Dear Mrs Bellamy, We are concerned by the extent to which the UN agencies, including UNICEF, will not say publicly and act on, what so many thoughtful people, including many of their officers, commonly say in private. They won't discuss demographic entrapment publicly because it is officially taboo. You will remember that a population is demographically trapped [1] if it has exceeded, or is projected to exceed the combination of: (a) the carrying capacity of its own ecosystem, (b) its ability to produce goods and services which it can exchange for the food and other necessities from elsewhere in the world, and (c) its ability to migrate to other ecosystems. A severely trapped population faces the three tragedies of entrapment in varying combination.

           (i) Become progressively stunted, and/or starve.

           (ii) Die from disease.

           (iii) Slaughter itself or its neighbours as it implodes into social chaos. Whether stunting and starvation, or violence and slaughter, are the outcomes is likely to depend on whether there are already tensions between groups in society.

           In the 1970s UNICEF and WHO devised the `political direction' called Primary Health Care. [2] At present there is no `political direction'. You and the leaders of the other UN agencies now need to devise one which is even more far reaching and which grapples with entrapment. The major lack of a powerful and realistic `political direction' is shown by Rwanda, which we believe is demographically trapped.

           One of the foundations of the taboo is the link between recognizing entrapment in the South, and excessive consumption in the North. You will therefore have to find some way of creating an alliance within the UN system, so that both these issues can be tackled at the same time as part of the same overall `political direction':

           (i) You could recognize entrapment, devise a `political direction' that would manage creatively the tensions that will be generated, and provide the leadership that the world so badly needs. The uproar that might result is the only thing that could possibly moderate Northern lifestyles and Southern fertility.

           (ii) You could persist with double-think, [1] and so let the chasm between `official reality', and the `reality of the real world' steadily widen. If so, UNICEF's relevance and purpose in the world will steadily diminish. We hope that you will find a way of challenging the current international consensus, so supinely accepted at the Cairo Population Conference last year, that the `two-child paradigm' is adequate. Rwanda shows how flawed it is.
 

The 2-child paradigm is that if all the unmet need for family planning is eventually met, and a 2-child norm eventually achieved, no matter when this happens:

           (i) it will be demographically sufficient to sustain high consumption lifestyles world-wide,

           (ii) there will be no demographic disaster, in that no account need be taken of carrying capacity limitations or of entrapment. This is the unstated official position of the UN agencies and orthodox demography. Private disagreement with this paradigm is however widespread. Three heads of divisions in WHO organized an unofficial seminar at which there was a consensus that entrapment is a serious risk for many countries. Africa's most eminent demographer [3] will admit that, for at least two thirds of sub-Saharan Africa's 36 states, the possibility of "...interacting economic and demographic transitions is pretty bleak...", but neither he nor demographic orthodoxy dare consider the consequences of their not interacting, or elaborate on the disasters facing the trapped, or discuss the radical changes that are now needed to deal with them. The unorthodox entrapment paradigm holds that there already is demographic disaster in Rwanda, and there will soon be much more elsewhere. This is a potential time bomb for large sections of humanity.

Figure. This is the 'elegant mathematical model' referred to above.  [11]  Nutritional levels  are in proportions of what they were in 1920.
 
 
 

The scale of the recent genocide in Rwanda is the result of entrapment. Two processes have certainly been at work - political tension and entrapment. Since it is unlikely that two completely independent processes of such magnitude would operate simultaneously, they probably have complex links. The critical link between them is the effect that population pressure has in promoting slaughter. It seems most unlikely that the "ordinary" level of slaughter endemic in that region would have suddenly escalated ten fold in the way it did, if there had been ample land and jobs for everyone, and/or opportunities for migration, or an export oriented economy that provided enough jobs, food and consumer goods. The fact that slaughter reached its climax at exactly the point at which carrying capacity was expected to be exceeded seems unlikely to have been coincidental.
 
 

           (i) There is `genocidal fever', or the highly infectious social psychopathology, that, once killing is under way, turns apparently normal people into killers. When violence has begun there is a considerable temptation to slaughter your neighbour and seize his half hectare before he does the same.
 

           (ii) There is the systematic planning of genocide. Politically, the 1994 genocide was a planned attempt by the MRND government to retain power by massacring its opponents, but this time on a ten times larger scale than had been attempted in the region previously. It was the pathological reaction of a previously relatively benign government under acute stress, in which severe population pressure on all resources was a major factor.
 

           Had population pressure been less; had the coffee price not collapsed in 1989; had Rwanda manufactured competitive exports; or had sufficient aid continued to flow, jobs would not have been so scarce, and pressure on the social system by the landless unemployed would have been less intense. It is the concurrence of all these and other factors that made population pressure critical. It was inevitable that the pressure would express itself by reopening the existing tribal fault line.
 

