UN POPULATION DIVISION EXPERT MEETING ON FERTILITY

On March 11-13, the UN Population Division hosted the second meeting in a series of UN Expert Group Meetings on the future of fertility. In New York, demographers from around the world met to reassess technical calculations that guide long-term estimates of the global population. Two years ago, the Population Division examined trends in so-called "high fertility" countries, where women have, on average, more than 5 children. Last week's meeting looked at "intermediate fertility" countries, where women have between 2-5 children. The New York Times reported March 11: “For decades, experts assumed that the world's biggest developing nations, the home of hundreds of millions in big families, would push the global population to a precarious 10 billion people by the end of this century. Now, evidence is now coming in that women in rural villages and the teeming megacities of Brazil, Egypt, India and Mexico are unexpectedly proving those predictions wrong.”

Joseph Chamie, Director of the United Nations Population Division, said: "A woman in a village making a decision to have one or two or at most three children is a small decision in itself. But when these get compounded by millions and millions and millions of women in India and Brazil and Egypt, it has global consequences." In a March 11 interview on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Adrienne Germain, President of International Women’s Health Coalition, said: “The major thing that's going on is a combination between women's will and determination to have the number of children that they can support and care for, on the one hand, and greatly increased access to contraceptive technologies to help them do that. I think the most important thing that we're now seeing, compared to 30 years ago when I first started to work in the field, is a level of consciousness and skills among women to take advantage of contraceptive services that are available.”

While the experts are projecting fertility declines in the intermediate fertility countries 30, 40 and 50 from now, some are concerned that projections of future fertility declines will divert attention from the very real needs of hundreds of millions of people around the world without access to family planning and other basic heath services. The poorest 50 nations on earth will, for example, triple in size over the next 50 years. There will be a 50 percent rise in world population, noted Sally Ethelston of Population Action International in Washington in The Christian Science Monitor on March 11. "The rationale for expanding family-planning access still exists." According to a March 13 story by Agence France Presse, Alaka Malwade Basu of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies also said, "Some people are saying family planning is no longer needed in India because women are getting empowered. Population growth is still an issue in this part of the world, and it would be foolish to think that adding 20 million people a year to the population of India means nothing," she added. Read in: The New York Times, NPR’s All Things Considered and The Christian Science Monitor

U.S. FUNDING FOR UN POPULATION FUND

In continuing news on the Bush’s administration’s hold on U.S. funding for UNFPA, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D - Calif.) was featured on National Public Radio’s March 9 Weekend Edition to warn that “the Bush administration should not play politics with international family planning.” She said UNFPA is “trying to equip in Afghanistan a clinic with operating tables, incubators, anesthesia machines. This is a very mainstream operation. It has nothing to do with abortion, and mainstream medicine and mainstream America and mainstream world is all for this.” In her closing notes, NPR reporter Michele Kelemen, reported, “Several members of Congress recently introduced a bill titled, “Saving Women’s Lives Act of 2002,” (HR 3916) that would, if enacted, guarantee that the UNFPA receives its $34 million this year and even more funding in fiscal year 2003. President Bush’s budget request so far has no funds for the agency for next year.” Bush’s freeze in funding may pose a threat to future UNFPA missions such as the March 4 mission that marked the arrival of the first two of four cargo jets carrying equipment and supplies for three maternity hospitals and two schools for women and girls in Kabul Afghanistan. Listen to: National Public Radio and read about UNFPA Aid Arrives in Afghanistan

SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES

International Women’s Day

Among many of the worldwide observances of International Women’s Day March 8, U.S. first lady Laura Bush joined U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the United Nations to focus on the plight of girls and women in Afghanistan. In her address, reported in a March 9 story by The Washington Post, Laura Bush said, "Human dignity, private property, free speech, equal justice, education and health care -- these rights must be guaranteed throughout the world." In a statement to mark International Women's Day, UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy said, “It is unacceptable that in the year 2002 so many women die in the basic act of giving life,” according to a March 8 story by Agence France Presse. "We must commit ourselves to addressing this fundamental aspect of the gender gap, keeping prospective mothers healthy and alive." Read in: The Washington Post

In other coverage on International Women’s Day, Agence France Presse noted Cambodia’s Queen Norodom Monieath Sinhanouk appealed for an end to all forms of domestic violence and trafficking in women: “We must try our best to prevent and eliminate violence against women in order to build a good and prosperous society.” In Bangladesh, AFP reported a rally organized by the Acid Survival Foundation included some 200 “horribly disfigured” victims of acid attacks. In recent policy news, The Press Trust of India reported March 14 that the Bangladesh government introduced legislation on March 13 that makes acid attacks punishable by death. In Kenya, Amnesty International’s report, “Kenya – Rape: The Invisible Crime,” urged the Kenyan authorities to end the culture of silence and impunity that surrounds widespread rape and other forms of violence against women. The report noted, “Those who do seek justice are confronted by a system that ignores, denies and even condones violence against women and proects perpetrators, whether they are state officials or private individuals.” The Associated Press coverage of the day reported that Nepal’s National Women’s Commission would review existing laws and suggest changes and examine cases of violence against women. The Forum for Women and Development said the commission should also study Nepal’s laws on divorce and abortions, which it considers discriminatory. In major cities across India, thousands of women demonstrated to protest harassment and exploitation in the male-dominated nation, where one woman is killed every 93 minutes and a rape occurs every 34 minutes. At a UN-sponsored panel discussion in New Delhi, India’s first lady said, “Development, if not engendered, is endangered.”

