Donor assistance for population, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programs continues to increase, but the benchmarks used to assess performance have not changed since 1994. Those who monitor donor performance say that current assistance is not sufficient and that the benchmarks need to move upwards. This review of recent efforts to revise cost estimates for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services concludes that $35 billion to $45 billion annually will be needed from all sources over the next few years. At the same time, further research is needed to improve the accuracy of such estimates.

Britain's recent pledge of US$15 billion to fund education in developing countries over the next ten years comes as good news for the estimated 493 million school-age children who are not enrolled in school, the majority of whom are girls. The gender gap-the difference between boys' and girls' school enrollments-is an indicator of gender equity and of a country's level of development. The gap is widest among countries in sub-Saharan Africa and a few Asian countries, including Yemen and Pakistan. Education has a profound impact on the future course of women's lives, influencing employment opportunities, earning potential and political participation. Access to quality education is also one of the best defenses against HIV infection, providing young people with the skills and knowledge to make informed decisions. Education is especially critical to HIV prevention in girls, as it reduces the power imbalances and social and financial dependencies that typically make females more vulnerable to infection. Moreover, a large body of evidence suggests that education of girls is associated with their roles in family decision-making and patterns of childbearing, resulting in improved maternal and child health, improved childhood nutrition, higher educational attainment among children, and a lower likelihood of experiencing unwanted and high-risk pregnancies.

Family planning dramatically improves the health and chances of survival of both women and their children. At the same time, when parents are more confident their children will survive, they are more likely to have fewer children and plan the size of their families. U.S. international development and humanitarian assistance should support both child health and family planning programs as complementary initiatives.

How many people will live on the planet 20 years from now? Where will they live? Where will population grow, and where will it decline? Researchers at PAI and Columbia University used new methods of mapping population density and projected populations changes to create an innovative map.

An unchallenged fixture of many news stories about population aging and decline in developed countries today is the idea that “replacement fertility”-the number of children women must have, on average, over their childbearing years to produce a stationary population-is 2.1 children. The extra tenth of a child is needed, the explanation often goes, to make up for the children who don't themselves survive to parenting age.

In this era of tight financial resources for international family planning – as evidenced by the recent budget cuts proposed by President Bush in the United States – are the world's donated contraceptives reaching the women and men who need them most? A review shows that while donors of such supplies often focus their resources on countries with high need, they could do so even more effectively.

A recent report by an independent task force enlisted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR, More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach toward Africa, 2005) recommends that the U.S. government step up funding to international family planning programs in sub-Saharan Africa as part of a strategy to increase U.S. engagement and prioritize assistance to that region (see p. 16, pp. 119-120).1

The West African nation of Niger was propelled to the headlines several months ago over reports of starving and dying children amid denials by its government that the country was enduring a sustained food emergency (seasonal fluctuations in the availability of food are not unusual in the arid Sahel region, they argued). Niger is perhaps better known as the country falsely accused by the Bush Administration of selling uranium to Iraq – an issue that later became the object of the Valerie Plame scandal. But Niger is confronting a genuine scandal: one-quarter of its people are facing yearly food shortages. Meanwhile, its population is set to double in less than 20 years and contraceptive use among Niger's men and women remains at one of the lowest levels of any country in the world.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) offer precise targets for reducing poverty and promoting global development, but they remain incomplete if they do not build from and incorporate the objectives of other major international agreements, particularly those reached at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing). At the 2005 World Summit and in the years leading to the 2015 milestone, the sexual and reproductive health community is taking every opportunity to advance this message: universal access to sexual and reproductive health services is essential to achieving the MDGs.

Nearly 80 million unintended pregnancies occur worldwide every year. More than half of these pregnancies end in abortion, often in countries where abortion is illegal and access to contraception is limited. Access to voluntary family planning services, including contraception, is essential in helping to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and, consequently, the incidence of abortion.