U.S. WITHDRAWS SUPPORT FOR ICPD PROGRAMME OF ACTION, UNFPA AND WHO
Coverage on ICPD
During a United Nations meeting in Bangkok, Louise Oliver, a special assistant in the State Department's population office, said the United States would not reaffirm its support for the 1994 "program of action" adopted in Cairo by 179 nations. According to Knight Ridder’s November 1 story, Oliver said the Bush administration objected to such terms as “reproductive services” and “reproductive health care” because they imply a right to abortion. "I think it is disappointing and incredible," said Agnes van Ardenne, the Dutch minister for development cooperation, in a November 2 story by The New York Times. "Poverty reduction will not be successful without reproductive health and without women being able to make their own choices." Francoise Girard of the International Women's Health Coalition said the Cairo agreement was critical to fighting AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, and to allowing women to control their fertility and preventing unintended pregnancies that lead to abortions. "This is a very profound shift for the United States," Girard said. "It contradicts their stated support for women's rights around the world." Read: The New York Times, Knight Ridder and Associated Press

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL) responded to the U.S. move in its November 10 editorial, “If the Bush administration has compromise language in mind, let's hear it. If not, clear the air and let the 1994 program get on with its good work. The United States should be improving the human condition, not impeding it.” The Sacramento Bee (CA) agreed on November 12: “By resorting to such tactics, Bush has shown how far he's willing to go to please anti-abortion groups. Indeed, this latest move strengthens the view that, if he could, he would ban abortion outright in this country. So much for "compassionate" conservatism.” Read: The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Sacramento Bee, Population Connection’s letter to the editor in Newsday (NY), Planned Parenthood Golden Gate and American Association of University Women letters in The San Francisco Chronicle, a Nov. 8 column by The Australian, and a November 5 column by Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, that ran in The Los Angeles Times and on Salon.com. Also, read Ruth Rosen’ plea to young women in her November 14 column in San Francisco Chronicle.

Funding for WHO in Jeopardy
Congressional Quarterly reported November 4 that nine Democratic lawmakers wrote an election-eve letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell questioning whether the administration's decision to cut off funding to a U.N. program on anti-abortion grounds will be applied to other organizations associated with the world body. The letter, signed by Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, and eight other Democrats, asked if the administration would apply its "strained interpretation" of a provision first included in a 1986 law (PL 99-88) to ban funding to the World Bank, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N Development Program. On November 4, an editorial in The New York Sun added its question to the president: "At a time when the United States is trying to work with the United Nations more than ever before, we feel strongly that resolving this issue would help achieve your goal. We ask for your assurance that the State Department has no plan to apply the overly broad interpretation of Kemp-Kasten to these other international organizations, which would risk their funding in the Fiscal Year 2003 budget." On November 6, Frederick Jones, a State Department official, told CNSNews.com that the Bush administration had no plans to cut or curtail WHO funding. "As a normal course of business we do not provide funding to any program or organization if we are aware that doing so would violate or otherwise be incompatible with all applicable laws, regulations, or policies," he said. “We would not provide funding to the WHO if it became clear that doing so was in violation of Kemp-Kasten or any other U.S. law.”

On November 7, Agence France Presse further reported that $3 million in US funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) Human Reproduction Program is in jeopardy because of its research into the so-called "abortion pill," RU-486, said a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher said no decision had yet been made but strongly implied the money would not be forthcoming. "We can't support any activity that supports abortion as a method of family planning or that motivates or coerces people into practicing abortion, so we would not use our money to support RU-486 research," he told reporters. However, Boucher denied accusations from several US lawmakers that the money had already been frozen, insisting it had never been formally allocated to the WHO health program. Read: CNSNews.com, Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post and the Nov. 1 and Nov. 14 letters sent by Congress members to Colin Powell.

COVERAGE ON UNFPA
34 Million Friends Project
The San Francisco Chronicle reported November 10 that President Bush's decision to renege on US support for the United Nations Population Fund has sparked a grassroots movement “aimed at reversing one of the meanest actions yet by an administration not known for an excess of the milk of human kindness.” The 34 Million Friends Project is a straightforward appeal to Americans to donate at least one dollar each to replace the lost funds so that UNFPA’s services to women in developing countries can continue. The Chronicle noted that even if the Friends Project's $34 million goal is a long shot, supporter Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., says it proves “that although the administration may have been willing to drop the ball on international family planning, the rest of us weren't willing to do so." Read: The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation and Press-Enterprise (CA)

SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES
Afghan Women’s Health and Aid
A joint report by UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one of every 15 women in Afghanistan will die from pregnancy complications, compared to one in 4,000 women in industrialized countries. Reuters reported November 7 that the study classified 87 percent of the women's deaths as preventable. “With new leadership and ongoing assistance from the international community, Afghanistan has a prime opportunity to reverse this record, starting now,” said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. “But investment in basic health care will only be beneficial to women if they are supported in accessing that care.” The Baltimore Sun reported on November 7 that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a ballroom full of high-powered Baltimore (Maryland, USA) women at the 10th annual Women of Excellence luncheon of Network 2000 that they should use their influence and dollars to help women in Afghanistan gain basic freedoms–to go to school, to work and to receive proper health care. "I've been very depressed at the very small amount of money everybody has been contributing to Afghanistan," Albright said. "They need to have schools and health centers and be supported. If governments can't do it, then philanthropy can." Read: Reuters, Associated Press, UN IRIN and Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Women, A Rarity in India
In India, a couple called Harpreet and Surinder, who did not wish to give their real names, paid about $3,000 for their baby boy—or, more precisely, for the guarantee of a male heir through in vitro fertilization. According to Newsweek’s November 11 story, the mother and father, with advanced degrees in child psychology and business, respectively—freely admit that their son contributes to a dramatically worsening gender imbalance in India that is likely to breed all manner of social ills. “This imbalance is bad for society and we might have contributed to it,” said Harpreet, 34. ”[But] it’s our choice as individuals and we should be allowed to do it.” The Health Ministry plans to tighten existing laws and may even outlaw sex selection by in vitro fertilization. But it’s unclear when India’s sexual balance will be righted—if ever. Authorities now realize that raising living standards doesn’t mean people leave their past behind. Read: Newsweek

HIV/AIDS WORLDWIDE
Gates Funds Fight against HIV/AIDS in India
The New York Times reported on November 12 that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will give more than $100 million over 10 years to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in India. It is the largest single program focused on a specific country that the foundation has undertaken since it was founded nearly three years ago. India has an estimated four million cases of HIV infection (although many believe the real number is higher), but the rate of infection is still relatively low, at about eight-tenths of 1 percent. “AIDS is in an early stage here," Mr. Gates said at a news conference. "There is the opportunity through the right preventive strategies to keep it that way." He also said he hoped that success in India could be applied in other developing countries. If necessary, he said, more money would be forthcoming, adding, "The initial commitment of $100 million is simply the beginning of what we think is appropriate." Read: The New York Times, Financial Times

HIV/AIDS and Women in India
Women with HIV fill two wards of the Tambaram tuberculosis sanitarium in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India. The day before Gates’ announcement, New York Times reporter Amy Waldman reported that the number of women and men seeking AIDS care is rising every month at this hospital, the Government Hospital for Thoracic Medicine, making it the largest AIDS care facility in India. The patients are people who had been considered low-risk: at least a third of the new patients are women, most of them monogamous housewives, and 72 percent of new cases are from rural areas, once thought to be largely shielded from the epidemic. In 1996, the hospital had 10 cases of children with HIV; now it has 250. For now, the burden is mostly on the individuals, particularly women whose husbands have already died. Read: The New York Times

Vatican Reaffirms Its Opposition to Condom Use to Fight AIDS
The Vatican repeated its opposition to using condoms as a way to fight HIV/AIDS, saying that chastity was the best way to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. Associated Press reported November 6 that Monsignor Javier Lozano Barragan, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers, acknowledged that to some, the Vatican position may sound "ridiculous in the society in which we live." But he said there was only one way to prevent HIV/AIDS from spreading. "We say that prevention...is called chastity." Barragan made the comments ahead of a three-day Vatican symposium on health care in Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world. Read: Associated Press

Microcredit to Help Fight HIV/AIDS
United Nations agencies on Tuesday endorsed a call for microcredit institutions to branch out into adult education so as to help fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In a November 12 story by Agence France Presse, Chris Dunford, President of the California-based NGO Freedom from Hunger, said, "Microfinance is a very powerful delivery system for complementary services" and could be used to educate people about HIV/AIDS. He cited the example of the Foundation for Credit and Community Assistance (FOCCAS) in eastern Uganda, which offers information on health, nutrition, family planning and running small businesses to 13,048 village women. AFP noted that one benefit of microfinance is that it reduces domestic violence, as women's self-esteem and status rise with increased earning power. Kunio Waki, Deputy Director of UNFPA, said empowerment took different forms. Group formation was one; education and income were others, he said, adding "knowledge is power, and money is power." Read The New York Times’ November 13 editorial on microcredit.

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
The news that Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was in New Delhi to pledge $100 million to combat AIDS in India is “pretty significant,” wrote L.A. Chung in her November 12 column in The San Jose Mercury (CA). The issue has attracted Gates in part because HIV/AIDS has gained momentum, even after more than 20 years of fighting it. Rates of infection are rising so fast that they pose a real threat to India, China, Nigeria, Russia and Ethiopia. Jane Wales, President of the World Affairs Council and co-founder of the Global Philanthropy Forum, said, “It's just as important in San Jose or San Francisco to alleviate the disaster as in Ethiopia -- and those two actions are linked. Not only diseases spread, but solutions will spread.” Chung said success would require more than foundation and UN action. “Having an impact is going to be the result of millions of individual actions to further prevention and treatment. It will take guts….And it will take money.” Read: The San Jose Mercury

The [U.S.] government is waging a covert war on condoms – a “guerilla war,” wrote Marie Cocco in her November 14 column in Newsday. Cocco noted examples such as: A fact sheet on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus has disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control Web site; and President George W. Bush has begun appointing critics of condoms to a presidential advisory panel on AIDS. She concluded: “In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when no one dared speak of what was then unspeakable, activist groups coined a phrase: Silence equals death. Two decades later, our own government has embarked on a campaign that begs for its own slogan: Disinformation is deadly.” Read: Newsday

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistribution is encouraged with credit to CCMC.