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Bush Administration Withholds UNFPA Funds For Third Straight Year
CLICK HERE to read a Press Statement by Richard Boucher, Spokesman, U.S. Dept. of State
CLICK HERE to read a statement by UNFPA
Washington DC, July 16, 2004—For the third year in a row, the Bush administration today withheld $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, in fiscal 2004, because of baseless allegations that the family planning agency is complicit in forced abortions in China.
In a statement, UNFPA called the decision “regrettable,” noting that the lost funds could have helped prevent up to 2 million unwanted pregnancies and nearly 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths. "UNFPA has not, does not and will not ever condone or support coercive activities of any kind, anywhere," said UNFPA head Thoraya Obaid.
At the same time, UNFPA critics in Congress pledged that the diverted funds would still go “dollar for dollar” to other aid agencies to support reproductive health and family planning programs.
In a statement to Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell once again invoked the Kemp-Kasten law of 1987, which bars U.S. funds to any agency the president determines “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or sterilization.” The decision came despite the State Department’s own finding in a 2002 investigation that there was “no evidence” to support any such charge.
“The United States recognizes that the UN Population Fund intends to promote a transition to a voluntary family planning program in China,” administration spokesman Richard Boucher said in another statement, adding that funding would be considered if future UNFPA or Chinese policy changes warrant.
Reaction in Congress was swift. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said, “The world's neediest women and children are again paying the price for the president's reelection campaign,” where the decision was a “play to his far-right base." Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) deplored the finding, saying, “Once again, nonsense has won out over common sense” in Bush administration foreign policy.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), a leading UNFPA critic, argued that the U.S. Agency for International Development already provides developing countries $495 million in family planning assistance, and said, “the money that does not go to the UNFPA will be reprogrammed dollar-for-dollar for these kinds of services.” He quoted Powell as promising in his letter to Congress that “he wants to reprogram to family planning and maternal health care initiatives elsewhere around the world.”
Another prominent critic, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-NY), added that “Nobody will be denied anything” because of the funding cut. “It just does not go through the UN.”
In a 2002 legal defense of the president’s first decision to withhold funds, the State Department cited a “social compensation fee” required of Chinese families that have out-of-plan children. The analysis said the fee may in effect coerce mothers into abortions to avoid paying it. Because UNFPA’s voluntary family planning programs in 32 counties in China include computers and vehicles, the Chinese government is “supported” in its operations, and therefore Kemp-Kasten applies, the department argued.
Background
- In 2002, the Bush administration withdrew the $34 million that Congress appropriated for UNFPA, saying the agency’s work in China came under the so-called “Kemp-Kasten” language. In 2003, $25 million appropriated by a bipartisan congress was also withheld. The $34 million that Congress approved for FY04 remains in the balance while the Bush administration continues to deliberate whether or not to release the funds.
- Kemp-Kasten authorizes a cut if the president finds that an agency “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
- The Bush administration went ahead and made that finding even after ignoring its own investigative team’s 2002 report which underscored that “no evidence” linked UNFPA to any coercive programs. A British team’s investigation into the facts found that UNFPA’s pilot China Country Program 4 (CP4) was, indeed, “a force for good” in China.
New developments
Dramatic results show that UNFPA’s current program has greatly improved the situation in the 32 Chinese counties where it has operated since 1998. UNFPA is a force for good:
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Female sterilization has declined by 16 percent in the 32 counties, while contraceptive prevalence is up to 90 percent and the ratio of abortions to live births is now below the U.S. level. Infant and maternal mortality rates are down and health checkup rates have doubled.
- The State Department’s 2004 Human Rights Report found that therefore, “800 other counties also removed the target and quota system and tried to replicate the UNFPA supported project model by emphasizing quality of care and informed choice of birth control methods.”
- Hundreds of counties competed to be included in UNFPA’s new and expanded China program for the next five years despite stiff new requirements for participating areas: each new county would be required to address sex-ratio imbalances, promote access for underserved groups, improve AIDS prevention work and ease the use of fees levied on families with more than the planned number of children.
- In part due to UNFPA’s urging, China has begun to give new and urgent attention to efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
A new opportunity
These developments should change the outcome of any rational debate within the Bush administration on whether to fund UNFPA. There are yet more reasons to restore the U.S. contribution:
- The lost $34 million could have prevented up to 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions and 4,700 maternal deaths, as well as 77,000 infant and child deaths annually.
- Since 1986, UNFPA has held U.S. funding in a separate account to ensure that none of it goes to China. That means that U.S. fund cuts punish no one in China but hurt only the people in the other 140 countries where UNFPA is working.
- UNFPA’s work in population and reproductive health including HIV and AIDS continues to carry indirect benefits to all Americans in terms of both security and economic imperatives in the global world we live in.
- Repeated surveys in the United States indicate that 70% of all American support international voluntary family planning.
More information:
Legislative Background: The Kemp-Kasten Amendment
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