UNFPA WELCOMES US CONGRESS SUPPORT, URGES ADMINISTRATION TO RELEASE FUNDS

UNFPA WELCOMES US CONGRESS SUPPORT, URGES ADMINISTRATION TO RELEASE FUNDS

(Reissued as received)

New York, 23 January (UNFPA) – The UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, today welcomed United States lawmakers’ decision to appropriate $34 million for the Fund for fiscal year 2004, and urged the Administration not to withhold the money.

Members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate approved the funds for the UNFPA as part of the 2004 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill which was included in the $373 billion Omnibus Spending bill.

“This critical funding will help save women’s lives around the world, through the provision of voluntary family planning and reproductive health care”, said the UNFPA’s Executive Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, thanking Congress for its support.  The UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family-planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.

For the past two years, the United States Administration has withheld funds appropriated for the UNFPA, claiming that the Fund provides indirect support to a programme of coercive abortion in China.  The UNFPA and several independent monitors have refuted the claims.  The Fund does not support abortion and does not participate in or facilitate coercive activities in China or anywhere else in the world.

The UNFPA programme in China is designed to show the effectiveness of a fully voluntary approach that offers clients a range of contraceptive choices along with information and counselling.  In addition, the Fund has strongly urged Chinese authorities to end coercive policies such as the “social compensation fee” imposed on couples who have more children than are allowed.

Numerous delegations, including a team from the United States Administration, have visited family-planning programmes in China and found no evidence of UNFPA support for coercion.  Last month, a group of United States religious leaders and ethicists released a report on their September 2003 mission to investigate the Fund’s activities.  The group found “UNFPA neither supports nor participates in managing China’s family planning programme”, and that, as a result of the UNFPA-supported programme, “abortion and sterilization rates are declining as contraceptive choice increases.”

The interfaith delegation reported, “UNFPA repeatedly states its opposition to the Government’s one child policy”, and was the first international agency to publicly voice concerns about China’s law advocating a “social compensation fee” as contrary to the principle of free choice in the matter of family size.

“I am extremely gratified that the religious leaders and ethicists who visited China have affirmed that UNFPA is promoting voluntary choice in the Chinese family planning programme and is not involved in any way with coercion”, said Ms. Obaid.  “These findings match those reported by a United States Administration team and a British delegation.  They all found that UNFPA is a positive force for good.”

She added:  “I appeal to the United States Administration to allow the funds appropriated by Congress to be released, so that the country can rejoin all other industrialized countries in supporting UNFPA’s work to promote voluntary family planning, safe motherhood and HIV/AIDS prevention in the world’s poorest countries.”

The UNFPA is the world’s largest multilateral source of population assistance, providing support to developing countries, at their request, to meet reproductive-health needs, and collect and analyse population data to support development efforts.

For more information, please contact:  William A. Ryan, tel.: +1 (212) 297-5079, e-mail: ryanw@unfpa.org; Abubakar Dungus, tel.: +1 (212) 297-5031, e-mail: dungus@unfpa.org; or Sarah Craven tel.: +1 (202) 326-8713, e-mail: craven@unfpa.org.  For more information on the UNFPA, please visit their Web site at www.unfpa.org.

* *** *