Special characteristics of population policy in the Middle East and North Africa

The 22 countries stretching from Morocco, at the northwestern tip of Africa, to Afghanistan, on the rim of Asia, present a spectrum of positions on population ranging from governmental policy to increase population growth rates, to no explicit policy, to explicit policy to reduce them. High population growth rates throughout the area have evoked various interpretations and responses from these largely Islamic nations, which have been grouped for presentation into five arbitrary categories. There are some family planning services available in practically all the states, although laws vary from frank interdiction of contraception to governmental national family planning programs. There has been remarkable movement toward articulated national population policies in the past decade. This is likely to increase in the future despite problems due to intranational heterogeneity, the Arab-Israeli hostility, certain values of Islamic culture and theology, and the present paucity of demographic and developmental data.