UNFPA US Funding Actions

Late yesterday the House Appropriations Committee, in a near party-line vote of 32 to 30, deleted language from an emergency spending bill that would have forced the White House to release $34 million to the UN Population Fund. Here is the related coverage from the past week:

May 11 Coverage: “House Appropriations Committee members voted to free up $34 million in international family planning funds [for the UN Population Fund] that the administration has withheld this year,” reported The Washington Post on May 11. “The 32 to 31 vote in committee, which came during consideration of an emergency spending bill, instructed the administration to give the money to the UN Population Fund no later than July 10 unless the United States finds the international agency in violation of U.S. laws.” The Washington Times noted on May 14 that “Republican leaders had been counting on Rep. John E. Sweeney, New York Republican, to vote against the amendment Thursday night. But Mr. Sweeney was outside the committee room when the vote was called and did not return in time to cast his vote, despite House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's effort to find Mr. Sweeney and bring him back in time.” The Times also mentioned Edward Leigh, a Conservative member of the British Parliament who led a three-member fact-finding team to China last month and said he found no evidence of coercion in the areas where UNFPA operates. "On the contrary, there was evidence UNFPA is trying to persuade China away from the program of strict targets and assessments," Mr. Leigh told The Washington Times.

May 15 Coverage: According to the May 16 edition of The Wall Street Journal, “the 32 to 30 committee vote was a bitter setback for family planning advocates, who had narrowly won on the same issue just last week.” The Journal revealed that with many other controversial spending bills currently being considered by the committee, “the leadership has been leery of any provisions that would make it that much harder to hold on to conservative support.” The Washington Post reported that Congress still insists on connecting UNFPA to abortion. The Post reports that “with a consensus on abortion rights still eluding Congress, lawmakers have engaged in a form of legislative hostage-taking, threatening to bring down bills that deal only tangentially with abortion.”

Read: The Washington Post: May 11 and 16, The Washington Times: May 12 and 14, The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press

UN SPECIAL SESSION ON CHILDREN

Reproductive Health Debate

During the May 8-10 UN Special Session on Children, more than 60 world leaders and 6,000 other delegates gathered in New York for a three-day meeting on children's issues ranging from primary education funding to infant AIDS prevention and child labor abuses. “Yet the main issue preoccupying the gathering is reproductive health services for adolescent girls--not because of its inherent importance, but because the United States and a few predominantly Roman Catholic and Muslim allies are pressing for the elimination from conference documents of any direct or indirect endorsement of abortion counseling,” reported The Los Angeles Times. According to The New York Times May 12 story, “The Bush administration and its allies failed in their bid to get an explicit policy against making abortion available to teenagers. Nor did it manage to make abstinence for unmarried teenagers the centerpiece of sex education.” The Times also noted, “Among advocates who had assailed the Bush administration all week for trying to water down language that world leaders had already agreed to, relief mixed with disenchantment this evening.” The Washington Post on May 9 quoted Adrienne Germain, President of the International Women’s Health Coalition, as saying, “The world has recognized and agreed on five previous occasions that adolescents are at great risk of HIV infection, unwanted pregnancy and botched abortions. The Bush administration is trying to take us back to the Dark Ages." Read: The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Guardian (UK) and Reuters

The affects of early marriage and related health risks, including obstetric fistula, were also discussed during the Special Session. Following in the footsteps of Nicholas Kristoff from The New York Times, the Associated Press reported that fistula “often means rejection by husbands and families who consider them unclean.” The AP article quoted France Donnay, an obstetrician working on fistula for the UNFPA, as saying that, ”this leads to stigma, isolation, divorce and abandonment.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorialized on fistula and other health problems confronting girls who are forced to marry early. The Journal-Constitution wrote, “…young girls themselves told the U.N. Assembly that teen motherhood brought increased risks of anemia, high blood pressure and obstetric fistula…” The early marriage discussion continued on television. On the Mother’s Day weekend broadcast of To The Contrary, a PBS public affairs program, District of Columbia Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton showed herself to be a strong advocate for UNFPA funding to help girls with fistula during a segment on early marriage and UNFPA funding. Read: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[NOTE: For the full coverage on the UN Special Session on children go to: http://www.planetwire.org/wrap/files.fcgi/2671_Children_Summit_Coverage.htm.]

