Joseph Chamie is Director of the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat in New York and was the Deputy Secretary-General for the 1994 International Conference for Population and Development.
Mr. Chamie received his doctoral degree in population from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has worked in various regions of the world, specializing primarily in South Asia and Western Asia. He has worked in national programmes dealing with health and family planning issues. He has first-hand experience with the diverse problems of less developed countries as well as the more developed nations. For example, he lived for several years in a rural Indian village working in health and family planning; he also lived in areas of civil conflict, having spent six years with the United Nations in Beirut, Lebanon. He has also conducted research and taught at universities in the United States and abroad.
He has spent more than 20 years with the United Nations, both overseas and at Headquarters in New York. During this time he has been responsible for a variety of activities, including (a) estimates and projections of population; (b) assessing national population policies; (c) analysis of demographic trends; (d) population and development issues; and (e) international conferences on population and the World Population Plan of Action. In addition to completing many studies issued under the United Nations authorship, he has also published numerous studies in his own name in such areas as fertility, marriage, family planning, population estimates and projections, international migration and population policy.
