystems.
Regretfully, as stated in the UN’s 2024 SDGs Progress Report, “the world is severely off-track to achieve the 2030 Agenda.” Technical challenges play a role in this shortcoming, of course. But so does the addition of roughly 70 million people a year to a planet already buckling under the strain of the current population of 8.2 billion. Population growth continuously outruns efforts to improve public health, water and sanitation, educational enrollment, electrification, and all the rest of humanity’s most acute challenges. Without addressing population growth in the poorest settings, we will not succeed in meeting the SDGs pertaining to human well-being. And with a population that needs ever more land, water, fuel, and other natural resources as it grows, we can’t reasonably expect to achieve the environmental goals either.
Below you’ll find a growing collection of statements we’ve made and events we’ve hosted at UN conferences, many of them in collaboration with Population Matters in the UK and Population Media Center here in the US. We will continue to take opportunities to urge the inclusion of population stabilization in UN pacts, treaties, and official goals going forward. It’s clear that if we don’t do it, no one will.
58th Session of the Commission on Population and Development, April 2025
- Read our joint written statement with Population Matters and Population Media Center.
- Attend our official virtual side event on April 10, 2025, at 12pm EDT:
What’s the story with family planning? How women’s empowerment, reproductive freedom, and storytelling build healthier, more sustainable communities
Reproductive health and rights and bodily autonomy are critical to advancing SDG 3, Good Health and Well-being. In this virtual side event, panelists will showcase how their organizations’ critical work to remove barriers to family planning and empower women and girls leads to healthier, more prosperous communities and greater environmental sustainability.
- Watch the recording of our in-person oral statement (forthcoming).
69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, March 2025
- Read our joint written statement with Population Matters and Population Media Center.
Summit of the Future, September 2024
- Watch the recording of the oral statement we delivered at a pre-conference planning meeting.
- Watch the recording of the oral statement we delivered in response to Draft 2 of the Pact for the Future.
- Read the population fact sheet we handed out in person at the Summit.
(All Summit participation was in partnership with Population Matters and Population Media Center.)
Read the final Pact for the Future, which includes a commitment to address population challenges.
Summit website
57th Session of the Commission on Population and Development, April 2024
- Watch the recording of our official side event, featuring Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka and Dr. Karen Hardee.
- Read the text of our oral statement, delivered in person at the conference.
(All CPD57 participation was in partnership with Population Matters and Population Media Center.)
CPD57 website
IPBES Second Global Biodiversity Assessment, June 2024 - present
The UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published its first global assessment on the state of biodiversity and nature in 2019. The next assessment is due in 2028, and the preparatory process is lengthy, with multiple opportunities for stakeholders to get involved.
Population Connection submitted feedback on the initial draft scoping report, urging the next assessment to focus more on the urgent need to tackle the root drivers of biodiversity loss (including human population growth), to recognize the critical linkages between human and environmental health and well-being, and to address how empowering development interventions such as advancing women’s and girls’ rights are also key environmental solutions.
We are keeping an eye on further opportunities to get involved.
IPBES second global assessment