Abortion Legalized in Nepal

Nepal, one of the few countries that prohibits abortions under any conditions, is set to legalize the procedure in a bid to reduce the Himalayan country's high maternal mortality rate due to illegal abortions, according to a March 15 story by the Associated Press. “It will be the law of the land once King Gyanendra, the constitutional monarch, grants his seal of approval shortly, a mere formality,” reported Inter Press Service March 15. "We welcome the passage of the bill," said Dr. Shanta Thapaliya, a lawyer and women's rights activist. "But it still has many loopholes -- like it requires daughters to return property once they are married, which is not fair. We will still continue our fight for equality." Read in: Inter Press Service (login required)

Marie Stopes International released a March 15 statement that “welcomed the news from Nepal that a Bill has been approved that will give women many of the rights denied to them for a long time, including the right to abortion.” In a March 14 statement, Melissa Upreti, Staff Attorney for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy’s Asia Program, said, "Nepal's brutal abortion law is now history, but the fate of those women imprisoned for abortion is unclear. Women's equality under the law requires the government to take action and end this great injustice of imprisoning women for abortion." Read statements by: Marie Stopes International and CRLP

Ireland’s Abortion Bill Defeated

Voters rejected a government plan to close a gap in Ireland's tough abortion laws, official returns showed Thursday, March 7 - a victory for those pushing for greater abortion rights, according to the Associated Press March 15. The vote was a defeat for the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic bishops, who each had issued letters calling for churchgoers to vote "yes," made no comment on the result. Jubilant "no" campaigners said the amendment's rejection - by 10,556 votes out of more than 1.2 million cast - meant that the next Irish government would be obliged to pass legislation allowing pregnant, suicidal women to receive abortions in Ireland. Read in: Associated Press, CNN World, Daily Telegraph and Irish Times

Bride-Burning in Fiji

The U.S. State Department's country-by-country annual review openly questions what may be going on in Fiji, whose Indian population is believed to have the world's highest female suicide rates, along with Samoa. Agence France Presse reported March 6 that the State Department’s report says, "Police investigations report that the women burned themselves so severely as to cause death, but the women's rights community believes that the deaths are the result of bride-burning."

HIV/AIDS: THE HUNGER PROJECT

On March 9-10, the Hunger Project hosted an international conference on “AIDS and Gender Inequality: Action at the Grassroots,” in Kampala, Uganda. More than 60 Hunger Project leaders and other experts from eight African nations took “personal and collective” responsibility for commitments aimed at transforming the condition of gender inequality that fuels the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. The Monitor (Kampala, Uganda) reported March 12 that Joan Holmes, president of the Hunger Project, said persuading 10 men with several partners to engage in safe sex has far greater impact than enabling 1,000 women to protect themselves from their only partner. The conference also produced a plan of action and commitments on AIDS and gender equality. Read in: The Monitor and The Kampala Commitments on AIDS and Gender Inequality

PREPARATIONS FOR UN SPECIAL ASSEMBLY ON CHILDREN

At a conference co-sponsored by WHO and UNICEF in Stockholm, Sweden, titled, “Global Consultation on Child and Adolescent Health and Development,” experts and political leaders gathered from around the world to draw up an agenda for the upcoming May UN General Assembly Special Session on Children in New York. The New York Times reported March 14 that almost 11 million children, most of them babies, die each year of preventable causes, according to UN officials meeting to hammer out a strategy to save more young lives. The Associated Press reported March 12 that of the preventable deaths, "eight million are babies, half of them in the first month of life," said the Director General of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland. "These deaths were preventable and treatable, not inevitable." UNICEF and the WHO said progress had been made in the 1990's, citing immunization programs, and that the overall total of preventable deaths had been reduced from 14 million. Read in: The New York Times, The Washington Times and The Associated Press

