The Bush administration is undermining international efforts to use conferences such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development to improve health care and family planning for women in under-supported rural areas, says a recent report in The New York Times.
Last month the United States cut $34-million in funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and is now insisting that documents at next week’s summit be purged of phrases like “reproductive health services” because of fears that they will encourage abortion.
US funding was stopped because of concerns about the UNFPA’s role in China. The US’s lobby of anti-abortion groups campaigned against the UN programme because it said it encouraged abortion and was supporting China’s one-child-a-family policy.
The cut went ahead in spite of a report by a US investigative team sent to China, which found that the UNFPA was not supporting coercive abortion.
Thoraya Obaid, the UNFPA’s executive director, condemned the decision.
“Women and children will die because of this decision,” she said at the UN headquarters in New York shortly after the decision was announced. “UNFPA has not, does not and will not ever condone or support coercive activities.”
The UNFPA provides HIV/Aids prevention and prenatal care, as well as birth control, to thousands of women in 140 countries. Its priorities include preventing teen pregnancy and providing reproductive health care and education to remote areas. The fund also works to improve the status of women.
This is the first time the agency has been denied funding for non-budgetary reasons.
The New York Times reported on August 16 that US President George W Bush’s decision has led to the cancelling of an emergency obstetric-care programme in Burundi that was due to start this year. In Burundi only a quarter of births are attended by a midwife and one in eight women die in childbirth.
A programme in Algeria to train midwives has also been cancelled, along with a centre to fight Aids in Haiti and a programme to reduce death during childbirth in India.
Family planning programmes help reduce maternal and infant mortality by helping women space pregnancies. They also diagnose, treat and prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Family planning also helps reduce abortions by helping women avoid unintended pregnancies.
“Balanced population growth benefits the world and the goal of sustainable development so that there are enough resources to meet the needs of current and future generations,” says Obaid.
The UNFPA started a five-year programme in South Africa in January that will channel $7,5-million into curbing the spread of HIV/Aids, wealth inequalities and violence against women and children.