Rwanda "...very difficult". At the Cairo population conference in 1994 there was a daily lecture from several of the world's most distinguished demographers. One of us (MK) put the Rwanda problem to each of them in turn. They all replied "...very difficult". We are locked into a position in which demographic entrapment is taboo, and in which further thought about what to do in Rwanda is left as "...very difficult".
 

       Rwanda has as it were `fallen off the edge of the world', it is a point of departure, a singularity where another way of looking at the world meets this one - a true impasse demographique where discussion ends. It is the interface where the `population problem' `out there' now increasing at the rate of about another Mexico annually, meets reality `down here', or rather `down there' - in Rwanda. The taboo on entrapment is maintained because it hides a view of the world that is frightening, particularly for its implications for Northern lifestyles. Faced by the many pressures in your new job, you might want to cut your teeth on something easier. There are indeed no easy answers, but there is one very difficult answer that has to be given a try.

-`Emergency disentrapment', the need for a uniquely rapid demographic transition. The slaughter of a million people has probably more or less returned Rwanda to within its carrying capacity. With a total fertility of 8.6 children per mother, the highest in the world, it will not remain there long. There is little hope of increasing Rwanda's carrying capacity, or of settling many of its people elsewhere in Africa, where other communities are likely to be only a little less trapped than Rwanda is itself, and proceeding in the same direction. Nor is there any real hope of Rwanda, a peasant community landlocked in the middle of Africa, being able to compete in manufactured exports with those of other countries. This leaves Rwanda facing the three entrapment tragedies at the average rate of 250,000 people a year, which is its annual population increment. [15]
 

           If indefinite and increasing food aid is excluded, the choice before intensely Catholic Rwanda is awesome - either 1-child families in the hope of a demographic transition of unprecedented speed, or more slaughter, starvation and disease. Rwanda is now too late for 2-child families. It is at the extreme of its carrying capacity, its population is young, and its ecosystem cannot accommodate the inherent demographic momentum of its population. Even if all mothers were to have only 2 children, Rwanda's population would continue to grow for at least a generation, although at a lower rate.

           There remains the extraordinary option of 1-child families. This was China's response to a much milder stage of entrapment. Rwanda's predicament is grave. In its immediate practical form the trilemma is "Should food aid to Rwanda continue?"

           The possibilities are:

            1.  To stop it now.

            2. To continue it for a time, and then for it to stop, as stop sometime it must. This will ultimately increase the slaughter and starvation.

            3. To continue it `on condition'.
 

           This is the position we take. We argue that food aid should continue on the condition: that entrapment is recognized by the UN agencies, and that the dilemma is put to RPF government of Rwanda. If the Rwandan Government accepts the need for an emergency demographic transition, then food aid should continue while this is put in hand. This requires at least: massive international assistance, a massive publicity campaign; the provision of all standard precoital and postcoital family planning methods including abortion (the Roman Catholic church not withstanding); acceptable incentives and penalties to ensure 1-child families (which these are, under particular conditions of entrapment, now needs urgent discussion); a huge number of family planning outlets; an increase of female (and male) education and employment; the creation of many more jobs through the aid financing of essential infrastructure; and an extensive programme of ecological repair.

           To put this into effect Rwanda now requires a new type of UN agency in Kigali, and it is here that you and UNICEF can play the lead role.

           This agency must:

           (i) fully grasp the reality of entrapment together with the need for an urgent demographic transition;

           (ii) encourage the Rwandans to do so too;

           (iii) reach agreed objectives in open meetings;

           (iv) distribute substantial quantities of carefully monitored funds to meet these objectives - conditionality in an extreme form.

           The major immediate task before UNICEF is to put such an agency in place, and to make Rwanda a `demonstration project' - to show that disentrapment is possible, and to encourage other trapped countries to act similarly and to disentrap themselves.

           To even suggest that one of the world's most catholic countries, with the world's highest fertility, should try to achieve the world's lowest fertility, is indeed bizarre - but what are the alternatives, especially with Burundi already following Rwanda, and with Malawi, parts of Kenya and West Africa perhaps not far behind? The pattern of the entrapment alternatives may be different elsewhere, but their aggregate effects are likely to be similar. African populations are still doubling about every 20 years.

           Much is made of the fact that fertility is starting to fall in some communities. The fact that it is rising in others is usually forgotten. What matters is the ultimate size of a community at the end of its demographic transition, in relation to the carrying capacity of its ecosystem (present and future), and its ability to trade and migrate. This is barely thought about. The reason why the numbers of the trapped remain conjectural is that studies of entrapment are taboo - agencies do not want to fund them, and many universities are unwilling to host them.

