FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Rev. Christopher Pollard2011 212-370-7885 Ext. 30cpollard@holyseemission.org New York, NY, Apr. 13 – Instead of eliminating poor people in an attempt to eliminate poverty, governments ought to “focus... resources on providing the promised development assistance to the approximately 920 million people living on less than $1.25 per day”. On the second day of the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt addressed yesterday afternoon the theme of the gathering: “Fertility, reproductive health and development”. According to Archbishop Chullikatt, who since September 2010 has been the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the U.N., there is a “distorted world-view [that] regards the poor as a problem to be commoditized and managed as if they were inconsequential objects rather than as unique persons with innate dignity and worth who require the full commitment of the international community to provide assistance so that they can realize their full potential”. The Archbishop took issue with the notion that population growth impedes development, noting that many “countries are experiencing population growth below replacement level” and consequently are finding it difficult to “sustain economic development and provide the resources necessary to support these ageing populations”. He stated emphatically that the “increasingly discredited concept of population control must be discarded”. Archbishop Chullikatt spoke in favor of “the adoption of policies which encourage marriages that are open to and welcome children, and which also provide families the necessary assistance in bearing and rearing children, including those with large families”. Moreover, he reminded the assembled delegates of the first principle stated in the Programme of Action from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which took place in Cairo, Egypt, which “recognized that the international community must, in conformity with universally recognized human rights, „respect the various religious and ethical values and cultural background? of all people”. The Commission on Population and Development, one of nine functional commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), was established in 1994 to implement the Programme of Action of the ICPD. The Forty-forth session of the CPD, currently underway at UN Headquarters in New York, concludes on April 15. For the full text of the Statement of the Permanent Observer and for more information about the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, please visit the Mission website. To contact the Holy See Press Office, please click here.