TESTIMONY OF PHYLLIS OAKLEY

Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Subcommittee on International Organizations and Terrorism

February 27, 2002

 

 

 

Good afternoon to you Madame Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.  As most members of this Subcommittee may know, I served in the United States Foreign Service for most of my professional life, including stints as desk officer for Afghanistan, as Deputy Spokesperson under Secretary George Schultz, as Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration and my final assignment as the Department’s Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research.  During the past several years of my retirement, I have been teaching – at Mt. Holyoke in Massachusetts and on Massachusetts Avenue at the John’s Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  I also serve on the Boards of several organizations concerned with education and foreign affairs, including, for the past year, the Board of the US Committee for UNFPA.  As always, it is a pleasure to be with you today and I welcome the opportunity to share with you my perspectives on international family planning issues and the work of the United Nations Population Fund.

 

I have been engaged in foreign policy work longer than I might like to admit – over 40 years.  So much has changed in that time. I was involved when the Cold War began in earnest, and was there when the Berlin Wall came down.  I experienced the transformation of that bipolar world and the emergence of an age of increasing interdependence, where issues, challenges, opportunities and threats transcend national boundaries.  Economists have talked of this transformation in terms of the era of globalization.  For those of us working on the front lines of diplomacy to protect American interests, we have seen this transformation in terms of an altered landscape of security threats and challenges.  Issues like international crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, growing numbers of refugees, global environmental challenges, and, of course, the emergence of worldwide networks of terror – these have all emerged from the sidelines to the mainstream of American foreign policy.  

 

My experience in the Foreign Service has taught me many things.  And one of the most important is that rapid population growth and associated poverty are dangerous, cross-cutting trends that must be addressed through international cooperation.  To ignore them is to ignore some of the driving forces underlying the global issues that are so prominent today.  Mine is the first – and hopefully it will be the only – generation to have lived through more than a tripling of global population.  When I was born, there were about 2 billion people on the Earth, today there are more than 6.  That is a whole lot of change – and it is profound.  Today, there are 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day.  

 

Now, I am no expert on whether the Earth’s environmental systems can sustain that kind of growth or the demand for resources associated with 6 or 7 or 8 billion people.  But what I can tell you is this:

 

First, that population growth has made the world a much more complicated place – exponentially so.  Demographic forces are not divorced from issues of state power, and help to shape not only our bilateral relations with other nations, but also our global priorities.

 

Second, I have learned – because I have seen it – that rapid population growth and persistent, jaw-dropping poverty are a dangerous mix.  That was true in Pakistan when I lived there; in Zaire; it was true in Afghanistan when I was a desk officer; it was true in the dreadful refugee camps that I visited after the genocide in Rwanda; and it is true in so many places today.

 

In the early 1990s, I was working on Humanitarian Assistance programs on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The discrepancy between rapid population growth and the ability of governments to respond was striking.  In overstretched infrastructure, heroic efforts were made to try and get people into school.  Those lucky enough to get through school were rudely awakened by the reality that the society could not produce enough jobs to keep up with growing numbers.  There is little surprise, then, that strident, fundamentalist religious schools became popular with the uneducated and the underemployed.  

 

I don’t want to belabor the point, suffice it to say that my own experience has led me to the belief that rapid population growth should be and must be considered as an important factor influencing America’s engagement around the world. 

 

The question is, what can we do about it?  I understand that nobody wants to talk about these issues, involving as they do sensitive personal, social and religious issues.   But we can’t ignore them, so we have to talk about them.  That is one of the reasons why we are fortunate to have the United Nations Population Fund as an institution and forum for confronting these issues in a civilized, adult manner. 

 

I was somewhat familiar with UNFPA’s work for many years, but learned much more about them when I became Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.  At that time, UNFPA was coordinating preparations for the International Conference on Population and Development, which was held in Cairo in 1994.  And they did a wonderful job, not only in the logistical preparations for that conference, but in working with the world to create a remarkable new vision for international population policy.  

 

They listened to the world – hearing from representatives of all regions, diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, NGOs and individuals from all over the world.  Because they listened, the bedrock principle of the action plan reached at the ICPD is that population policies should be pursued with full respect for not only national sovereignty, but also diverse religious and ethical values and in accordance with universally recognized human rights. 

 

They moved the world away from a fixation on the number of people on the planet and towards a needs-based approach – focusing on the fact that if people, especially women, have access to family planning and other health services, if they are educated, if they have economic opportunities, if human rights are respected, and if men will recognize their responsibilities for homelife, if all these conditions are met, the global population will stabilize on its own, and we need not focus on numbers. 

 

This new approach, forged through UNFPA leadership and agreed at the ICPD, was all aimed at addressing concerns – held especially by women and NGOs around the world – about the use of demographic targets and certain situations in which coercion was encouraged.  This is a very important point Madame Chairman, and I want to underscore it.  The United Nations Population Fund was the leading advocate, the force that moved international population policy away from numeric targets and other tactics that could encourage coercion.   UNFPA championed a human rights based approach to population policy.  

 

All of us who were at Cairo recognized what a wonderful achievement this was.  And all of us on the US delegation were thrilled to be a part of it.

 

After Cairo, I became more and more familiar with UNFPA’s work in the field. Not only its ongoing efforts in more than 140 countries around the world.  But especially its efforts in areas that overlapped with other responsibilities I carried, particularly in crisis situations in refugee camps around the world. 

