ISLAMABAD: 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 demands an urgent shift from short-term fixes to robust, evidence-based strategies.
The stakeholders were speaking at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) seminar titled “Population Growth and Policy Coherence in Pakistan: Challenges and Pathways” held here on Monday.
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.
The keynote was delivered by Executive Director of the Health Services Academy Prof Dr Shezad Ali Khan whereas the panel discussion was participated by Rabia Zafar of the National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS) and Farah Ashraf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Dr Shezad Ali Khan presented some of the starkest findings, arguing that population dynamics cannot be understood through a narrow medical lens alone. He said an estimated 48 per cent of pregnancies in Pakistan were unwanted, contributing to roughly 380,000 abortions annually, many carried out through unsafe procedures in unregulated clinics that result in severe complications and sepsis.
Pakistan records around 700,000 stillbirths a year, highest in world; 42 out of every 1,000 babies die within their first month
On maternal and infant health, Dr Khan said Pakistan recorded around 700,000 stillbirths a year the highest number in the world while 42 out of every 1,000 babies die within their first month, the highest neonatal mortality rate globally since 1960.
He further noted that 20 out of every 100 couples faced unmet family planning needs due to structural resource shortages rather than community resistance, underscoring that population challenges stem from systemic failures rather than public failure.
Dr Khan cautioned against over-reliance on externally driven terminology that could provoke cultural resistance, calling instead for an indigenised narrative built around “population welfare,” with emphasis on maternal nutritional recovery and birth spacing through breastfeeding currently practiced by only 33 per cent of mothers.
He added that infants, who were 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.
Rabia Zafar 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.
Farah Ashraf 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.
Deputy Executive Director (Policy) SDPI Dr Shafqat Munir 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 per cent 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 Munir reiterated SDPI’s commitment to evidence-based, multi-sectoral dialogue that bridged research and actionable governance, telling participants that Pakistan must now move “from dialogue to implementation.”
He said the seminar formed part of its continuing research agenda on demographic and development policy in Pakistan.
Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026