House Panel Takes Steps to Restore UNFPA Funding

Women’s Lives in the Balance as Congressional Deliberations Enter Crucial Phase

Additional Information:

Latest media coverage Transcript of the State Dept Briefing 7/22/02 Determination that Kemp-Kasten Precludes Further Funding to UNFPA Summary of the US Delegation Report on UNFPA in China The UK Report of UNFPA Operations in China Contact an Expert: Sarah Craven, UNFPA Stirling Scruggs, UNFPA Rachael Pine, EngenderHealth Terri Bartlett, PAI Sally Ethelston, PAI Related Links: Statement by Thoraya A. Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA Statement by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Rep. Carolyn Maloney's website with background information on UNFPA Statement of Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-NY) Statement by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) NGO Reactions

September 18, 2002 – Last week, the House Appropriations Committee passed legislation that earmarks funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and modifies slightly restrictions that were used by President Bush to justify defunding the world’s leading multilateral family planning agency.

For almost 20 years, US appropriations language has included the so-called “Kemp-Kasten” amendment, which requires that the government ensure that no US funding is provided to any organization that “supports or participates in the management of” a program of coercive family planning. Legal experts have criticized this language as vague – essentially because it is unclear whether the intent is to prohibit funding to an organization that provides any support (e.g. financial) to a coercive program, or that actively supports and participates in such a program. UNFPA has been caught in the vise of these ambiguities.

An expert panel assembled by the Bush Administration determined recently that UNFPA does not support, participate or condone coercion in China and in fact is a force for human rights. The Bush Administration chose to ignore this recommendation and the reality and instead to interpret UNFPA’s mere presence in China as support for coercion and a violation of Kemp-Kasten. For more information about the Administration’s decision, click here

The action by the House Appropriations Committee, which was spearheaded by Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) offers some hope for restoration of UNFPA funding. The Committee earmarked $25 million for UNFPA and added language that conditions US support on UNFPA not providing assistance directly to China’s State Family Planning Commission (SFPC). The Bush Administration has rationalized its decision to cut off UNFPA funding on the basis of the agency’s support of the SFPC (ironically, concern about t China’s coercive practices did not prevent the Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services from providing direct funding to the Chinese Ministry of Health, which oversees the SFPC, for HIV/AIDS prevention efforts).

It is unclear whether the Committee’s action would compel President Bush to fund UNFPA, but the language clearly is a step toward restored funding. Further action and clarification may occur through amendments to the legislation when it is taken up by the full House of Representatives in the coming weeks.

In the US Senate, the Appropriations Committee, led by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), has passed a spending bill that earmarks $50 million for UNFPA, and rewrites and clarifies the “Kemp-Kasten” language. The new language passed by the Committee precludes US funding for any organizations that are found to be directly involved in coercive family planning activities.

Efforts in Congress to restore funding for UNFPA echo widespread negative reaction across the country to President Bush’s decision. Editorial and opinion writers across the United States have sharply criticized the cut-off in UNFPA funding. Editorials and commentaries have appeared in more than newspapers all over the country – from South Carolina to Washington; Texas to Michigan.

Noting that “most administrations draw the line at compromises that cost lives,” the Washington Post’s David Broder wrote July 28th that the “Bush administration now has crossed that line – not accidentally, but deliberately.” Broder called the decision a “shame” for all Americans. The Washington Post’s own editorial called the decision a “blow to poor women.”

The New York Times called the decision “an inexcusable sop to right-wing anti-abortion activists in an election year,” noting that the withdrawal of US funding will reduce the agency’s budget by more than 12 percent and harm women’s lives all over the world.

Echoing the comments in many other editorials, the Dallas Morning News called the decision “another wrongheaded slap at multilateral cooperation.” The Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette wrote that “Bush is behaving like a puppet of hidebound, puritanical, narrow-minded groups who are out of step with most of America, and the world.”

The Miami Herald characterizes the decision as “willfully irrational” and a threat to “the ideals that the administration purportedly champions and suggest that the president’s priorities are with politics, not policy.”

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