Mr. Speaker, the vast majority of the world's population is made up of young people who will come of age in the next millennium with little or no information about their sexual and reproductive health.
Annually two million people between the ages of five and fifteen are introduced into the global commercial sex market, the majority of them adolescent girls. Annually an estimated one in twenty adolescents contracts a sexually transmitted disease.
The United Nations Population Fund Report on the State of the World and the International Conference on Population and Development have said both developed and developing countries must work to remove legal, regulatory and cultural barriers to sexual and reproductive health so that adolescents are able to have better access to the information and services about their health.
Since July 11 is World Population Day, I call upon CIDA and colleagues on both sides of this House to use this occasion to support initiatives that promote the sexual and reproductive health needs of young people.