Global Population Trends
Speakers: Timothy Wirth (click here for biography)
Soap Summit 2

Transcript of Proceedings
September 7, 1996

TIMOTHY WIRTH: Thank you Sonny and thank you all very much for being here today. I was delighted to be invited to come to New York today, to be with you to share a few thoughts about the changing nature of foreign policy and the challenges we face - together - in grappling with the difficult issues which will determine the future of our children and grandchildren.

The changing nature of national security is reflected in this time of enormous transition for our country and the world. Together, we face a range of unfamiliar challenges in a world itself so unfamiliar as to be nearly unrecognizable.

Security, for so long defined by the Cold War struggle, is now increasingly understood in the context of human security. Human security is about the 1 billion individuals who live in abject poverty. It is about the 800 million people who go hungry every day, and the 240 million malnourished. The 17 million who die each year from easily preventable diseases fall into this definition of security. As do the 1.3 billion people without access to clean water and the more than 2 billion people who do not benefit from safe sanitation. There are more than 20 million refugees, moving across national lines; and now, alarming numbers of, internally displayed moving within the borders of their own countries.

Similarly, human security can be measured in the soils disappearing around the world and the declining prospects for producing and distributing essential food requirements. It can bemarked by the persistence of poverty and the dearth of development in many parts of the world.

The relationship between these issues and traditional security are far from tenuous. During the decade of the 1980s, many of the states that have become staples of the evening news have shared remarkably similar characteristics - from rapid population growth and resource degradation, to declining per capita caloric intake and inadequate delivery of basic health care.

Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti all share these characteristics. And in others, like Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union, birth rates decline, birth defects increase, and hope becomes more precarious in a world of toxic poison, genetic defect and savage environmental degradation. In some cases causes, in others effects - the trends are surely straining efforts to promote political and economic progress, and in turn compromising international security and the world's ability to promote peace, democracy and sustainable development.

The Cairo Program of Action, was an agreement around the world, agreement on the necessity of family planning services and information, the education of girls, maternal and child health and reproductive health care programs, economic status of women directly related to the education of women, the responsibilities of men.

Now, here was the world coming together, thinking very differently than it had before about what its long-term national security interests were a quite remarkable time. Let me give you just two stories to kind of give you a focus on how important this is around the world; then I'll come to the United States.

In 1992 at the Earth Summit, there was a three-day period of time in which heads-of-state came and were given seven minutes each to address the rest of the world about their country and their problems and what they were thinking about. Every country came and talked about what it was going to do. Fidel Castro took his seven minutes, gave a three-minute speech. It was remarkable. George Bush gave a speech. Wasn't bad. It was, you know, it was the largest gathering of heads-of-state in the history of the world. Never before had so many heads-of-state come together.

One morning the president of Madagascar got up a very thin, French-educated gentleman about 5'7" I would guess, elegant, wonderful looking person and started his speech by saying, "An astronaut told me that my country looks like it is washing into the sea." That was how he started his speech. In other words, from on top, looking down at Madagascar, this enormous and extraordinarily important island off of the southern coast of Africa, looks like it is washing into the sea. Painted red. Imagine starting the thing talking about your country that way. In 1993, I was here in New York with Secretary Christopher at the United Nations general assembly. Every Secretary of State or foreign Minister in the world wants to see the U.S Secretary of State. The Secretary has a schedule all day long that would kill anybody. I mean, you know, it's 20 minutes and 20 minutes and 20 minutes and 20 minutes. I was the note taker for the meeting that we had with the Prime Minster of Haiti. And the Secretary would go, and there's always somebody assigned to make sure that the right things are said and that we take notes as to what comes up and can follow up and so on.

I was there early, and the Prime Minster of Haiti arrived a little bit early, and we were sitting talking about Haiti. This is a man named Malval, Robert Malval, a wonderfully elegant, highly educated Haitian one of the few who has not taken his marbles and gone to Miami or gone to New York and clipped coupons. And as we were waiting for the Secretary of State, he said, in sort of an endearing way, "I've never met with a Secretary of State before. What do I say?"

"Prime Minster, why don't you just tell him a little bit about your country?" At which point the Secretary came in, you know, the enormous rush of aides and momentum and so on, and came in and sat down. They sat on either side of the table and did their obligatory talking points. Everybody has your staff schedule talking points. Everybody goes through the talking points, and you do everything you're officially supposed to do. And as the 20 minutes was over, the Secretary apologized and said that he had to go on to another meeting and "'['hank you very much," and Prime Minister said, "Wait a minute, Mr. Secretary. Let me tell you a little bit about my country." [AUDIENCE LAUGHS]. I wondered, what's the man going to say. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] And he said, "Mr. Secretary, my country has a population of 7 million people. As you can tell, it is unsustainable economically. We have the lowest standard of living of any country in the Western Hemisphere. It is unsustainable politically. You can see that the ravages that are on top of it, it's unsustainable environmentally. What was once the garden spot of the Caribbean is now totally eroded away." He said, "Mr. Secretary, in 18 years the population of my country will double. In the year 2007 2011, my country will have a population of 14 million people." And he stopped. That's what he chose to to tell the Secretary of State of the United States of America that the population of his country was going to double. Now, what does that mean for us? Not only is that a kind of a metaphor for the whole of the world around us and what is happening in Haiti is happening elsewhere but it also clearly illustrates a vital self-interest of our own as well. Where are those other 7 million Haitians going to go? There is no way in the world that Haiti can support another 7 million people; they can't support the 7 million people they currently have. Where are they going? They're not going to Venezuela. They're not going to Mexico. They're going to Miami. And that is also a very clear indication of our own self-interest and we hope that we can sustain a viable democracy in which we can maintain control of our own borders and controls of our own population.

Which leads me to final comments about where we are in the United States of America. It may come as a surprise to you, but we have the fastest-growing population of any industrialized, developed country in the world. The United States has the fastest-growing population in numbers and in percentage of population. Our population is growing by 3 million people per year. We currently have a population of 260 million people. We're growing at the equivalent of a Connecticut every year. We're adding a Connecticut every year. We're adding almost a California every decade. Now, for us in the United States, as we must think seriously about our own future, it is absolutely imperative that we also focus on population as an issue for us. This is not something that abstractly exists someplace else. That 3 million growth in population is a million from immigration and 2 million from births in the United States. So we can't say, "Oh, that's an immigration problem again or something that exists elsewhere." It is a dramatically increased population growth in the United States, even 2 million a year. You look at this and you say, "What we'd like to do is to have a stabilized population." The first thing that we have to do is to look back at what we are doing to reach the goals of Cairo. What are we doing in the United States to make sure that family planning services and information are made available to everybody? Well, not a great deal. You know, in the United States we're having brutal battles, brutal battles in the Congress with people who assume that providing family planning services and information is the same thing as abortion, which, of course, it's not, who refuse to discuss sexuality.

Most politicians, as you know, are risk averse. Most politicians don't want to get into something that is difficult to talk about, and in population you have to talk about population, meaning you have to talk about sex and you have to talk about religion. It is essential that we talk about the provision of family planning services. Essential that we continue to emphasize the extraordinary importance of the status of women and the education of girls something that we've done pretty well in the United States. We're making some real progress, but there are still very significant gaps, particularly in lower income areas, particularly in lower income areas, where the gap in education and the gap in the status and the gap in self-esteem between girls and boys is the greatest. Third, it is absolutely imperative that we focus carefully on women's reproductive health care issues. And this is not an issue of abortion. It's an issue of providing for and attending to the special health care needs of women, who in fact are different from what most of the medical establishment views.

And finally, again, that we talk about the extremely important role of men and responsibility of boys in this process. The Cairo Program of Action something that was put together with 180 countries around the world is applicable to us as well. We cannot be so arrogant as to assume that we do everything right, and the rest of the world somehow these things are done for them. We are in this in an inexorable fashion. The elements there are as true for us as for the rest of the world. Final note: importance of what you all do. Let me give you two examples and then a third. The first issue that I was involved with when I came to the Congress was smoking and health. At that time the tobacco industry came and said to us that we could't prove the correlation between smoking and health; so therefore we shouldn't do anything. They were technically correct. We could not prove scientifically the absolute correlation between health and how it worked, but we knew that there was a very clear correlation. We didn't know exactly how it worked. There was heavy denial by the tobacco industry. Remember the Dire Straits song, "Denial is More Than a River in Egypt." Heavy denial by the tobacco industry, not wanting to have the Congress and the public get involved. But the Congress and the public did get involved, and your industry got involved. Your industry got involved in a way that now it is much less likely that we're going to see on television or in movies people with a cigarette dangling out of their mouth as a sign of being strong, being cool, or whatever. That has had an enormous impact.

