UNFPA

The Bush administration announced Monday, July 22 that it will withhold $34 million that Congress appropriated for U.N. family planning and reproductive health programs overseas - programs that are designed to help poor women in developing countries. "Bush's decision to eliminate the funding rejects the recommendation of his own fact-finding team, which reported in May that the U.N. program does not support coerced abortions and, in fact, helps prevent abortions through education and contraception," reported Knight Ridder on July 20. The Associated Press reported July 22 that "Secretary of State Colin Powell decided that the funds will instead be spent on child survival and health programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said." Boucher added, after careful consideration of the law and other factors, the administration "came to the conclusion that that the U.N. Population Fund monies go to Chinese agencies that carry out coercive programs."

In a July 22 interview with CNN, UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan said, "I think UNFPA does very essential work and we have made it clear that it does not go around encouraging abortions. It gives good advice to women on reproductive health and does good work around the world, including in China." Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, said in a statement released after the decision, "It is with deep regret that I confirm the loss of U.S. funding this year for the United Nations Population Fund. It is especially troubling since the fact-finding mission that was sent to China by the United States found quote: "no evidence that UNFPA has supported or participated in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China," as has been charged by critics."

At a July 16 press conference, members of Congress pressed President Bush to explain why he has held up $34 million for U.N. family planning programs. According to the Associated Press' July 16 story, a group of 48 lawmakers, mostly Democrats, sent a letter to Bush asking that he release the findings of a U.S. delegation that traveled to China in early May to see how the funds are used. The group asked Bush to meet with them so they could "share our understanding" of how U.N. Population Fund programs in China operate." In a July 16 story by Reuters, Rep. Nita Lowey said, "I am absolutely outraged by the possibility that, despite a clean report from the China investigation team, the administration could still consider cutting off funding to" the U.N. agency. If this is true, it is clear that petty politics, rather than prudent policy, is the main consideration here."

According to earlier reports, President Bush is poised to reject the advice of his own fact-finding team and cut off millions of dollars to a UNFPA. On July 14, Knight Ridder reported: "The three-person team, which spent two weeks traveling throughout China, wrote in a report to the State Department that the U.N. program did not knowingly support coercive abortions, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the officials said, the report concluded that the U.N. program improved women's lives by helping them prevent unwanted pregnancies through education and birth control and, therefore, reducing the number of abortions under China's restrictive family planning policy." In response, several editorials expressed similar views as The Bergen County Record (NJ): "President Bush is about to make an incredibly misguided decision." The Sacramento Bee July 5 editorial asked, "Can poor women elsewhere be any less deserving?" The Kansas City Star July 16 editorial stressed, "The fact that so many lives are at stake should encourage Bush to reconsider the freeze on American funding." Read: Associated Press: July 16, July 22 am, July 22 pm, Reuters: July 16, July 22, Knight Ridder: July 14, July 20, CNN, Salon.com, Sacramento Bee (CA), Kansas City Star (MO), Detroit Free Press (MI), The Lincoln Star (NE), The Bergen County Record (NJ), The Journal Star (Peoria,IL), Philadelphia Inquirer (PA) and The Mercury News (San Jose, CA)

[NOTE: For the full coverage, go to: http://www.planetwire.org/wrap/files.fcgi/1780_Media.htm.]

BARCELONA AIDS CONFERENCE

Feminization of HIV/AIDS

At the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona July 7-12, the UN Population Fund released a report that found the real key to protecting women and curbing soaring AIDS infection rates in poor countries will come not just from public health initiatives. A July 13 Houston Chronicle editorial cited the report that found the key "lies in making fundamental social changes that will enhance the status of women so that they can protect themselves and their children." In her July 9 Newsday column, Marie Cocco urged: "Governments - all governments - must finally admit that by social custom and social policy, they are killing women. Early in this crisis, we learned AIDS is both fatal and preventable. So is sexism." Reuters reported July 10 that Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS said, "African teenage girls were generally not infected by boys of their own age, but by older men. ''That is one of the major driving forces of HIV in young people in sub-Saharan Africa. Suman Mehta, HIV/AIDS Coordinator for UNFPA, said many older men used teenage prostitutes, adding, ''Some HIV-positive men feel that if they have sex with virgins they can be cured of the virus."

