Population and Social Issues
The decade saw further expansion of LGBT rights, with many European, Oceanic, and American countries recognizing civil unions and partnerships and a number of countries extending civil marriage to same-sex couples. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. By 2010, same-sex marriage was legal and performed in 10 countries worldwide, although only in some jurisdictions in Mexico and the United States.
Population continued to grow in most countries, in particular in developing countries, though overall the rate slowed. According to United Nations estimates, world population reached six billion in late 1999, and continued to climb to 6.8 billion in late 2009. In 2007 the population of the United States reached 300 million inhabitants, and Japan's population peaked at 127 million before going into decline.
AIDS continued to expand during the decade, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. New diseases of animal origin appeared for a short time, the mad cow disease in 2003 and the bird flu in 2007, but they appeared not to be dangerous for man. On the contrary, the swine flu was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in 2009.
Read more about this topic: 2000s (decade)
Famous quotes containing the words population, social and/or issues:
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)
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“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”
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