In other concerns at the special session, Save the Children issued a report on the status of mothers around the world, focusing especially on war-ravaged countries. On National Public Radio’s May 12 Weekend Edition, Mary Beth Powers of Save the Children said, “What you see today is that 90 percent of all casualties are civilian casualties. That's contrasted with only 5 percent of civilian casualties during World War I. So the face of who is dying, who's affected by warfare, is now women and children civilians. Maternal mortality, death during pregnancy and childbirth, is also much higher during warfare than during times of peace.” Powers noted, “The wars are fought in people's back yards, in marketplaces, in their homes, instead of on battle lines, far from where civilians live.” Listen: NPR’s Weekend Edition

“The four boys from Makeni, Sierra Leone, won’t be among child delegates joining more than 60 heads of state at United Nations headquarters in New York this week,” according to Newsweek’s May 13 story. “They’ve barely thought about one of the main issues,” which is that soldiers under the age of 15 have fought in more than half of the world’s 55 ongoing or just-ended wars, according to UN experts. “Children are easy to recruit, low cost and malleable,” noted Newsweek. “From the ‘little bees’ of Colombia to the ‘baby brigades’ of Sri Lanka, they have become the cannon fodder of choice.” In closing, Newsweek stressed, “Child warriors everywhere need elders to look up to.” Read: Newsweek, The New York Times and Reuters

SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES

Violence against Women

Women across Asia have fewer opportunities to advance socially and economically than men, partly due to violence against them, reported the United Nations Economic and Social Commission, according to a May 14 story by the Associated Press. “Violence against women, including wife-beating and forced sex within a marriage, and the trafficking of women and girls contributed to women's poverty in the region. Up to 225,000 women and girls are trafficked in the region annually,” the UN agency said. In addition, “Worldwide, more than 80 million girls between the ages of 10 and 17 are married, too often with devastating consequences on their physical and mental health,” experts at the UN Special Session on Children said, according to a May 10 story by the Associated Press. “Married girls also face health risks related to childbirth. In many cases, their underdeveloped bodies are not ready to carry and give birth to babies, leading to lasting damage to both themselves and their offspring. Young girls who become pregnant can develop a condition called fistula because their pelvises are too small to give birth,” noted AP. “During delivery, they damage their bladder and urinary tract, causing persistent leaking of urine and feces. The condition often leads to severe infection and can cause death.” Read: Associated Press: May 10 and May 14

Opportunities for Women in Tanzania

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), along with the government of Tanzania and Akiba Commercial Bank, has launched a project to help tackle the problem of child labor in the country by boosting women's income-earning potential, according to the May 2 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. “Women who cannot meet their family needs are forced to send their own children to work in order to supplement family income," said Rose Lugembe, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, Youth Development and Sports. "We must specifically address the issue of feminised poverty, and resources must be allocated to ensure women's survival, options and opportunities.” The article added, “The broad objective is to reduce the use of child labour in Tanzania - where the practice is widespread, in common with many African countries. The project will involve poor working mothers in selected sectors and locations receiving loans as part of a package designed to allow women make best use of the loans for productive activities.” Read: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks and opportunities for women in Kenya as reported by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette May 9

HIV/AIDS WORLDWIDE

The virus that causes AIDS is spreading so rapidly in parts of Africa that it is killing teachers faster than their countries can train them, undermining an international effort to enroll all children in school by 2015, said a report by the World Bank, according to a May 8 story by The New York Times. “The report says that in parts of Uganda and Malawi, nearly a third of all teachers carry HIV.” According to The Times, “The report also noted that, despite the toll that AIDS had taken among teachers, in recent years infection rates in that group and other professionals have been dropping, as they alter their behavior or take other precautions.”

