Women have the key to the solution of population problem and if they have choices, they can play a crucial role in checking birth.

Sultan A Aziz, Director of United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) Asia and the Pacific Division, made the observations at a 'meet the press' in Dhaka yesterday.

"We have to give some realistic thoughts to empowering women, not only their social empowerment but political empowerment too," he said.

Aziz, now on a visit to Bangladesh to attend a UNFPA regional conference, commended the initiatives in Bangladesh to control population. But she noted there are some persistent issues that need to be addressed -- one is violence against women and the other is a high maternal mortality rate.

On UNFPA efforts, he said it is a small organisation and it has several development partners and governments. So it has to adhere to the visions of individual governments and its partners for its priority and vision.

Referring to meeting targets like reproductive health, Aziz said, " It's always not so easy to meet certain targets or vision. We have to be opportunistic to meet as much of that vision as possible."

On reducing maternal mortality to a certain level, he said the ideal situation will be to address all problems relating to population issues but there are priority options for a government. So one will get more attention over the other, he added.

Speaking about the role of imams in the communities, Aziz said, they must also act as 'informed social mobilisers'.

"We have tremendous challenges ahead, particularly on issues like violence against women, human trafficking and HIV/AIDS which are devastating against women, " he said.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of UNFPA in Bangladesh, and Nurul Amin, assistant representative of UNFPA, also spoke at the press conference.