Second issue that we were involved with was automobile safety. It was very clear that highway accidents were caught taking a tremendous toll, not only in killing people, but a tremendous toll in terms of maiming people. And the Congress, against what the automobile industry wanted to do, began to develop aggressive programs related to seat belts and air bags. The automobile industry came in and said: One, the American public wouldn't accept it; second, air bags wouldn't work, and we should not get involved with any kind of automatic crash protection devices. The Congress went ahead and did it anyway. And you will remember that your industry, as well, changed very significantly. And almost never do you see somebody on television sitting in a traffic jam, driving down the highway, whatever, without having a seat belt on. And the impact has been very significant, and now you cannot find an automobile manufactured in the United States or an automobile company that isn't marketing safety, that isn't marketing air bags. The cooperation between these kinds of public goals and the kinds of roles that you are play is extremely important. And we can just look finally at elements of the Cairo Program of Action. One element on the status of women. Think about how the status of women has changed and what impact television has had. Very, very significant. Mary Tyler Moore, probably the classic; right? We all think about, talk about, what happened to status of women. How much more can be done in thinking about the other elements of the Cairo Program of Action: the education of girls; family planning services and information; the realistic discussion about sexuality; the roles of men.

That's what I know you all are here to talk about and to think about and to try to figure out how you do this. I just want to come to you and say that the context in which we're doing this around the world, the role of leadership of the United States of America, and the fact that we're all in this together are all laid out in this particular issue of population. It is the most important issue we are all going to face. Sonny, thank you very much for asking me. I'm delighted to have a chance to share some thoughts with you and appreciate coming up and talking with you today. Thank you. [APPLAUSE].

SONNY FOX: We have only a few moments. Any quick questions that they'd like to direct to Tim?

TIMOTHY WIRTH: Can I tell one story?

SONNY FOX: Sure. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS].

TIMOTHY WIRTH: This is something also that demands a real political commitment. All right? You have to have leadership at the top, and you have to have awareness at the bottom to make something like this go. It's a difficult issue to talk about. And as we moved into Cairo Felicia, you'll remember this, engaging the President and the Vice President was a very important thing to do. Gore was on board, committed and engaged in, really understanding this in very significant detail. I really didn't have a sense of where the President was. We had a huge dinner to celebrate our move to Cairo and this was important on the eighth floor of the State Department. Some of you have been on the eighth floor. It's the ceremonial room, this very elegant dining facility. Ted Turner sponsored a dinner. We invited most of the key population people from around the country and women's groups people, health care people, and so on. About 400 people were there for this significant dinner, with the President coming as the speaker. We really worked it. And the answer came back very quickly: "Yes, I would like to do that." So we drafted a speech about a month ahead of time, as you do, and sent it to the White House. You never know what's going to happen to this sort of thing. With about two weeks to go, I began to get telephone calls that it had moved up the ladder from the speech writers to the appropriate people clearing the speech and then was getting to the real inner circle. And certain things were beginning to be taken out of the speech. So the danger signs were beginning to come: you know, some of this is difficult, controversial material. It was 2 days to go, the speech was with the final speech writer. I got a frantic call to talk to the speech writer, I said, you've got to include this, you've got to include that, you've got to include another thing. But there was no response at the other end, indicating somebody was taking it in. The President was supposed to arrive at the end of dinner. I got a frantic call from the Chief Domestic Policy person who said, "We've got significant problems. The speech has got to below a lowest common denominator, and you have got to catch the President in the holding room." Right. Now. [LAUGHS]. In this very large dining room, you come up to the President or whoever it is comes up a private elevator, and there's a holding room in the corner, and you wait until everybody's set to go. We were in the holding room, Ted and Jane, and my wife, Ren, and I, waiting for the President. And he came in, and I greeted him and said, "Welcome, Mr. President. We're delighted to have you here. You know Ted and Jane. By the way, Mr. President, would you let me see a copy of your speech?" And he said, "Oh, I know. You had problems with the speech, didn't you?" You know. "These were the things that you were concerned about." And he pulled out the speech that had been given to him by the speech writers. And in his own large blue hand, he had replaced all of the bad stuff that had gotten in there and taken it right back to where we were. Now, how in the world did he know about all of these issues? I mean he knew he had done it himself in the hour before he was to arrive and give the speech. It was absolutely extraordinary. I, by the way, have that speech as one of the great collector's items. But I was just blown away. These things don't occur without leadership; they don't occur without commitment at the top and a broad-gauge commitment at the bottom. Obviously I am not a partisan person in any way, shape, or form. [LAUGHS]. But I wanted to share that story with you. Thank you very much. [AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]