Inter Press Service - August 23, 2002
Akhilesh Upadhyay

They say they will use November's mid-term elections in the United States as a platform to publicise how the Bush administration, bowing to its supporters from the Christian Right, denied poor countries much needed funds approved by Congress.

Post-election, they will use a two-pronged strategy to contain a conservative White House. First they will ask the Senate to set aside the UNFPA money for the next fiscal year as a "hard earmark", a provision that substantially curtails the president's authority to override appropriation bills.

Then they will request that the Senate change the law, known as the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, that authorises the president to deny foreign assistance funds to any organisation that "supports or participates in the management of a program of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilisation".

President George W. Bush withdrew the assistance for the fiscal year 2002 last month based on unsubstantiated charges that UNFPA was engaged in coerced abortions and sterilisations in China.

A U.S. fact-finding team that visited that country wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell in May to say it had found "no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported" programs of coercive abortions or sterilisations in China.

But because the fund worked with Chinese state agencies that practised the procedures, the money was withdrawn, said Bush spokesman Richard Boucher after the story came to light.

"Because money is fungible," Boucher said, "we won't be giving our money to a U.N. programme that then gives money to Chinese agencies that then carry out these coercive abortion programmes".

In a letter addressed to Powell this month, the 'Group of 77' developing countries at the United Nations called for the administration to restore funding. It said the U.S. move jeopardises programmes in many developing countries where UNFPA's support has been critical in such areas as poverty eradication and prevention of HIV/AIDS.

In Kenya, where poor women cannot afford health care, clinics in eight rural districts will be unable to train traditional birth attendants if the money is not restored, says the UNFPA. In Haiti, support for a major HIV/AIDS prevention centre and education programs to reduce teenage pregnancy will be curtailed.

In Nepal, the local UNFPA office will decline a government request to sponsor the training of demographers, blocking the processing of data collected from the 2000 census into forms that can be used by government officials, planners, and academics.

Activists say that the Bush administration is unlikely to restore the UNPFA fund despite the international outcry following last month's cuts. The current fiscal year ends Sep. 30.

While it was always possible that Bush would bow to conservative elements in the Republican Party and cut off the UNFPA funding, as had past Republican presidents, activists say what made the job easier this year was Congress' approval of the UNFPA fund as a "soft earmark".

"It said that 'up to' 34 million dollars was earmarked for UNFPA," says Lisa Moreno, senior legislative policy analyst at Population Action International (PAI), an advocacy and research group based in Washington.

That, she argued, did not bind the president to a particular level of funding, only that he could not exceed the amount should he decide to change the status of the fund.

In order to avoid the pitfall in the next fiscal year, the Senate, she said, plans to set aside 50 million dollars for the U.N. agency as a "hard earmark", which would leave Bush less room to manoeuvre.

But the president would still have final say on the fund under Kemp-Kasten, which the activists hope to have changed.

They are confident the Senate will push for an amendment to the controversial measure when Congress reconvenes after the August recess, a move far less likely to be supported by the House.

Kemp-Kasten came into force in 1985, but successive administrations have interpreted the law differently. U.S. assistance for UNFPA was zero between 1986-1992 as the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. withheld all contributions approved by Congress.

When then-president Bill Clinton restored UNFPA funding in 1993, it was on the condition that no U.S. money would be used in China. A year later, the UNFPA contribution reached a high of 40 thousand dollars.

It is likely that the Senate and House will work out a compromise on 2003 funding by year-end, says Moreno. "It could either be just 'hard earmark', or just Kemp-Kasten, or something in between," she adds.

The results after last year's legislative battles were also mixed. While Congress increased its assistance by nine million dollars it could only designate the money to UNFPA as a 'soft earmark'.

At the same time, the House agreed to drop long-standing 'China penalty' language, which had reduced the U.S. contribution to UNFPA by one dollar for every dollar the UNFPA spent on programmes in China.

When Congress passed the foreign operations appropriations bill for 2002, it brought to an end one of the longest-running legislative battles in recent history.

While the European Union has offered to make up some of the 34 million dollars lost, that money cannot replace the U.S.-funded programmes, says a UNFPA spokesman.

"There seems to be a misunderstanding that the recent EU (European Union) commitment of 32 million euros (31 million dollars) was to compensate for the U.S. withdrawal," said Abubakar Dungus, UNFPA spokesman in New York.

"But," he stressed, "the European money, unlike the U.S. money, is not part of UNFPA's core fund, and will have to be spent on particular projects in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific nations."

The money would also have to be spent over three and a half years, he added.

Dungus told IPS that charges of coercion against the U.N. population agency are "baseless". "We are in fact working with the Chinese government in 32 counties to move their policies away from coercion toward a voluntary approach that respects human rights and conforms to international agreements."

In all, 130 teams have visited China since 1997 to review UNFPA programmes and all have found them to be free of coercion, he said. "The U.S. team came up with the same finding."

The charges against UNFPA originated with the Population Research Institute (PRI), a spin-off of an extremist anti-abortion group called Human Life International (HLI).

PRI's director, anthropologist Steven Mosher, has written a number of anti-Beijing books, including 'Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World', and has denounced the UNFPA as part of a "New World Order" conspiracy.

Mosher was dismissed from Stanford University for "illegal and seriously unethical conduct" regarding his fieldwork on family planning in southern China in the 1980s. (END/IPS/WD/PR/IP/AU/ML/02)
020823
IP020818

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 2002. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .