Experts warn Pakistan’s population policies lag behind demographic realities, call for data-driven, multi-sectoral reforms

ISLAMABAD, Aug 10 (APP):With Pakistan’s population having crossed 240 million and a median age of just 19, policymakers, health experts and researchers warned that the country’s demographic trajectory demanded an urgent shift from short-term fixes to robust, evidence-based strategies.

The stakeholders gathered here at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Monday at a seminar titled “Population Growth and Policy Coherence in Pakistan: Challenges and Pathways”, said a press release.

The seminar was steered by a wide-ranging discussion on institutional silos, regional implementation bottlenecks and community-level narratives shaping Pakistan’s population policy landscape.

Prof. Dr. Shezad Ali Khan, Executive Director, Health Services Academy, presented some of the seminar’s starkest findings, arguing that population dynamics could not be understood through a narrow medical lens alone. He said many pregnancies carried out through unsafe procedures in unregulated clinics that result in severe complications and sepsis.

Dr. Khan said that infants who are not breastfed were 11 times more likely to die of diarrhoea and five times more likely to die of pneumonia, reinforcing the need for a multi-sectoral approach that brings education and economic planning alongside healthcare.

Ms. Rabia Zafar, from National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS), drew attention to these macroeconomic projections, pointing to structural deficits in long-term financing, regional coordination and ground-level commitment. She urged policymakers to move from reactive planning to systematic, projection-based frameworks, stressing that only targeted investments in human capital, health and skill development would allow Pakistan to capitalise on its approaching demographic window.

Ms. Farah Ashraf, from United Nations Family Planning Association (UNFPA), highlighted the pressing need to dismantle fragmented departmental silos that continue to hamper coherent policymaking. Speaking on UNFPA-backed initiatives, she said unified data governance, harmonised coordination between federal and provincial stakeholders, and aligning national budgets with long-term demographic trends were fundamental prerequisites for effective policy implementation.

Dr. Shafqat Munir Deputy Executive Director (Policy) SDPI, noted that Pakistan’s 57 million women currently in their reproductive age were projected to surpass 100 million by 2050, while the country’s working-age population currently bolstered by a youth cohort making up 67 percent of the population was expected to grow from 164 million to 292 million over the same period. He added that Pakistan’s core challenge was not a shortage of policy statements, but inadequate long-term financing, uneven regional access and weak inter-departmental coordination.

Closing the discussion, Dr. Shafqat Munir reiterated SDPI’s commitment to evidence-based, multi-sectoral dialogue that bridged research and actionable governance, apprising participants that Pakistan must now move “from dialogue to implementation.”

He said the seminar forms part of its continuing research agenda on demographic and development policy in Pakistan.