The demographic change should not be regarded as a crisis, as it often happens, but as an opportunity. The approach to the demographic change is related to the quality of people’s lives, not to their number. The long-term solutions are based on the rights and individual needs of each person, said United Nations Under-Secretary-General Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, who discussed the demographics situation in the Republic of Moldova with Minister of Labor and Social Protection Marcel Spatari, IPN reports.
The bilateral meeting was held on the sidelines of a ministerial conference entitled “Shaping Europe’s Demographic Future” that was staged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy of Bulgaria and UNFPA in Sofia on Decembers 1-2. The conference centers on the demographic trends in Europe, such as population aging, low fertility, migration of the young people, and on solutions for turning these into opportunities.
The meeting with Moldova’s delegation centered on the demographic view of the Republic of Moldova, including the working out of demographic policies based on people’s needs and their integration into national development programs for increasing the country’s demographic resilience. Natalia Kanem approved of the model chosen by Moldova, by which the demographic security concept based on the size of population is replaced with demographic resilience based the rights and individual needs of each person.
The UNFPA chief also appreciated the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection’s participation in the Generations and Gender Survey that covers a sample of 10,000 people and whose results are to be presented in Chisinau next week, and the national efforts made to promote intergenerational dialogue, active ageing and family-friendly workplace policies.
For his part, Minister Marcel Spatari reiterated Moldova’s commitment to put into practice the country’s demographic view starting from the rights of each person and by accelerating family support programs so as to have the wanted number of children, including by promoting the equality of chances for women and men, creating family-friendly workplace policies and child care infrastructure and by further developing active aging programs, digitization for older persons and other actions.
The ministerial conference “Shaping Europe’s Demographic Future” brings together over 600 high-level representatives of governments, opinion leaders and experts from all over Europe and Central Asia. The conference will end with the launch of the Decade for Demographic Resilience 2022-2032 and the Sofia Alliance, a community of practitioners led by the member states to facilitate the exchange of experience and to offer expertise and technical assistance for strengthening demographic resilience in the region.
