Mussolini’s Italy awarded medals to women as an incentive to have more children-future soldiers for its fascist army. China, on the other hand, introduced an aggressive one-child policy in order to ensure its economic success. Throughout human history population planning has been either a war strategy or an economic policy. Fortunately, governments later acknowledged that without a human rights approach, no family planning program or population policy can work. This rights based approach was first adopted in 1968 during the International Conference on Human Rights at Tehran, which stated that “[…] couples have a basic human right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and a right to adequate education and information in this respect.” This right in its essence is linked to women empowerment and poverty alleviation. It guarantees a woman’s independence to choose how many children she’d have, and when she’d have them. A violation of this righ...