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

In observance of International Women’s Day, Newsday columnist Marie Cocco wrote: “There lives, in Thoraya Ahmed Obaid's mind, the story of one Afghan woman who turned up in a refugee camp. She was 32 years old. She'd had 16 pregnancies. Eight of her children survived. The woman herself is lucky to be alive, given that one out of 15 Afghan women dies in childbirth.” She quoted Obaid, executive director of UNFPA, as saying, "The basic right is for women not to die while they are having a baby." Cocco pointed to the “the smoking desk” as identified by Josephine Guy who was “an investigator for something called the Population Research Institute, a small anti-abortion group based in Virginia.” Cocco explained, “This is the basis for withholding American money from an international aid organization that is, at the moment, rebuilding Afghanistan's only maternity hospitals, handing out sterile delivery kits to pregnant refugees and re-opening a vocational training center for married women. It has, by the way, on-site day care.” In a March 14 letter in Newsday, Austin Ruse, President of the anti-abortion group Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, criticized Cocco’s column as, “[Showing] a remarkable lack of curiosity about very serious charges of human rights violations in China.” Ruse concluded, “UNFPA in China is under a cloud of suspicion. Until Congress investigates the UNFPA, it should not receive any U.S. money.” Read in: Newsday: Marie Cocco, Newsday: Austin Ruse and Recent letter by Terri Bartlett of Population Action International in Newsday and The Detroit Free Press editorial

The Boston Globe ran a March 8 op ed piece by Barber Conable, former Republican congressman from New York and World Bank president, who is on the board of the National Committee on US-China Relations. In it, Conable wrote that President Bush’s second visit to China demonstrated his appreciation for the importance of constructive relations with the world's largest country. “Unfortunately, persistent domestic political concerns continue to dog the relationship, including the recent administration decision to freeze funds for the UN Population Fund because it is trying to work with the Chinese on voluntary family planning.” Conable closed his opinion piece with, “Bush has a chance to confound the pundits and take a needlessly controversial subject off the table. He should continue funding for the UN Population Fund's efforts around the world to provide voluntary family planning, improve health, and encourage development.” Read in: The Boston Globe

The Christian Science Monitor’s March 12 editorial on UN Population Division’s March 11-14 conference on the future of fertility noted a more general societal shift toward equality for women - a reduction in domestic violence, better healthcare for babies, and more education for teenage girls - that raised the awareness of choice. The United Nations reports that at least 76 countries have liberalized their laws and policies toward women since the mid-1990s. The Monitor went on to suggest, “This focus on women should continue with even greater fervor because in many nations the fertility rate has yet to drop to "replacement level.” Read in: The Christian Science Monitor

The Washington Post’s March 12 editorial said, “James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, recently said an imaginary wall has separated the rich world from the poor, allowing us to view as normal a situation in which one-fifth of humanity takes home four-fifths of global income. Comfortable behind this wall, the prosperous north has presumed it would feel no consequences from the extreme poverty of the rest -- from the fact that more than a billion people lack drinkable water or that women are dying in childbirth at the rate of one a minute. But then, on Sept. 11, the imaginary wall came crashing down. We find that there are not two worlds, just one.” The editorial posed the question, what should be done? It answered, “Trade barriers that prevent the poor from exporting their way to a better life should be torn down, and development assistance should be doubled… Endorsing Mr. Wolfensohn's appeal for a doubling in aid is the way to follow up, and it would cost only one-fifth of 1 percent of the income of rich countries. Remember, there is no wall. There is only one world. It is time that policies adapted.” Regarding Bush’s announcement of $5 billion in aid to developing countries, The Washington Post March 15 editorial said, “Mr. Bush has taken an excellent step, but there is still a long way to travel.” Read in: The Washington Post: There Is No Wall and Mr. Bush and Foreign Aid

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution (GA) ran a March 13 editorial on President Carter’s recent trip to Africa, where he urged the South African government to act more aggressively against AIDS and offered to help raise funds for the effort. By distributing the AIDS drug Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women, South Africa could save tens of thousands of newborns from the disease. But the government of South African President Thabo Mbeki has refused to act. The editorial noted that even Mbeki's mentor, the venerable Nelson Mandela, is tiring of the games that the president and his leadership play with people's lives. "This is a war. It has killed more people than has been the case in all previous wars and in all previous natural disasters," Mandela told South Africa's largest newspaper, The Sunday Times. "We must not continue to be debating, to be arguing, when people are dying." In its concluding statement, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution wrote, “How tragic that the ANC, which this year celebrates 90 years of struggle for the rights of nonwhites, now stands idly by as they die.” Read in: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

In response to the March 8 New York Times story, "Children as Barter in a Famished Land," Kim Gandy, President of National Organization for Women, wrote in a March 15 letter, “[The article] barely mentions girl-selling, only observing the practice of selling young girls into marriage. Translation: forced labor and sexual slavery.” Gandy continued, “Refugees fleeing Afghanistan report countless girls and women sold by their families or kidnapped. We need a public spotlight on this global problem, stronger antitrafficking laws and foreign aid to alleviate the poverty that exacts such a terrible price.” Read in: The New York Times

The above analysis was written by Elena M. H. Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700.

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