News and Events

Message for World Population Day 2010
Everyone Counts

12 July 2010

As we commemorate World Population Day, "Everyone Counts" is a theme that speaks to the inherent value and dignity of each human being, in Nepal and around the world.

The theme "Everyone Counts" highlights the stories that numbers tell us about people. Data can reveal striking situations in countries. Figures can show the faces and reality people live. Censuses, surveys including Nepal Demographic and Health Survey and Nepal Living Standard Survey, and vital statistics provide critical data to guide plans, policies and programmes to meet people's needs and improve their lives. This data is crucial as we strive for universal access to education, HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, and reproductive health and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. This data will tell us if we are making the MDGs meaningful for the most marginalized. This data will help us implement the new constitution. It will tell us if we are addressing (and what more we can do to ensure) inclusion of excluded groups and gender equality.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, actively supports countries in the 2010 round of censuses. The Nepal Population and Housing Census is taking place in June 2011 led by Government and supported financially and technically by donors and the UN. It will mark 100 years of Census taking in Nepal and comes at a historic moment in Nepal's transition to peace and development. Censuses are central to UNFPA's mandate and mission to support countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect. UNFPA commits its continued technical support.

Population dynamics - including growth rates, age structure, fertility, mortality and migration - influence every aspect of human, social and economic development. The results of the current round of censuses will be used in statistical systems and policies and programmes for years to come. On this World Population Day, we call on national government, civil society, the media and external partners to ensure the highest quality, use and dissemination of data and the right of everyone to be counted, especially women, girls, the poor and marginalized. It is in everyone's interest to do so, because everyone counts.

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