Exploring how young people across continents face different barriers to the same fundamental choice
By Young Hong, Deputy Regional Director, UNFPA East and Southern Africa
I never imagined that one day I would be advocating for the right to have children, while listening to young people across continents tell me why they feel they cannot.
From the misty foothills of Nepal, where I once worked with adolescent girls rebuilding their lives after child marriage, to the bustling cities of South Korea, where couples delay or forgo parenthood under the weight of economic pressure, and now to the vibrant communities of East and Southern Africa, where young people are navigating early pregnancies they never planned, one truth permeates across these regions. The power to choose if, when, and how to start a family remains out of reach for far too many.
In South Korea, many young people are delaying or abandoning the idea of having children not because they don’t want to, but because housing costs, job insecurity, and social pressures make parenthood feel unattainable. Meanwhile, in Malawi and across much of East and Southern Africa, young people are being pushed into parenthood far too soon, without the knowledge or support to make informed decisions.
Two vastly different realities yet both point to the same crisis: a crisis not of fertility, but of choice. Across Asia, and especially in my home country, we’re witnessing what headlines call a birth rate crisis. But the real crisis is deeper and more human – it’s a crisis of opportunities, of choice, of agency. When systems fail to support young people whether by denying them access to contraception or the conditions to raise a family with dignity, the result is the same: lives shaped by limitations, not aspirations.
When I recently moved to East and Southern Africa as UNFPA’s new Deputy Regional Director, I was struck by the contrast. Here, the challenge is not too few births, but too many too soon. There is a young woman named Amina in rural Tanzania, just 16, already a mother. Her pregnancy wasn’t planned, it was the result of a lack of information, contraception, limited access to quality education, or even immediate economic need, and a world where saying no wasn’t always an option.
Two regions. Two stories. One truth. Around the world, too many young people are being denied the power to choose their own futures.
World in a mirror
According to UNFPA’s State of World Population 2025 report, 1 in 5 people under age 50 expect they will not have the number of children they want. In Asia, many delay or forgo parenthood due to crushing housing costs, rising education cost, limited child care support, job insecurity, climate anxiety, and persistent gender inequality. In Africa, particularly in our region, nearly 72 million youth are not in school, employment or training, and 1 in 3 say they or their partner have experienced unintended pregnancy. These are not opposing trends, but they are mirror images of the same systemic failure.
And yet, young people remain at the center of public debates. In East Asia, this generation is labeled selfish for choosing careers over children. In East and Southern Africa, girls continue to struggle to live with the life-time consequences of pregnancy they did not understand. In both cases, youth are blamed for demographic shifts they did not design, which they are burdened from fixing without the resources, knowledge, rights, or respect.
Turning the world around
We need to flip this reality. The solution to so-called population crises is not coercion or blame – it’s care. It’s trust. It’s an investment.
UNFPA is doing just that. In Zambia, we’re supporting youth-led centers where young people access comprehensive sexuality education and speak openly about their dreams. In South Sudan, mobile clinics reach girls in conflict zones with reproductive health services. In Lesotho, young men are stepping up as champions for family planning. And later this year, UNFPA will launch a global Youth Reproductive Choices Survey to listen, not prescribe, what young people need to thrive.
One young activist in Nairobi said, “We’re not afraid to have children. We’re afraid we won’t have a future to raise them properly.” That fear, whether whispered in a café in Seoul or shouted from a township in Johannesburg, must guide our response.
That means policies grounded in fairness across generations. It means affordable housing, quality education, and decent jobs for youth. It means dismantling online misogyny and supporting parental leave not just for mothers, but for fathers too. It means ensuring that contraception is available without shame, and that fertility treatments are accessible without ruinous costs. It means the society believes in young people and respects their decisions.
As a Korean, as a UNFPA leader, and yes, as someone named Young, I believe in youth. Not just as an age, but as a force: dynamic, hopeful, and deserving of choice.
This World Population Day, let’s stop framing young people as a demographic problem. Let’s see them as the designers of their own future that is fair, inclusive, and sustainable. Whether in Seoul or Seke, Lusaka or Busan, it’s time to trust them. To listen. To give them the power to plan their families and their lives on their own terms.
Because when we do, we don’t just solve population challenges. We build a better world.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UNFPA – East and Southern Africa.
