PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN POPULATION FUND

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN POPULATION FUND

About 60 per cent of the world's fertile couples had access to family planning services and the use of contraception today, compared with 10 per cent at the inception of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 30 years ago, Robin Chandler Duke, Co-Chairperson of Population Action International, told a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

Announcing the formation of the United States Committee for the UNFPA, she said that access to improved health services in many countries of Asia and Africa was a major achievement due to the work of the agency and it was a success story that somehow never seemed to reach the media. The Committee wanted to tell the American people that UNFPA was creating a safer and more humane world for their children and grandchildren.

The Committee must provide the information to people, so they would know the good news as well as the bad news, Mrs. Duke said. It was essential to eliminate the more than 500,000 preventable maternal deaths occurring every year and to advocate education and meaningful employment opportunities for women and girls. An important way to do that was to give them access to every aspect of health care.

Accompanying Mrs. Duke, who is the Director of the newly-formed Committee, were: Dr. Nafis Sadik, UNFPA's Executive Director; Representative Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan's 14th Congressional District and sponsor of the UNFPA Funding Act of 1999; and Alex Marshall, UNFPA's Deputy Director of Information and External Relations.

Mrs. Duke said the Committee would like Americans to join in supporting the new bill introduced in the United States Congress by Representative Maloney. Despite decades of United States leadership in that arena, many in Congress did not recognize what UNFPA had accomplished and how it was in the self-interest of Americans to care about that issue. The United States legislature had cut the agency's funding from $35 million in 1995 to $20 million in 1998. It had totally eliminated the funding for the current fiscal year.

Those funding cuts had occurred at a time when United States prosperity was juxtaposed against the financial hardships caused by the world economic crisis and while the need for resources had skyrocketed, Mrs. Duke said. If people were deprived of health care and family planning information, they would begin to export their problems to the United States. Besides the humanitarian reasons for supporting UNFPA, it was in the best interests of the American people to support the agency.

Representative Maloney said her bill (House of Representatives Resolution 895) would restore $25 million in United States Government funds to UNFPA in fiscal year 2000 and $35 million in fiscal 2001. It had attracted 23 co-sponsors -- practically evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, ensuring strong bipartisan support -- and been endorsed by more than 40 independent non-governmental organizations from across the United States.

The bill and the new Committee would help save lives, preserve the environment and reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS, she said, an important part of UNFPA's health services worldwide. Loss of United States funding would mean that 870,000 women would be deprived of effective modern contraception, leading to 500,000 unintended pregnancies, 234,000 births, 200,000 abortions and hundreds of thousands of maternal and child deaths.

Representative Maloney went on to say that inadequate funding for UNFPA could potentially have far-reaching consequences. Population pressures destroyed natural and environmental resources and destabilized the economic and social development of both developing and developed countries. Importantly, UNFPA was a multilateral programme, a shared effort in a shared world that was active in more than 100 countries.

She noted that UNFPA did not fund abortion services, but worked to prevent abortions by helping to ensure that contraceptives were widely available, so that couples could plan their families. One of the excuses given for cutting UNFPA funding was to ensure that United States funds did not go to support China's coercive family planning policies. The new bill ensured: that no United States dollars went to China unless the United States certified that certain conditions were met, including the programme's use for voluntary family planning; its implementation only in counties where all quotas and targets had been eliminated and where the programme was independently monitored; and its suspension of operations in counties found to be in violation of programme guidelines.

However, Representative Maloney added that political policies should certainly not be allowed to interfere with helping men, women and children around the world in every country that needed assistance in health care and family planning.

A correspondent asked about recent efforts by the Vatican to oppose the provision of emergency contraception, which it was trying to link to the abortion pill. How might that complicate UNFPA's work and efforts to gain United States support?

Dr. Sadik replied there had been some misinformation. Emergency contraception had been around for a long time. It really was a formulation of oral contraceptives, to be used within 72 hours after a sexual exposure. It prevented pregnancy from taking place, but it was being linked with RU-486

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which, in fact, was a totally different technology and not an oral contraceptive. The two were quite separate, as clearly and categorically stated by most medical specialists, scientists and the World Health Organization (WHO).

She said WHO would make a statement on that issue tomorrow at the Commission on Population and Development. There was a piece of paper floating around and WHO needed to put its technical stamp on the definition of an emergency contraception.

There was so much trouble in the United States Congress just meeting the basic United Nations dues, how did UNFPA hope to get $25 million when the words "United Nations" were flagged? another correspondent asked. Dr. Sadik replied that last year and the one before, the agency had been funded under a separate item in the budget. The fact that it had not been funded this year was not linked to the United Nations budget or that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which had also been controversial.

She said the United Nations budget bill was hostage to domestic policy, because of an anti-abortion rider attached to it. In UNFPA's case, that rider could not be applied because the agency did not fund abortions. There was a big difference between the amount for UNFPA and for the United Nations.

Returning to China, the same correspondent asked whether the UNFPA programme was included in Representative Maloney's reference to that country. Dr. Sadik answered that a congressman who had visited the agency's China programme had been very pleased with the way in which it was being managed, and with the suspension of family planning targets and quotas. The UNFPA Executive Board had invited members of the Government of China to visit the programme, which was very transparent and open. If the new bill included certification by the United States, then that country could itself go and monitor the programme. The United States Mission in China had already visited some of the counties involved and intended to continue those visits.

In light of funding cuts by the United States and other governments, would UNFPA secure more non-traditional funding sources, such as the William H. Gates and Ted Turner foundations? another correspondent asked. Dr. Sadik said in response that not all other governments had reduced their funding and that several had increased it, including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. For the United States, it was not a question of increase or decrease, as that government had just not provided any money.

She said UNFPA expected to attract some of the contributions announced by Bill Gates, and was certainly getting money from the Turner Foundation. Some UNFPA projects were being considered by the Turner Foundation. UNFPA was also preparing some large projects for the Gates Foundation, which had

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$2.2 billion earmarked for population and health programmes. Bill Gates had provided about $2 million last year.

However, she said, private funding was not a substitute for government contributions. UNFPA was working with other business leaders to expand private sector support for population, including the private sector in Europe which had been less engaged in that field. Besides Gates and Turner in the United States, the Rockefeller, MacArthur and Hewlett-Packard foundations had all been very engaged in population and had made contributions to domestic as well as international programmes.

Family planning was no longer controversial, she said. Every developing country provided contraceptive services to its population, whether it was Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist. UNFPA had programmes in every country in the world today, unlike the late 1960s and 1970s, when only a handful had them.

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