Most countries emphatically agreed, and in addition blasted the attempts of outside countries, particularly the superpowers, to regulate their populations. President Nicolae Ceauseseu of Rumania, the host country, said that every government "has the sovereign right to promote those demographic policies and measures that it considers most suitable and consonant with its national interests, without any outside interference."

Antonio Carillo Flores, a Mexican lawyer and secretary general of the conference noted that while many countries want to reduce their birth rates. "it is also understandable that several nations in Europe. Africa and Latin America, where the objectives and situations are different, look at the problem in a different way."

The Washington delegation appeared at the world's first international population conference with a declaration containing all the outworn calculations, theories and warnings of neo-Malthusianism and wanted them included in the final draft declaration that is to be approved at the coming United Nations General Assembly this fall.

But the developing countries — which outnumber the industrialized by better than two to one — easily succeeded in reversing the original draft statement.

Instead of discussing "overpopulation" and its alleged dire consequences for humankind, the revised text stands virtually neutral on whether there is over or underpopulation in the world.

Instead it stresses the importance of the economic and social development of a country as primary in implementing any population policy. As Ali Oubouzar of the Algerian delegation put it: "The underdeveloped countries want to restore the paramountey of development over the matter of negatively influencing fertility rates."

Virtually all the U.S. proposals were rejected. Instead of calling on all countries to adhere to a single birth control plan, the document says: "Countries which consider their birth rates detrimental to their national purpose are invited to consider selling quantitative goals." But the declaration stresses. "Nothing herein should interfere with the sovereignty of any government to adopt such quantitative goals."

The conference rejected outright the U.S. statement that there is "overpopulation." For this clearly implies placing the burden of action on the third world countries, whose population in the last few decades have been expanding rapidly — after centuries of imperialist and colonialist plunder and decimation. Instead, the declaration puts much of the blame for the world's problems on the industrialized countries which consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources.

"Recognizing that per capital use of world resources is much higher in the more developed than in the developing countries, the developed countries are urged to adopt appropriate policies in population consumption and investment, bearing in mind the need for fundamental improvement in international equity." the declaration said.

Inter-Relationship Stressed

Instead of asserting, as the U.S. would have had it, that population is a phenomenon that can be regulated in isolation from other factors in a country, the declaration notes "the inter-relationship of demographic and socio-economic factors in development." It adds: "It is imperative that all countries and within them all social sectors should adapt themselves to more rational utilization of natural resources, without excess, so that some are not deprived of what others waste."

Instead of denying the right of families to bear children, the draft states: "It is strongly recommended that national policies be formulated and implemented without violating. . .universally accepted standards of human rights."

The document also contains a special section calling for promotion of the rights of women and noting the importance of their role in determining the birth rate. As long as women are oppressed and cannot take part in the social and economic life of their countries on an equal footing, the document suggests, they will not be able, on a mass scale, to consciously and willingly regulate their families according to their own or their country's needs.

A "general objective" of the conference is "to promote the status of women and the expansion of their role [unclear: e] full participation of women in the formulation. [unclear: t] implementation of socio-economic policy, including population policies, and the creation of awareness among all women of their current and potential roles in national life."

The declaration notes also that the death rate must be lowered in most countries, that child labor and child abuse must be abolished, that maternal and infant care programs must be expanded and the like.

The U.S. proposal by contrast was undiluted Malthusianism. A U.S. State Department policy memorandum, for example, put forth the notion that overpopulation was the root cause of nearly all the world's ills:

"Excessive global population growth widens the gap between rich and poor nations: distorts international trade; increases the likelihood of famine in the relatively near future; adds to environmental problems; produces unemployment; enlarges the danger of civil unrest and promotes aggressions endangering peace."

China's Position

One of the best retorts to this notion, which was echoed indirectly by the USSR, was the speech by Huang Shu-tse of the Peoples Republic of China. He said, in part:

"The third world now has a population of nearly 3 billion, which is more than 70 percent of the world's population. How to see this fact in a correct light is the first thing we must be clear about. One superpower asserts outright that there is a 'population explosion' in Asia, Africa and Latin America and that a 'catastrophe to mankind' is imminent.

"The other superpower, while pretending at some conferences to be against Malthusianism, makes the propaganda blast that 'rapid population growth is a millstone around the neck of the developing countries.' If (these fallacies are) not refuted, there will be no correct point of departure in any discussion on the world population. . . .

"Is it owing to overpopulation that unemployment and poverty exist in many countries of the world today? No, absolutely not. It is mainly due to aggression, plunder and exploitation by the imperialists, particularly the superpowers. . . . What a mass of figures they have calculated in order to prove that population is too large, the food supply too small and natural resources insufficient!

"But they never calculate the amount of natural resources they have plundered, the social wealth they have grabbed and the superprofits they have extorted from Asia, Africa and Latin America. If an account were made of their exploitation, the truth with regard to population problems would at once be out. Their multitude of population statistics will not help them a bit either.

"The average population to a square kilometer is only 12 in Africa and 15 in Latin America. Although population density in the developing countries of Asia is a bit higher, it is nonetheless lower than that in the developed countries of Western Europe.

"How can it be said then that the have-not countries are poor because of overpopulation? They claim that poverty can be overcome by reducing the rate of population growth. If so, why are there still so many jobless and underfed people in the two superpower countries where the rate of population growth is relatively low and the population density fairly small?"

Huang Shu-tse added: "Social imperialism asserts that 'only economic development with my aid can solve your population problem.' This is a ruse. It goes without saying that economic development is necessary for a country to emerge from poverty and solve its population problems. The point is that what social-imperialism calls 'economic development'. . .can only mean intensified control and plunder of the third world countries, with the consequent aggravation of their unemployment and poverty."

The USSR received so much criticism that, according to the Associated Press, when Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin talked with Russell Peterson, chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, "the two men bantered about which of their countries was receiving more 'battering' at the hands of the developing nations represented at the UN World Population Conference."

Altogether some 3000 delegates representing nearly every country in the world attended the conference. The final draft declaration represents a victory for the world's peoples. In essence, it calls for bettering people's lives rather than for less lives.