Bosnian Baby Starts Life as No. 6,000,000,000

At U.N. headquarters, a population clock heralded the world’s 6 billionth human among the 370,000 babies born Tuesday, many of them destined for a future of poverty and illiteracy.

“As we mark this day, the central question we face is not simply how many people will live on this planet but how they will live,” President Clinton said in Washington.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan marked the day by honoring a boy, to be named Adnan, born two minutes past midnight to Fatima Mevic in a Sarajevo hospital, as the world’s symbolic 6 billionth person.

“The birth today of the 6 billionth person on the planet--a beautiful baby boy--in a city returning to life, to a people rebuilding their homes, in a region restoring a culture of coexistence after a decade of war--should light a path of tolerance and understanding for all people,” Annan said.

Parades were held in Bangladesh, rallies in London and a series of events in China, which has the world’s largest population at 1.25 billion people.

In Beijing, officials said the world’s population would have reached 6 billion much sooner if the government had not imposed a controversial one-child policy about 20 years ago.