           This not the place to debate the probability of a world, in which grain stocks [17]  and per capita grain production [18] are falling, being able to feed a population that is expected to double and could triple. We are ourselves divided on this issue and nobody knows. The point is that present mechanisms are too weak to move food and other necessities from potential producers to poor consumers. Poor consumers in trapped communities, who don't reduce their fertility are therefore likely to be in a position in which they starve, or slaughter one another.

           We are thus in a situation in which the greatest threat to the firstborn in a family is more brothers and sisters, especially in families which, as in Rwanda, expect to have eight children.

          UNICEF has therefore to come to terms with the fact that the greatest threat to the global child is 10,000 more of himself or herself each hour.

           We have to ask you therefore: Do you accept this, or don't you? If you do, what are you going to do about it?

           If you don't, how can you and your staff justify your refusal to accept it in intellectually convincing terms? We and the world look forward to your reply in these pages. [That reply has never come. Ed]

Shifting the 2-child paradigm. The reason why thought on Rwanda ends with the words "...very difficult", and why the 2-child paradigm is so hard to shift, is that it is locked into so many interlinked ethical, political, and economic aspects of the status quo. [18]
 

• The North realizes that if it questions southern fertility, its own 50 fold greater per capita resource consumption will also be questioneed.
• The advertisement and media driven market economy, to which there is no viable alternative anywhere on the horizon, sees entrapment as threatening the continual augmentation of unsustainable Northern lifestyles, and the employment they now provide.
• The elite rich in both North and South do not want their lifestyles questioned.
• The `prolife' movement opposes the abortions that are necessary when precoital family planning methods fail.
• The Holy See opposes both abortion and most methods of family planning.
• The `human rights movement', sees such rights as absolute, and fails to realize that the ecological constraints on man take no account of our rights or of our ethics.
• Orthodox demography is strongly antimalthusian.

            

          The UN agencies maintain a fragile coalition of many of the above interests, and fear the uproar that a change of policy might cause. Overall, there is a widespread fatalism which feels that there is nothing to be done. If the 2-child paradigm is to be shifted, change has to take place in all these.

            

           The countervailing forces are admittedly weak, however powerful the intellectual case may finally turn out to be. There are elements of civil society in the North who care about equity. There are elements of the green movement and of idealistic youth. There are probably many people in the South who would like entrapment recognized, if their views could be known.

               As the Commission on Global Governance recommended, UNICEF is going to have to generate a new set of alliances within the UN system, and be itself the major agent of change within that system. You will have to help the specialized agencies move from their present rather narrow multisectoral modernization roles - more health, more education, more agricultural output, etc. - to a much more critical awareness of what is implied by a gentle mutually dependent world; a world which makes the long-run survival of the whole globe - humanity and all other living things - possible. As a change of consciousness dawns in the world and its agencies, it will be followed by the necessary `nuts and bolts' - measures to reduce energy consumption and increase equity in its use, heavy taxes on capital transfers, arms sales and advertising...

           President Chiluba of Zambia was recently asked how many children he had. He replied, somewhat overstating his continent's fertility: "I have nine, I am just like any other African".  [20] No African leaders appear to realize what is in store - not for them, but for their communities, if African mothers continue to have six children or more. Why don't they realize this? Because nobody dare tell them.

           We reckon that much public discussion of entrapment could hugely reduce fertility. This would at least mitigate the 3 entrapment tragedies. Meanwhile, slaughter has already started in Kenya, so far only up to 20 people at a time, the Kikuyu versus the Masai at Kajiado, and the Kalenjin at Molo, with the Kikuyu at risk being transported to camps (name of eyewitness supplied to the editor). Time is indeed running out fast.

           The world faces a dilemma: either it thinks seriously about 1-child families, or it accepts the tragedies of entrapment. If it is argued that 1-child families would appeal to those of an authoritarian bent, we argue that the other horn of the dilemma, which is to deliberately let the status quo persist, or to let the dilemma decide itself by default, would appeal to those of a sadistic bent, since it would allow the tragedies of entrapment to multiply. If it is argued that 1-child families are impractical, we argue that there is no practical ideal solution. If there was, there would be no dilemma. We have however now got to the point at which they appear to be theoretically necessary to avoid the three tragedies. Any substantial progress towards the 1-child norm will mitigate those tragedies.

           Some middle way has to be found between the human rights abuses of Rwanda which stem in large part from no population control, and those occasional ones  [21] reported from China which are the result of too much zeal for it. UNICEF has a role - perhaps the central one - in opening the dialogue and in securing for the poor of the world more time to stabilize their populations, with all the implications this has for Northern lifestyles. It is for you Mrs Bellamy and your staff to accept or refuse that challenge. Either way you will be judged by history. It is therefore important that you be clear about why you make the decisions you do. We wish you and UNICEF well.