PPD as a member of Population Experts Committee attend the committee meeting regularly and provide necessary guidance and support to the committee. This committee is hosted by General Economics Division (GED), Bangladesh Planning Commission funded by UNFPA, Bangladesh.
The committee was established in 2017 under the project “strengthening Capacity of the General Economics Division to integrate population and development issues into plans and policies”. Since then, PPD has been engaged with the committee. PEC serves as a specialized think thank supporting the GED of the Bangladesh planning commission in advancing the agendas of the ICPD and SDGs and other national priorities on population and development.
Todays (6 March 2025) meeting was called mainly to discuss challenges of the project titled “integrating population dynamics and development issues into national plans and policies” and how to strengthen the committee’s role and functions to address such challenges.
The committee discussed its ToR and future activities to be undertaken under this project. Also, the committee emphasized demographic transition situation in Bangladesh which is shifting from stage 3 (declining birth/death rates) toward early stage 4. In Bangladesh currently two-thirds of its population are in the working age, 9% aged 60+ and 6% aged 65%, and women constitute half the population. It means Bangladesh stands at a crossroads of multiple demographic dividends: a youthful workforce, a growing ageing population, and untapped gender potential. The committee therefore highlights the key dynamics shaping resilience harnessing these dividends requires addressing intersecting challenges: youth aspiration vs structural barriers; ageing population; technology disruption and climate change.
The committee unanimously agreed to include these 4 key dynamics shaping resilience as priority to ToR of the committee for the year 2025-26.
Being a member of this important committee represented by PPD Senior Program Manager Dr Nazrul Islam further emphasized that due to closing the USAID funding in Bangladesh and other developing countries will face critical financial problems to access reproductive health care services including family planning services which will further widen the unmet needs of family planning and reproductive health commodities. An alternative financial mechanism like South-South cooperation should be promoted to address the current challenges of developing countries including Bangladesh. Population expert committee is playing a vital role in strengthening Bangladesh’s demographic resilience by fostering evidence-based dialogue, targeted research and inclusive policy discourse.
PPD’s recent consultative works on institutionalization of South-South Cooperation and population dynamics into national plan and policies in some selected countries like Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco can be shared with the committee members as well as the committees experiences can be transferred to other PPD member countries which may further create opportunities of knowledge generation and dissemination in advancing ICPD and SDGs agendas.
PPD acknowledged for the contribution of UNFPA to strengthening the committee and thanks to planning commission of Bangladesh to host this committee as national think tank force. Also, PPD is thankful to both UNFPA and Planning Commission of Bangladesh for engaging PPD in this committee as expert in the population field.
