Bush Administration Withholds UNFPA Funds for Fourth Straight Year

Click here to read the US State Department Press Statement regarding FY 2005 Funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

CONTACT:

Sarah Craven, UNFPA 202-255-7262 Afshin Mohamadi, Office of Rep. Carolyn Maloney 202-225-7944 Sarah Hemingway, Americans for UNFPA 212-297-5207

CLICK HERE to read statement by R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Dept. of State

CLICK HERE to read a statement by UNFPA

Click here to read the NGO Response to Sec. Rice's Decision

Washington DC, September 16, 2005—For the fourth year in a row, the Bush administration has withheld $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, because of baseless allegations that the family planning agency is complicit in forced abortions in China. The action came quietly in an unannounced letter that Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns sent Thursday afternoon to Congress. At about the same time, the Bush administration was joining in a consensus agreement at the United Nations World Summit in New York that asserted the goal of providing universal reproductive health care to the world’s women.

“This decision is disheartening because it contradicts clear evidence that UNFPA works hard to end coercion by proving the efficacy and superiority of the voluntary approach to family planning over any other alternative,” said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA’s executive director. “We receive funding from 166 nations that believe in strengthening UNFPA’s role as a leading voice for human rights in family planning, safe motherhood and AIDS prevention.”

Timothy E. Wirth, head of the United Nations Foundation, called the decision bad timing. “Ironically, President Bush called on nations to do more to combat the global AIDS pandemic and then defunded one of the world’s premier agencies combating the spread of HIV/AIDS,” he said.

Burns’ letter 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 on UNFPA’s fiscal 2005 funding came despite the State Department’s own finding in a 2002 investigation that there was “no evidence” to support any such charge. Of the withheld amount, $25 million will be transferred before the Oct. 1 end of the current fiscal year to “child survival and health fund programs,” Burns’ letter said. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said, "The president's extreme right-wing base is behind this decision - a decision that hurts the world's most impoverished women and children. The United States should be the world's leader in helping those who are most in need, but we are not, because of political games being played in Washington. UNFPA is an honorable and important organization, and it should have the full support of our nation.”

Background

• In 2002, the Bush administration withdrew $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA, saying the agency’s work in China came under the Kemp-Kasten language. In 2003, $25 million appropriated by a bipartisan Congress was also withheld. The $34 million that Congress approved for FY04 was withheld on the same grounds. The total withheld is now $127 million.
• 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.” Burns’ letter said, “I have determined that UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s birth-planning activities facilitates the Chinese government’s coercive abortion program. Therefore, the Kemp-Kasten amendment continues to preclude funding for UNFPA.”
• The Bush administration finding ignores its own investigative team’s 2002 report that found “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 instead “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. The UNFPA program in China was developed with the express purpose of moving China away from coercion, by providing evidence of a superior alternative. UNFPA is a force for good:

• Birth quotas and acceptor targets were lifted in these counties, because they had tended to encourage coercive enforcement, according to the 2002 U.S. State Department Human Rights report.
• Births with skilled attendance have increased.
• Knowledge of HIV/AIDS has risen from 75 to 93 per cent.
• Knowledge of effective prevention methods has remained at 90 per cent, while that of incorrect methods has fallen from 80 to 20 per cent.
• Knowledge of more than three modern contraceptives has risen from 73 to 99 per cent.
• Knowledge of natural methods has increased from 5 to 60 per cent.
• Surgical contraception has dropped from 45 to 30 per cent.
• Abortion rates have declined from 24 per 1,000 women to 10.
• Home-based childbirths have fallen from 47 to 19 per cent (national average: 40 per cent)
• Choice of contraceptive methods being made by clients has grown from 56 to 95 per cent.

A new opportunity

• 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.

UNFPA is the largest global source of multilateral funding for maternal health, safe delivery, and family planning programs. It provides help in 146 developing countries to:

• Help mothers deliver healthy babies through pre-natal care and safe delivery
• Enable couples to determine the number and spacing of their children through safe modern contraception
• Reduce HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections
• Provide emergency care for pregnant women in war and disaster situations.
• UNFPA does not support or provide abortion anywhere in the world–not one penny of its funding supports or promotes abortion.
• All UNFPA work is based solely on voluntary participation—UNFPA rejects coercion in any form in family planning.

More information:
Legislative Background: The Kemp-Kasten Amendment

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