POPULATION: Hillary Clinton Defends US on Reproductive Rights

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

THE HAGUE, Feb 9 1999 (IPS) - Hillary Rodham Clinton was in her element at The Hague Tuesday, just 24 hours after attending King Hussein’s funeral in Jordan and during the same day that the U.S. Senate began deliberations on her husband’s impeachment trial.

The first lady warmed to her task at the Population Forum here in defending the White House’s commitment to furthering reproductive rights and dealing with population issues – despite the fact that the United States cut funds for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

The First Lady pledged that the White House would push for 25 million dollars in voluntary funding for UNFPA for next year; she she honoured women who spoke up for their reproductive rights and discussed the need to educate and empower women worldwide as part of any population effort. Underlying all this was the implicit message to women from the South that, regardless of funding shortfalls, Washington was listening.

Clinton provided the keynote speech at the five- day conference in The Hague – called to review progress since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo. She took a firm stance that all population efforts must involve the informed consent of women.

“Government has no place in the personal decision a woman makes on whether to bring her child into the world,” Clinton said. “That is a decision that has to be made freely and responsibly, without government coercion.”

Such remarks garnered Clinton applause at the Hague Forum, but have found little favour in the U.S. Congress, where the Republican majority has tried to curtail U.S. womens’ abortion rights. Congress successfully blocked UNFPA funding last year despite President Bill Clinton’s support for UN population efforts.

The first lady asserted that the proposed 25 million-dollar voluntary contribution for UNFPA would “send a strong signal that the United States supports the ICPD,” but she reflected awareness of the political reality.

“I hope Congress approves it,” she said of the president’s funding request, dryly noting that such parliamentary approval does not always happen.

At a time when President Clinton’s impeachment was being considered in the Senate, she did not need to underscore the challenge faced by the White House in obtaining money for the causes it wanted to support. But her speech here shrewdly outlined a way forward for the UNFPA funding by combining praise with the agency’s efforts to reform its policies in China with criticism of the pro-natalist policies adopted by Nicolae Ceaucescu’s government in Romania.

On the one hand, Clinton was able to contrast China’s “one- child” policy – that has been labelled “draconian” by Republican politicians for its penalties on women seeking larger families – with Romania’s policies under Ceaucescu, where a programme to compel women to bear as many as five children was just as coercive and dehumanising. That approach disarmed one major Republican tactic: to link totalitarianism with birth control.

On the other hand, Clinton could laud UNFPA’s intention to open up a pilot programme in 32 Chinese counties designed to monitor Beijing’s population efforts and ensure no quotas or targets were involved. That could open up a way to defuse the controversy over UNFPA assistance to China and enable normal funding from Washington to resume without obstruction.

UNFPA Director Nafis Sadik appeared delighted both by Clinton’s high visibility on population issues at The Hague and by the commitment from Washington to obtain the 25-million-dollar package for the next fiscal year. Sadik noted that Clinton had showed her commitment to population issues by “coming here not once, but twice”, speaking on Sunday for a youth forum at The Hague and then returning later after King Hussein’s funeral.

Yet for all of Clinton’s eloquence and commitment Tuesday, U.S. funding for population issues remained low relative to the size of the U.S. economy, according to Population Action International.

The non-governmental group, in a report released this week, would have to triple its 1996 level of population-related expenditure, estimated at 638 million dollars, to reach its target for funding for the year 2000 outlined in the ICPD Programme of Action.

“We are not at the level we ought to be – we are running behind,” conceded Frank Loy, U.S. undersecretary of state for global services, during a discussion this week of Washington’s funding. But disputes over the level of U.S. assistance, and how much Washington was committed to women’s empowerment and other issues beyond simple population control, melted away when Hillary Clinton pledged the government she represented would do better.

For now, at least, delegates reviewing progress on reproductive rights since the Cairo conference could bask in the comforting words of the U.S. first lady that “my husband’s administration” remained committed “to meet the goals we have set.”