POPULATION-US: New Committee to Push Congress on UNFPA Funding

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 1999 (IPS) - Prominent US population activists announced Tuesday the formation of a new committee to lobby the US Congress and public in support of goals set by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

Robin Chandler Duke, co-chairwoman of Population Action International and one of the leaders of the new group – the US Committee for the UN Population Fund – declared that Washington has “failed to live up to its commitments to support UNFPA”.

Duke said that while a blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-60) – had helped set up the population agency, the Republican-led Congress had since abandoned it.

The US Committee, whose board includes Duke, several longtime UN officials and former US Surgeon-General candidate Henry Foster, will push for the US support of UNFPA to return to past levels, she said.

Congress cut US funding for UNFPA from 35 million dollars in 1995 to 20 million dollars last year, before defunding the agency completely for this year, Duke noted. “Those cuts have occurred while the need for resources has skyrocketed,” she said.

“Inadequate funding for UNFPA could have potentially far- reaching consequences,” warned Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York. “Every year 600,000 women die in childbirth – that’s about one death each minute…Loss of US funding will mean that 870,000 women will be deprived of effective modern contraception.”

To prevent that prospect, Maloney, a Democrat, is sponsoring a bill in the House of Representatives designed to restore 25 million dollars in US funding for UNFPA next year, and 35 million dollars for 2001.

The bill has won 23 cosponsors in the 435-member House, including prominent Republicans like Maryland Representative Constance Morella.

Yet US funding for UNFPA remains a difficult goal, largely because of conservative opposition to the agency’s support of family planning in China and to perennial disputes between UNFPA and the Vatican over the distinction between contraception and abortion.

The China dispute was what led to last year’s funding cutoff, when a group of Republicans insisted that UNFPA’s support for “draconian” family planning practises in China – including allegations that the money was supporting a one-child-per-family policy from Beijing – rendered the agency off-limits.

During a tough political battle over funding UNFPA and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year, President Bill Clinton’s administration opted to push for the IMF funds, conceding a victory to the conservative bloc on UNFPA funding.

The momentum on the China issue, however, is now on UNFPA’s side. Nafis Sadik, the agency’s executive director, noted Tuesday that a programme to monitor independently 32 Chinese counties receiving UNFPA assistance has helped to ensure that the family planning programmes there are not used to enforce strict population quotas.

“It’s very transparent, very open,” Sadik said of the monitoring effort. “The United States itself can go and monitor (the county programmes) … From what I hear, they are fully satisfied with what we are saying.”

“The excuse for cutting UNFPA funding was to ensure that the US funds didn’t go to support China’s coercive family planning policies,” added Maloney.

“My bill makes sure that no US dollars go to China unless the president certifies that certain conditions are met, including that the programme is used for voluntary family planning…where the programme is independently monitored.”

The China flap is not the only hurdle the White House faces in restoring UNFPA funding.

Some hard-line Republicans, including Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, have accused UN agencies – including UNFPA and the UN High Commission for Refugees – of supplying “abortion on demand” in refugee camps, despite UNFPA policy which forbids any funding of abortions.

Such opposition is linked to the position of the Vatican, which has engaged in a long-running dispute with UNFPA over a variety of contraceptive services that Roman Catholic doctrine deems to be little different from abortion.

Most recently, the Holy See insisted that UNFPA support of “emergency contraception” – oral contraceptives which can be used within 72 hours after sexual encounters – is the same as a policy of encouraging actual abortive agents, such as the RU-486 pill. A Vatican official, speaking at a UNFPA review convened last month in The Hague, argued that any use of emergency contraceptives “cannot be considered as family planning”.

Sadik, however, argued that there is a clear scientific distinction between oral contraceptives used within 72 hours of intercourse – which prevent implantation of a woman’s eggs – and abortion-inducing devices like RU-486.

UNFPA, she said, makes its decisions on the technical advice of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which she noted intends to deliver its technical evaluation of emergency contraception Wednesday.

Agencies like WHO, UNFPA and UNHCR have underscored the uses of emergency contraception in helping to prevent abortions by halting unwanted pregnancies before any implantation occurs.

That technology especially helps refugee women, who often suffer from rape or from inadequate provision of family planning services.

One UNFPA official said on condition of anonymity, said the distinction between implantation and conception is blurred by the Catholic Church, whose doctrine on when life begins does not involve the implantation of eggs.

But as Sadik argued, the Holy See has often differed over other contraceptive technologies, such as intrauterine devices and Norplant implants, without taking into account the difference between what those devices do and abortion.