CAIRO — Egypt’s failing economy has prompted authorities to become explicit about family planning, one of the most private issues in this traditional Muslim country.
As the Egyptian population reaches the 100 million mark, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi launches a campaign entitled “Two is enough”.
The campaign, backed by the United States and the United Nations, is not like China’s harsh rule restricting children. Instead, authorities want to persuade young couples to stop at two children.
“The two biggest dangers facing Egypt are terrorism and population growth, and this challenge diminishes Egypt’s chances of moving forward,” el-Sisi said last year at a meeting. a youth conference.
Egypt’s unemployment rate fell to 10.6% in the first quarter of this year, from 11.3% in the same period last year, according to the government’s most recent figures. The country must create jobs for almost a million people entering the labor market each year.
Egypt is on the threshold of “water poverty”, which the United Nations defines as acute water scarcity. Water scarcity is likely to worsen. Ethiopia will likely start filling the reservoir behind the Grand Renaissance Dam this year, a move that will reduce the volume of water from the Nile as it flows north toward Egypt.
Along with a media campaign encouraging fewer births, the ‘Two is Enough’ campaign provides maternal and child health care and cash assistance to 1.15 million women in the country’s poorest families. .
“I heard about the campaign on Facebook,” said Rosie Bakhoum, 25, who has one child and lives in Sohag, one of the 10 states in Egypt where the birth rate is more than three children per year. woman. “The ideal number of children in rural Upper Egypt is still four (to work the land), but I think this program will succeed because honestly economic conditions force us to have smaller families.”
The government’s call for fewer babies comes amid steep increases in food and transport prices after a three-year, $12 billion bailout package signed in 2016 by el-Sissi’s government and the International Monetary Fund which demanded cuts in state subsidies for gasoline, electricity and water, in addition to devaluing the Egyptian pound.
To help the cash-strapped government in Cairo, the U.S. Agency for International Development will provide Egypt with $19 million over the next five years to help public clinics and nonprofit groups increase the contraceptive use and improve women’s health. The United Nations Population Fund has allocated approximately $6 million this year for reproductive health services in Egypt.
“We know that USAID’s family planning programs have had a tremendous impact in the past,” the agency’s mission director Sherry Carlin said, referring to the drop in fertility rates of 5.8. children per mother of three under President Hosni Mubarak. “We are once again ready to be part of the solution to Egypt’s rapidly growing fertility rate.”
The new push is a reversal of recent Egyptian policies. In the six years between Mubarak’s forced departure during the Arab Spring and el-Sissi’s initiative, family planning projects were not well funded and the birth rate began to rise.
Support for birth control was withdrawn during the year President Mohammed Morsi served as president until he was overthrown by el-Sisi in July 2013. Since then, state funding for health care was slow to rebound during Egypt’s 6-year economic period. crisis.
Women’s rights advocates have argued that legalized abortion should be an option to slow population growth to its goal of 2.4 children per woman.
“Young men must be included in education efforts, and abortion must be a legitimate and legal option for women in addition to contraception,” said Nada Nashat, a lawyer at the Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance Center. based in Cairo.
Egyptian law prohibits abortion. Women and the doctors who practice them could face three years or more in prison.
El-Sisi is unlikely to decide to legalize abortion, as he is under fire from Islamic fundamentalists for promoting equality for Coptic Christians and fighting Islamic State terrorists in the Sinai.
Officials acknowledged that gaps in medical services must be filled for the “Two is Enough” program to succeed.
“The role of nurses is particularly important, given that up to 30% of women may stop using birth control because they cannot access advice when needed,” said Randa Fares, coordinator of population programs at the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the government’s central social protection agency.
“Many believe that more children provide more economic support in old age,” as millions of Egyptians retire without a pension, Fares said. “Competition between sisters-in-law over who has the most children and the fear that if they don’t give birth to a son the husbands might take another wife are also driving up birth rates.”
Nader reported from Sohag, Egypt.