The Associated Press reported May 6 on a UN report that warned, “HIV/AIDS is rapidly reaching epidemic proportions in parts of Asia and the Pacific, adding that the newest threats are in India and China.” The study found that “At present 7 million people in the region have the virus or the full-blown disease, but China alone could have as many as 10 million people with HIV/AIDS by 2010 unless prevention programs are stepped up.” Read: The New York Times and the Associated Press

“Two decades into the global AIDS epidemic, an unlikely alliance of lawmakers is pressing President Bush to increase spending by hundreds of millions of dollars this year to help foreign nations grapple with the disease,” reported The New York Times May 12. “The Bush administration has budgeted $780 million for the global AIDS fight this year. On Thursday [May 9], however, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee voted to add $200 million in global AIDS money to an emergency measure for domestic security and military spending.” The Boston Globe noted May 15 that, “The proposal far exceeds spending suggestions from President Bush and, if adopted by Congress, could mark a turning point in US policy on fighting the disease in other countries.” David Gold, vice president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, said the proposal ''really is a change in paradigm.'' He added, 'The US government in the past has had a really embarrassing level of commitment to human development. This is an important step, a much bigger commitment.'' Read: The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Reuters

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

“At the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children, the Bush administration insisted that the final resolution contain no reference to ‘reproductive health services,’ which it interprets as an implicit endorsement of abortion,” noted The Atlanta Journal and Constitution’s May 14 editorial. “The administration's insistence on treating abortion as a foreign policy issue is nothing new. Last year, Bush yanked $34 million in aid to the UN Population Fund, dedicated to improving women's health by combating such practices as female castration and gender-selection abortions.”

The AJC mentioned, “Health advocates and young girls themselves told the UN assembly that teen motherhood brought increased risks of anemia, high blood pressure and obstetric fistula, a tearing of the rectum, urethra and vagina that causes urine or feces to leak uncontrollably.” It concluded, “For the White House, restricting young people's access to sexual and reproductive health information was a matter of politics. For millions of young girls, it's a matter of life and death.” The New York Times’ May 8 editorial concluded the same, “Denying reproductive information and services to girls and women is counterproductive, and endangers the futures and lives of millions abroad.”

In her May 15 column, Cynthia Tucker, columnist for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, added, “If [Sen. Jesse] Helms is sincere about repairing some of the damage he has done, he ought to take another look at the link between good family planning efforts and preventing the spread of AIDS. Without family planning programs, AIDS prevention is simply impossible.“ Read: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution May 14 editorial and May 15 column, The New York Times and a May 5 column by Jane Eisner in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Read a May 9 letter by Peter Kostmayer of Population Connection in The Washington Times that responds to a May 8 op ed by Steve Mosher of Population Research Institute. Also, see a May 14 op ed by Chris Smith in The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

“Every 24 seconds, 100 babies are born around the world. That is 100 infants whose futures are in our hands,” wrote Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, in a May 7 Los Angeles Times op ed. “Fortunately, we know exactly how to ensure that they grow up healthy, educated and able to reach their full potential as adults. Sadly, we also know that we are failing these children. Far too many of them die from preventable diseases, never enter a classroom, are terrorized by violence and conflict and are forced to work, often in abusive conditions.” She concluded, “Supporting the conference's efforts can help today's children and tomorrow's generations, who in turn will help us build a more prosperous and stable world. Let's not waste this opportunity.” Read: The Los Angeles Times and a May 5 op ed in Newsday by Jo Becker of the Human Rights Watch

“The United Nations last week delivered a devastating portrait of motherhood and childhood at a special session on children. In recent years, armed conflict has accelerated the toll,” noted Abigail Trafford in her May 14 Washington Post column. “In Afghanistan, one of every six babies dies within a year of birth. A woman in that country is 1,200 times more likely to die in childbirth than her counterpart in Switzerland. Family planning is nonexistent. Prenatal care is negligible. More than 90 percent of all babies are delivered without help from a trained health attendant.” "We are so blessed by peace and security. We don't have a concept of how insecure and fragile life is for women and children around the world," says Mary Beth Powers, reproductive health adviser to the nonprofit Save the Children Foundation. Trafford concluded, “This is a moment when the United States needs to support the UN and other international agencies to protect the health and safety of mothers and their children. The Bush administration has proposed additional funds for foreign development. In the name of nation-building and homeland defense, a good chunk of that money should go to projects for women and health care.” Read: The Washington Post

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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