In addition to UNFPA's report, UNICEF released a report, "Young People and HIV/AIDS," that revealed, AIDS is striking the world's poorest young women with stunning ferocity, according to United Nations figures showing that infected girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa outnumber infected young men by 2 to 1, according to the Boston Globe's July 7 story. The Globe noted, "The reason, according to AIDS experts, is that three-quarters of all cases in the world are now transmitted through heterosexual relations - up from 60 percent in 1990." UNICEF's report found that men are eight times more likely to transmit HIV to women than women to men because of the biology of the vagina - the tissues are thinner and break more easily in younger women - and because of semen's effectiveness as an HIV transmitter. Read: Boston Globe, Newsday, Reuters and Associated Press

Religion and HIV/AIDS

Also at the Barcelona AIDS Conference, Roman Catholics in North and South America unveiled a campaign at the International AIDS Conference aimed at overturning the Vatican's ban on the use of condoms. Agence France Presse reported July 10 that Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), gathering 10,000 Catholics in the United States along with chapters in Canada and five Latin American countries, mounted a billboard and advertising campaign, as well as an email petition to the Holy See, said CFFC President, Frances Kissling. "We want the Vatican to change its position and preach that the use of condoms is not against life, it is part of the culture of life," she said. In addition, the Associated Press reported July 15 that the Roman Catholic Church - and to a lesser extent other world faiths and denominations - were criticized for failing to talk about the disease openly and preaching social mores that conference participants considered unrealistic or to be impeding efforts to stop the disease's rampant spread in poor regions, especially Africa. Read: Associated Press

SAVING WOMEN'S LIVES

Violence against a Pakistan Woman

After worldwide media coverage and human rights outcry against the Meerwala tribal council's ruling that ordered a woman gang raped for her brother's supposed wrongdoing, The New York Times reported July 17 that gang rape is not uncommon in this part of southern Punjab. "What has shocked Pakistan is that a tribal council here, for the first time anyone can remember, decreed gang rape as a punishment to avenge an episode of illicit sex - one that probably never happened in the first place," noted Times' reporter, Ian Fisher. This year so far, there have been 72 gang rapes and 93 other rapes documented in densely populated Punjab Province alone, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The rapists are often higher-caste men, the victims usually lower-caste women, as in the case here. In this case, the rape appears to have been meant as the worst punishment possible. "What happens in war?" asked Attiya Inayatullah, the nation's minister for women's development. "Rape is used as a tool of war. Similarly here, rape has been used as the ultimate humiliation." Read: The New York Times and Associated Press

Report on Worldwide Abortion Policies

In a country-by-country analysis of abortion policies, published on June 14, the UN Population Division said that "law enforcement authorities [in countries where abortion is generally illegal] ignore or tolerate the performance of illegal abortions or even unofficially license clinics for that purpose." The Lancet reported June 6 that the UN Population Division estimated that nearly 40% of 50 million abortions done worldwide each year are done illegally. "The UN, governments, and many organizations view unsafe abortion to be a major public health concern," Joseph Chamie of the UN Population Division. Axel Mundigo of the Center for Health and Social Policy said the only way in which the annual incidence of unsafe abortions in developing countries could be decreased is to "liberalize" abortion policies. He said, "Even small policy changes can open up the door, so clinical services that offer medical or surgical abortions in modern health facilities can be made available to women." Read: The Lancet (UK)

TREATY FOR THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN: CEDAW

The Washington Post reported July 18 that "In an almost unheard-of challenge to presidential prerogative, the Democratic Senate is preparing to consider ratification of an international treaty the White House has indicated it may not want approved." Among the most emphatic proponents of the convention was Sima Samar, who was then the minister of women's affairs in Afghanistan. Samar's letter to the committee said, "I cannot overstate to you how important it will be for me and other Afghan women if you do take this step. We will then be able to tell our countrymen that the United States, where women already have full legal rights, has just seen the need to ratify this treaty."

The San Francisco Chronicle's July 17 editorial urged, "It's way past time for the United States to leave the company of Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Somalia and affirm women's human rights. The Senate should ratify the treaty and the president should sign it." According to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) July 7 story, "Like most U.N. treaties, it probably would have little immediate effect in dozens of countries. But it would give the force of an international thumbs-up in the drive to help women who are destitute, imprisoned by culture (as women under the Taliban were) and physically abused." Read: The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News (TX), Pittsburgh Post Gazette (PA) and Sen. Joseph R. Biden's July 17 letter in The Wall Street Journal. For more information on the treaty, go to: http://www.womenstreaty.org.

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS

In The Christian Science Monitor, a July 18 op ed by Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, wrote, "Women are more socially, culturally, and biologically vulnerable than men is a reality that arises directly out of the nature of global inequalities between the sexes." She continued, "On the one hand, millions of women do not have the power or the wherewithal to say 'No!' to unwanted or unprotected sex. At the same time, women - often sick themselves - are continuing to care for the sick, an extension of their daily responsibilities within the home." Heyzer concluded, "If we are to tame and reverse the AIDS epidemic, we need to protect women's human rights and put an end to laws that violate them." Read: The Christian Science Monitor

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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