TESTIMONY OF DR. NICOLAAS H. BIEGMAN

United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Subcommittee on International Organizations and Terrorism

27 February 2002

 

 

Madame Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify this afternoon on the work of the United Nations Population Fund and specifically on its activities in China.  I am truly pleased and honored to share what I know with you today. 

 

Before I start, let me tell you a little about myself.  I served my country the Netherlands for 38 years in the Foreign Service.  Among many postings, I have been Ambassador to the United Nations and to NATO.  From 1988 to 1992, I was the Director-General for Netherland’s International Cooperation, managing and overseeing our foreign assistance program. 

 

While I knew the work of the United Nations Population Fund before I became Ambassador to the UN in 1992, I became better acquainted with UNFPA through my active involvement in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. I was the Vice-Chair of the preparatory process and I chaired many sessions of the Main Committee at the Conference itself in Cairo, where the last-minute negotiations took place.  After much push and pull, 179 governments, including the United States, approved a program of action, which continues to guide the work of United Nations Population Fund to this day.

 

The United Nations Population Fund plays a very specific role in developing countries.  It helps them to provide reproductive health and family planning services on the basis of informed individual decision.  This is the central guiding principle of the Programme of Action of the 1994 Cairo Conference, which, in effect, shifted the focus of population policy away from achieving demographic targets and quotas to promoting human rights and meeting the individual needs of women and men. 

 

Since the United Nations Population Fund is guided by and promotes the Programme of Action, it is committed to a range of internationally agreed human rights standards, including the right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children; to have the information and means to do so; and to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.  The ICPD Program of Action also states, and I quote: “In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” 

 

The countries that provide funding to the United Nations Population Fund, including the United States, insist that UNFPA follow these principles and that it carefully monitor its activities to ensure that all activities are not only in line with the ICPD Programme of Action, but that they are producing positive results.  In the case of the United States, its contributions are kept in a segregated account and not one cent of the U.S. contribution to UNFPA is spent in China.

 

UNFPA provides financial, technical and program assistance to 140 governments to help them carry out effective maternal and child health, reproductive health, and voluntary family planning programs.  In recent years, HIV/AIDS education and prevention has also become an important component of UNFPA’s programs in many countries.  All of the activities of the UN Population Fund are watched very closely by its Executive Board, which is composed of representatives from 36 governments.  The United States is an active and longstanding Board member.

 

The involvement of the United Nations Population Fund in any country is based on a written agreement between UNFPA and the government that must meet the internationally agreed standards and principles of the Cairo Conference.  These country work plans are carefully reviewed and approved by the intergovernmental Executive Board to ensure that they make efficient use of scarce resources to meet the pressing needs of recipient countries, and that they comply with the strict standards and policies that the world’s governments and the Executive Board have set for UNFPA.

 

The United Nations Population Fund is prohibited from providing support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world.  Written policy clearly states that the Fund is “not to provide assistance for abortion, abortion services, or abortion-related equipment and supplies as a method of family planning”.  The Fund is also prohibited from promoting or providing support for involuntary sterilization or coercive practices of any kind.  All of these principles and policies are spelled out explicitly in the Cairo Programme of Action and I vividly remember the negotiations that led to their final approval.

 

It is within this context that I was asked by the UN Population Fund to lead an independent international review team to investigate allegations linking the UN Population Fund to human rights abuses in China.  The crux of these allegations is whether UNFPA is violating its commitments under the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and acting directly against the express wishes of its intergovernmental Executive Board and its donors, including the United States.

 

The allegations were brought forward by the group Population Research Institute at a hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Relations on October 17, 2001.  They alleged that abuses had taken place by family planning workers in one of the counties in China that receives assistance from the UN Population Fund. 

 

I would like to state for the record that I accepted this invitation with an open mind.  Although I am familiar with the UN Population Fund and believe that its work has, on balance, been very helpful in the developing world, everyone who works on these types of issues understands that the possibility for abuse exists and must be vigilantly guarded against.  I traveled to China prepared to uncover and weigh the facts impartially and to respond fairly and accurately to whatever I might find.  I also believe that the delegation that accompanied me was open-minded and quite ready and able to identify any and all possible complicity by UNFPA in violating human rights.

 

Our investigation in China began on October 22, 2001 and lasted a total of five days.  I was accompanied by Ms. Noemi Ruth Espinoza-Madrid, the Deputy Ambassador of Honduras to the United Nations; Ms. Jana Simonova, Minister Counsellor of the Czech Mission to the United Nations, and Emolemo Morake, First Secretary of the Botswana Mission to the United Nations.

 

In preparation for this mission we endeavored to collect as much information as we could about the specific allegations that had been brought forward about the UNFPA program in China.  To aid our investigation, we requested specific information from the organization making the allegations via a direct telephone conversation and also through a written statement that they requested.  Unfortunately, they were either unwilling or unable to provide a response, so we had to rely upon the evidence and allegations made at the October 17^th hearing.

