TEHRAN -- A poster exhibition promoting the campaign against the decline in the birth rate in Iran was opened in Tehran on Sunday by former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Speaking during the opening ceremony of the “Young Iran” exhibition, Jalili said, “Art is the best and most influential medium for disseminating pure revolutionary principles and thoughts, and sometimes it even achieves better results than political speeches.”
“For people like me, who have something to express, it is pleasant to find some people who are able to convey our words in the best and most efficient way,” he added.
The exhibition was organized by the People’s Movement for Revolutionary Posters and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex, which is affiliated with the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization.
“The issue of the social harm of the decline in the rate of population growth is very serious,” Sarcheshmeh Managing Director Hojjatoleslam Mohammadreza Zaeri said at the ceremony.
He also stated that official statistics show that the abortion rate has tripled since 1991. According to Zaeri, over 250,000 abortions are officially recorded in Iran every year.
“In our society, we are facing some serious problems, for which we once censured the Europeans,” he stated.
Iran had been implementing a policy of preventing population growth through birth control for several years until October 2013, when Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei expressed concern over Iran’s low birth rate and the fact that the population is aging and called for the adoption of measures to encourage Iranians to have larger families.
He asked Iranian scholars to thoroughly study the causes that have made Iranians prefer smaller families and to find ways to encourage them to have more children.
The Leader said that there are a number of social issues, such as unemployment, low salaries, and the fact that people are getting married at an older age, which have caused a decline in Iran’s birth rate.
“I believe that our country should not be a country of just 75 million people; our country [could be] a country of 150 million people… and even more,” he stated.
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