 

In Goma, I saw how important UNFPA’s work was in providing emergency supplies for pregnant women.   You all will recall the horror of those vast numbers moving so quickly, the outbreak of cholera, camps organized amazingly overnight when hundreds of thousands of people fled the massacres occurring in Rwanda and crossed over into what was then Zaire.  These were difficult and dangerous situations.  Ethnic tensions were high.  Thousands of women had been raped as an instrument of terror.  Gangs were commonplace and security in the camps almost non-existant in the beginning because the Government of Zaire could supply none.  In the midst of all of this, brave international public servants from UNFPA worked tirelessly to provide the most basic supplies so that pregnant women would have a chance to deliver a child safely.

 

They supplied soap, plastic sheeting, a razor blade to cut the umbilical cord, sutures for complications, rape treatment kits and basic contraceptive supplies. 

 

In Kosovo, several years later, UNFPA was there as part of the United Nations humanitarian response team when hundreds of thousands of Kosovars fled mass killings and the systematic use of rape.  Again, brave international civil servants responded and helped to provide emergency supplies and such things as underwear for girls and women. 

 

For their efforts, a handful of organizations, including the Population Research Institute, chose to go on the attack, going so far as to make the outrageous accusation that UNFPA was conspiring with Mr. Milosevic in a campaign of genocide. 

 

Those same organizations have been giving UNFPA a hard time over Afghanistan, where the Fund is again working to meet the needs of those displaced by 20 years of civil war and the welcome efforts of the United States and others to rid that country of terrorists and the harsh rule of the Taliban. 

 

I have been to Afghan refugee camps and I have seen UNFPA’s contribution to international humanitarian response efforts.  I wish that all those who take potshots at the UN, who think that international cooperation is about bloated bureaucracy, or who cavalierly attack UNFPA could experience these heart-rending situations.  If they did, they would have their hats off to these brave individuals and the hard-working organizations they represent.  And if I have not been clear enough, let me just say that I resent and take great offense to those who have attempted to ruin the reputation of UNFPA and international family planning in such a reckless fashion.

 

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the endless campaign that has been waged to suggest that UNFPA is complicit in the very serious and disturbing violations of human rights that occur in China.  As a woman, and one who has seen the anomalous gender ratios in China, I am not about to defend China’s one-child policy, the incidence of coercion or female infanticide.  The facts are pretty clear, and very upsetting. 

 

It is equally clear that UNFPA has absolutely nothing to do with these practices, nor does the United States contribution to UNFPA.  US law has prevented even one cent of the US contribution to UNFPA from being spent in China for years.  More fundamentally, the clear evidence is that the UN Population Fund is aware of the problems in China’s program and that it is attempting to work with the Chinese to demonstrate the greater wisdom and effectiveness of voluntary, non-coercive population policies.  Reflecting the consensus it championed and forged at the Cairo Conference, UNFPA has insisted that Chinese authorities agree to discontinue to the use of targets, quotas and other coercive means in each of the 32 counties in which it is providing assistance to the Chinese.  This does not mean that UNFPA’s staff of four people in China has taken over China’s program – it means that UNFPA is having a positive influence.   And that fact is being born out in the reporting of our own foreign service officers.

 

Last year’s Human Rights report – not known for pulling punches – found clear evidence of UNFPA’s positive influence in China.  Let just quote a few passages:

 

“600 counties covering about half the country’s population have adopted more liberal (population) policies.” 

 

“The Government was beginning to relax its policies in the cities.”  “Other jurisdictions, such as Minglan village in Yandu County, have reportedly followed the earlier example of Beijing and other cities, abolishing birth permits and allowing couples to decide on their own when to have a baby.”

 

The evidence from others, including the many monitoring teams that have been sent to observe progress of the UNFPA program echo these sentiments.

 

There is only one place in the world where UNFPA’s activities are questioned – and that is right here in Washington.  I was the relevant Assistant Secretary of State for three years.   During that time, I have to tell you that never, not once, did I hear from another government, from my forceful colleagues in the human rights bureau, from the intelligence community, or from any reputable human rights organization expressing concerns about UNFPA’s work in China or anywhere else.  Not one cable, not one letter, not one phone call.  Nothing. 

 

Why?

 

Because this is only an issue of American domestic politics – not of foreign policy or of the actions of an international organization.  UNFPA is a good organization caught in the vise of American politics.  That is what makes this issue so sad, so frustrating, so Kafkaesque.  Hours and hours are wasted at the Department, on the Hill and throughout Washington in an annual fight that is based on smear, innuendo and hatefulness.  

 

All of us who have worked on this issue have been tempted to throw up our hands, to give up, to become frustrated by the groundless nature of this debate.  But if it is tempting, it is also wrong.

 

For to give up would not only abandon the architecture that has been put in place for addressing common global issues, but it would also abandon those women and children who depend on UNFPA in refugee camps, it would be to give up on the 350 million couples that want to plan their families but don’t have access to modern family planning services, and it would be to abandon those people in China and elsewhere who yearn to realize their basic human rights as individuals.  This is not a debate about what words are put in an appropriations bill.  This is a fight for the most impoverished and repressed people in the world, it is about truthfulness, and it is about American leadership on the great issues of this new century unfolding.

 

I thank the Subcommittee for inviting me hear today.  And I hope that you will endeavor with your colleagues to put this issue behind us – where it belongs – once and for all.