For Immediate Release:	July 16, 2004
For More Information:	Afshin Mohamadi, Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Afshin.Mohamadi@mail.house.gov, 202-225-7944
Sponsor Organization:	Office of Representative Carloyn Maloney
"The world's neediest women and children are again paying the price for the president's reelection campaign to play to his far-right base"
WASHINGTON, DC - Today, the State Department announced that President Bush has once again stopped the United States from contributing to UNFPA (the United Nation's Population Fund). Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14), who has led the Congressional effort to resume the U.S. contributions to UNFPA that have been withheld for three years, said that women and children worldwide will continue to suffer because of a small right-wing constituency to whom the president is appealing. "The world's neediest women and children are again paying the price for the president's reelection campaign to play to his far-right base," said Maloney. "He could have chosen our compromise to spend the money on obstetric fistula, but instead he chose to go way out of the mainstream and appeal to the right-wing. "Once again, it's the U.S. against the world - only the U.S. is withholding funds. Our country's credibility is lying on the floor. I don't think women can handle much more of this president's 'Compassionate Conservatism.'" Since 2001, Congress has appropriated money to contribute to UNFPA each year, and each year the administration has withheld that contribution, invoking the Kemp-Kasten provision. The administration claims UNFPA supports the Chinese government in forced sterilizations and coercive abortions - a claim that was flatly refuted by the State Department's own fact-finding team. In April, Maloney and 10 colleagues offered a compromise, urging the president to direct the U.S.'s contribution to UNFPA specifically to the UNFPA's Campaign to End Fistula (http://www.house.gov/maloney/press/108th/20040414FistulaCompromise.htm). Obstetric fistula is a condition that arises from poor pre-natal care and results in horrific and debilitating vaginal and intestinal injuries in women and, often times, stillborn babies. One of UNFPA's missions is to combat fistula. FACT SHEET UNFPA, THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND CHINA Updated July 16, 2004 Here are the facts of about UNFPA in China - the alleged reason for the Bush administration de-funding UNFPA: --The UNFPA program in China does not support abortion or any coercive population control policies. Rather, it is working to reform the system into a voluntary family planning program in 32 Chinese counties as a model for the rest of the country's one billion people. --In 2002, the Bush administration withdrew $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA, saying agency work in China came under the "Kemp-Kasten" provision. In 2003, $25 million was withheld. --Kemp-Kasten authorizes a cut in funding 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 made that finding, arguing that UNFPA's provision of computers and automobiles in China eased government management of its one-child policy. --The finding ignored the State Department's own investigative team's report in 2002 that "no evidence" linked UNFPA to any coercive programs, and a British team's finding that UNFPA's pilot China Country Program 4 (CP4) was "a force for good" in China. --Meanwhile, studies now show that UNFPA CP4 program has greatly improved the situation where it has operated since 1998. UNFPA is a force for good: --Female sterilization has declined by 16 percent in the 32 counties. --Contraceptive prevalence is up to 90 percent. --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 because of this work, "800 other [Chinese] counties also removed the target and quota system and tried to replicate the UNFPA project 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, CP5, despite stiff new requirements for participating areas: they must address sex-ratio imbalances that are heavily skewed in favor of boys, promote access for under-served groups, improve AIDS prevention work, and ease the use of fees levied on families with more than the planned number of children. --In part at UNFPA insistence, China has begun to give new and urgent attention to efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. --Congressional hearings established that the legal basis for U.S. cuts in funding for UNFPA in 2002 and 2003 rested on outdated Chinese provincial regulations that have been phased out, and upon serious errors in translation of Chinese documents. --Except for the United States, UNFPA's entire executive board of 36 countries strongly supports UNFPA work in China, reasoning correctly that engagement is a more productive policy than simple complaint. --No other country or human rights group has ever had anything but praise for UNFPA's work in China. And if China reneges on any of its agreements with UNFPA, the program will be suspended. --Since 1993, when the Clinton administration re-funded UNFPA, ending the drought of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, UNFPA has held U.S. funding in a separate account to ensure that none of it goes to China. That means U.S. funding cuts punish no one in China but hurt only the people of other countries --UNFPA is often the only international provider of reproductive health and family planning care and services in many developing countries. UNFPA works in 140 countries, many of which get no assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The lost $34 million in 2002 alone 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. Is it right that so many people should suffer because a few cars and computers were sent to China? Those are in fact used to monitor quality of care and adherence to human rights. ###