 

I also entered this mission with a very clear view of what my job was.  I was asked to look for evidence that UNFPA is linked to a coercive family planning policy in China.  I was not asked to simply look for human rights abuses.  The U.S. State Department documents an extensive array of human rights abuses in its annual Human Rights Report for China.  These allegations of abuse are horrendous and should be addressed as forcefully as possible.  The mission I led had a single goal: to see if we could uncover any credible evidence that the UN Population Fund violated the human rights of Chinese citizens or was complicit in any way in helping the Chinese Government violate the human rights of its citizens. 

 

Our investigation found absolutely no evidence that the UN Population Fund supports coercive family planning practices in China or violates the human rights of Chinese people in any way.  After we returned, we prepared a detailed report of our activities and findings, which is publicly available and I believe the members of the Subcommittee have copies of this report.

 

During our five-day investigation in China, we met with officials from UNFPA and the Chinese government, and with officials from the United States Embassy. We also visited a total of seven family planning clinics, service centers and hospitals in the county from which the allegations stemmed and also in another county that receives UNFPA funding.  As far as time permitted, we interviewed Chinese citizens at random – on the street, in family planning and mother and child health clinics, in villages – using two independent interpreters and without any Chinese government officials present.  Our random interviews with people on the street included over three hours of discussions.

 

Responses varied, but generally people believed that family planning policy in their area had been relaxed considerably in recent years and that the quality of care had improved.  No one expressed any grievances or complaints or knew of any abuses in recent years.  Such abuses had occurred in the past, they said, but not in the present.

 

The team also asked nearly every government official and family planning/reproductive health service provider whether they knew of recent abuses.  None said he did.  The team also asked these people if such abuses were possible.  They all said yes, such abuses were possible, but that those responsible would be punished in accordance with the severity of the abuse because Chinese law now forbids such abuses.  I took this to be a very positive sign.  

 

Madame Chairman, our goal was to uncover the truth, and to determine if the reported abuses are true.  But in some cases it became quickly apparent that the allegations were simply wrong.  For example, the desk that supposedly comprised the UNFPA office in Sihui County that was constantly referred to in the testimony before the House Committee simply does not exist.  That purported UNFPA office, which formed a central part of the testimony of the Population Research Institute, is a complete and utter fabrication.  UNFPA has no offices in China outside Beijing. 

 

Now that I have told you what we did not find, let me tell you what we did find. 

 

Our investigation found that the UN Population Fund’s program in China, which took two years to establish, appears to be playing a positive and catalytic role in the reform of reproductive health services—away from an administrative approach to a client-oriented approach that promotes informed choice of contraceptive methods through information, education and counseling. 

 

Voluntary, quality family planning services are not yet the norm throughout China.  However, our investigation found that UNFPA’s program, which operates in a limited number of counties in China, is helping to show Chinese officials that voluntary family planning programs are the best way to reduce population growth.

 

The overall impression that the team came away with was that the Chinese approach had changed in the two project counties we visited and that the people we met were aware of, and benefiting from, this change.

 

It was also apparent that the United Nations Population Fund does not support the Chinese Government’s one-child policy in name or practice and does not take any part in supporting or managing the Government’s program.  In fact, assistance from UNFPA is less than 0.1 percent of the $3.6 billion annual cost of China’s national family planning program.

 

The UNFPA program, which exists in 32 counties, is meant to demonstrate the efficacy of the client-based approach, which is based on voluntary family planning, and is purposefully designed to eliminate the sort of abuses alleged.  The principles and non-coercive policies in these demonstration projects are now being adopted by the Chinese Government on a larger scale in the future.

 

I would like to stress that this view was reinforced by officials at the United States Embassy in Beijing who noted during a lengthy discussion that UNFPA was definitely a positive force in moving China away from precisely the kinds of practices and abuses alleged by the Population Research Institute.  The U.S. officials further noted that the UN Population Fund had had a direct, positive effect on the language of new legislation on family planning and reproductive health—a point that was reinforced by the Vice-Chairperson of the National Congress.

 

Madame Chairman,

Let me be clear: the UNFPA program in China is not a panacea, it is not by itself going to change China's policies overnight.  That is unrealistic and naive.  But I would argue it is far better for the UNFPA to stay engaged and promote dialogue, better laws and better services than taking the easy route and packing their bags.  The UN Population Fund is doing what needs to be done, one step at a time, to assist China in moving away from coercive policies and practices.  Are the results perfect?  No.  But is the effort worth it?  I think the answer to that is an overwhelming yes. The UN Population Fund represents the world's interests in helping China to move in a direction that is in line with international human rights standards.

 

The investigation I led was by no means the first visit by foreign government officials to UNFPA project sites in China.  As I mentioned earlier, the United Nations Population Fund relies on rigorous monitoring visits by foreign diplomats, its Beijing-based staff, independent experts and delegations of its 36 member intergovernmental Executive Board to ensure that human rights standards are maintained.  Since 1997, nearly 60 diplomats from some 30 countries, including the United States, have visited project counties and found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the United Nations Population Fund.

 

Thank you Madame Chairman and members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to share my knowledge with you today of the UN Population Fund and its activities in China.  I am pleased to answer any questions you may have.

 

 

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