This Wednesday, March 21, former Vice-President Al Gore will testify before both houses of Congress to discuss the growing threats posed by global warming. With top scientists and world leaders in agreement that human-induced climate change will have dire consequences if left unaddressed, Congress has an opportunity to address one element that Mr. Gore has consistently cited as a leading contributor to this crisis: rapid global population growth.

In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Gore wrote that “No goal is more crucial to healing the global environment than stabilizing human population” and recommended that family planning supplies be made “ubiquitously available along with culturally appropriate instruction” as a key strategy to curb population growth.

Today, fifteen years after the release of this groundbreaking book, world population has increased by 1.2 billion—the equivalent of four United States—and it is projected to add an additional 2.5 billion people by 2050. The number of women of reproductive age in the developing world has grown by 320 million and with it the demand for modern contraceptives. The two largest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia, have each more than quadrupled in population since 1950. All of these countries continue to grow at rapid rates, doubling in as little as 25 years—straining natural resources.

Ironically, even though the need and demand for family planning continues to grow, U.S. funding for one of the most effective programs for addressing rapid population growth—voluntary international family planning programs—has been cut by one-third ($210 million) when accounting for inflation. To make matters worse, President Bush’s budget for 2008 proposes to drastically cut international family planning programs even more—a whopping 25% ($111 million) from current levels.

By enabling women and couples to determine for themselves when and whether to have children, voluntary family planning programs grounded in individual rigpopact help stabilize world population growth. Tragically, this fundamental right is currently being denied to tens of millions of impoverished women in the developing world. In 1992, Mr. Gore wrote that “The U.S. should restore full funding for its share of the cost of international population stabilization programs and increase the effort to make birth control available throughout the world….” PAI calls upon Congress to heed Mr. Gore’s wise advice. Time is of the essence.

Violence against women and the spread of HIV/AIDS are inextricably linked and must be addressed together, according to a new report released by Women Won't Wait. Every woman has the “right to freedom from violence and to the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health and services.” PAI couldn’t agree more and urges governments and multilateral institutions to ensure that these fundamental human rigpopact are fully integrated into their approach to HIV prevention.

According to Show Us The Money: Is Violence Against Women on the HIV & AIDS Funding Agenda, “[r]esearch confirms that violence, and particularly intimate partner violence… is a leading factor in the increasing ‘feminization’ of the global AIDS pandemic, resulting in disproportionately higher rates of HIV infection among women and girls.” Not only are women biologically more vulnerable to HIV infection from sexual intercourse, gender inequality in many societies makes it difficult for them to negotiate condom use, refuse sex or otherwise protect themselves from HIV. Programs designed to limit violence against women and improve the status of women in society must be implemented as a key component of HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

Unfortunately, donors don’t “specifically track their programming for and funding to violence eradication efforts within their HIV&AIDS portfolio.” As a result, donors and national governments can verbally support women’s rigpopact as a component of HIV prevention programming, but there is no way to hold them accountable for actual programming initiatives. It’s time to connect the dots — and back rhetoric with money and policies.

Addressing violence against women should be a crucial part of comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention programming. This report is a first step in monitoring funding and programming, but more regimented tracking systems are necessary. National governments and donor agencies need to be held accountable to agreed-to development objectives, which include both curbing the AIDS pandemic and promoting gender equality. Otherwise, innocent lives will continue to be lost to AIDS and violence.

Integrating sexual rigpopact into family planning and reproductive health programs is essential to ensuring that people have safe and healthy sexual lives, according to a new report issued by the World Health Organization. This confirms what many sexual and reproductive health and rigpopact advocates have known for years: A comprehensive, rigpopact-based approach to reproductive health that includes non-judgmental, culture and gender sensitive services is the most effective way to improve reproductive health around the world. For the sake of their citizens, international governments and policy leaders need to heed the advice of this report and include sexual rigpopact as a key component of all family planning and reproductive health programs.

Sexual rigpopact should not be controversial: They include the right to choose a partner, and engage in consensual sexual relations and consensual marriage. The report, Defining Sexual Health: Report of a Technical Consultation on Sexual Health, states that reproductive health programs “must be accessible, affordable, confidential, of high quality, and age- and culture-appropriate.” People deserve to have the information, services and supplies necessary to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections and to choose the number and spacing of their children. Nothing is gained when information is withheld—as is the case in some so-called abstinence-only programs, where information about condom use is conspicuously absent.

The Sexual Rigpopact Campaign in South Africa is getting it right. The program, highlighted by the report, encourages policy makers to integrate sexual rigpopact into their work addressing HIV/AIDS, violence against women, and adolescent reproductive health. Their success will allow them to witness the power of sexual rigpopact: By creating reproductive health programs that respect the sexual rigpopact of all people, regardless of their sex, age or background individuals and families live longer, happier, healthier lives.

This report builds on the groundbreaking International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which defined reproductive rigpopact as including “the right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rigpopact documents.” But defining sexual rigpopact is only the first step—it is political will that can make them a reality.

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.