By Beyza Binnur Donmez
GENEVA (AA) - The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) on Tuesday said Ukraine’s population has declined by an estimated 10 million since 2014 and that the situation "got worse" after Russia's war began.
Florence Bauer, the UNFPA regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told a UN briefing in Geneva that 8 million of the total have declined since the beginning of the Moscow-Kyiv war in 2022.
"This also presents a huge loss in human capital – human capital that is urgently needed for recovery and for building Ukraine’s future," Bauer said.
She underlined that since 2022, the birth rate plummeted to one child per woman -- "the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world."
Meanwhile, millions of people have been displaced internally within the country and some 6.7 million externally as refugees, she noted.
Some regions have been depopulated with young people leaving, the regional director said, and added that a significant number of people have died as a direct result of the war.
"To effectively plan for Ukraine’s recovery, a population census is urgently needed, once security allows," she said, noting that the last census was conducted in 2001, making updated demographic data "critical."