Rwanda, Africa’s most densely populated country, wants to impose a three -child limit to couples in an attempt to reduce poverty levels. Since the 1994 genocide, the population has been rising at 3% per year and Rwandan women average six child –births in their lifetime. This proposed law is highly unpopular because a large percentage of Rwandans are Catholic and the Catholic Church is against contraception and other family planning methods.
Personally, I feel that this law is a good idea. The hope is that this law does not need to be permanent and that it will curb the population percentage enough to reduce poverty and influence the use of contraception. Even the slightest increase in the population can drastically raise poverty levels. Those who oppose this law argue that the population in Rwanda will soon level off because many Rwandans felt the need to “fill the gap” left behind by the genocide and that this trend in the rise of the population will soon end.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
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1 comment:
I understand where the Rwanda government is coming from, the idea that they are searching for a way to improve the condition of its people. That’s great. However, this tentative solution seems preposterous at worst and Machiavellian at its best. Realizing China’s growing influence in Africa, it is not far-fetched to recognize a Chinese-quasi communist inspired plan here at work. The problem here though is that a large proportion or a majority of the Chinese people were not Roman Catholic or had strong ideological beliefs against contraception when the plan was implemented. In Rwanda, as evidence from the article, many of its people are Roman Catholic and have inhibitions against a policy that would most likely involve the use of it. Therefore, my concern is that the Rwanda government should be implementing economic decisions at the cost of breaching strong ideological and religious beliefs for a significant proportion of its people. From a pragmatic level it’s not good government and from a personal level it just seems mean. As a result, I don’t think the Rwandan government should open up this Pandora’s Box. Flowing from this wonderful idea, what’s going to happen next? The government is going to outlaw the Mass because it sharply hinders industry and trade on Sundays?
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