RESPONSE TO UNFPA DE-FUNDING
Articles
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are opposing President George W. Bush's move to end support for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reported the East African (Kenya), according to an August 12 story by the Xinhua General News Service. A letter sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell noted, "The 49 least developed countries, 34 of which are in Africa, receive the bulk of UNFPA's funding and will be most affected by this decision of the US.  We are particularly disturbed by its potential impact on our efforts to prevent HIV/ AIDS, promote family planning and improve the lives of children, especially the girl-child, and of women, which are all critical for Africa's growth and development." According to an August 1 story by the Associated Press, the social issues agency of the United Methodist Church has also strongly criticized the Bush administration's decision. Jim Winkler, leader of the Methodists' Board of Church and Society, charged that the action was "a frontal assault on women and the United Nations" and that "the administration is caving in to extremist forces." He said the cutoff would harm thousands of women, cause more abortions and worsen the HIV-AIDS problem. AP reported August 12 that at the start of a three-day peace conference in Puerto Rico, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias said, "The fact that the United States is holding back [these] funds is not only insulting...but it also constitutes a direct threat to the lives of many poor women who will not be able to receive basic health services.” Read: Associated Press

Columns
In an August 4 column, Robyn Blumner of The St. Petersburg Times (FL) wrote about the Population Research Institute, the anti-family-planning group that was instrumental in getting President Bush to cut UNFPA’s $34 million appropriation. What’s amazing, she said, is that “this niggling little group of fanatics has the ear of the president.” She added, “A group that sees voluntary family planning programs as ‘neocolonialism’ and small families as cheating heaven isn't where our president should go for public policy advice. But that's where he's knocking. They're his kind of people.” Read: The St. Petersburg Times

Melissa Fletcher-Stoeltje of The San Antonio Express-News (TX) listed in her August 4 column the various women’s issues where the Bush administration has balked, including withholding funding for UNFPA. Fletcher-Stoeltje wrote that she’s “waiting for some old fool on the Hill like Sen. Jesse Helms to propose a rollback on women's suffrage.” Fletcher-Stoeltje then advised her readers: “When Election Day roles around, use that marvelous female brain of yours – hardwired to retain every insult, every injustice - to review Bush's record on women's rights and do one thing: Remember.” In her August 1 column, Lynn Sweet of The Chicago Sun-Times noted the move in Congress to restore UNFPA money. “In the House, where Republicans rule with a five- or six-vote majority, GOP moderates are drafting a letter strongly protesting the White House move,” Sweet said. “They have enormous leverage and the question is, are they willing to use it? Read: The San Antonio Express-News, The Chicago Sun-Times

Editorials
The August 5 editorial by The Wisconsin State Journal called the decision “inexcusable,” noting that Bush “justified his decision by saying it was consistent with his opposition to abortion, yet his decision raised the risk that the number of abortions worldwide will increase.” It further noted that worthy programs and projects like those that provide midwife training in Algeria and an AIDS center in Haiti are without funding. The Hartford Courant (CT) put it this way in an August 1 editorial: “Mr. Bush's decision to withhold the money is a repudiation of Mr. Powell, flies in the face of common sense and will ultimately damage the health of women and children worldwide.” Read: The Hartford Courant; an August 14 op ed by Fred Sai in The Los Angeles Times and letters August 7 from Patricia Mcgeown of the Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood Albany in the Times Union (Albany, NY); and by Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Adrienne Germain of International Women’s Health  Coalition in The Wall Street Journal.

SAVING WOMEN’S LIVES
Violence against Women
United Press International reported August 7 that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the criminalization of "honor violence,” participating in or threatening violence against women and girls in the name of honor. AP noted that day that the U.N. Development Fund for Women announced more than $1 million in grants for 18 programs in 22 countries combating domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape and honor crimes.

On August 5, The Washington Times featured a story on a Pakistani woman who was released from jail after serving a seven-year sentence as an illegal immigrant because she tried to escape an abusive husband by throwing herself in a river and was instead carried across the border. The Times noted that while in an Indian jail, the woman was raped and gave birth to a child who was deemed an Indian citizen and barred from Pakistan. This ruling left the woman the grim choice of remaining in jail or leaving her baby and going home to face possible death for dishonoring her family. The Times reported that the Indian courts acted in the case only after it was raised by human rights activist Ranjan Lakhanpal, who petitioned the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights more than four months ago. Read: The Washington Times

Human rights activists expressed outrage after a Cambodian judge on August 5 convicted 10 Vietnamese girls and young women of illegal immigration even though they allegedly were kidnapped or sold into sexual slavery, reported The Chicago Tribune on August 6. The youngest defendants were either kidnapped or sold by their families into the sex trade, activists said. Human Rights Watch representative Sara Colm said, "To go after the victims in a trafficking case and not the perpetrators is certainly not the way to go. It sets a dangerous precedent." Pierre Legros, an adviser with the Paris-based aid agency Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances, said, "It's a problem of poverty. The sex system is very lucrative because you do not need a diploma, you do not need expertise. If we can't find a way to get financial independence for these girls, for sure they will end up back in the sex trade. So we start all over again." Read: The Chicago Tribune

Women’s Treaty
The Chicago Tribune reported August 7 that the Bush administration wanted to delay ratification of CEDAW to allow for further review by the Justice Department, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said that if the committee did not act now, there was little hope the Senate would ratify the treaty before Congress adjourns this year. Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority, said she is "optimistic that when CEDAW reaches the Senate floor before the elections, it will be ratified." The Tribune reported that Democrats want to schedule a floor vote prior to the November midterm elections to raise political pressure from women on moderate Republicans to support the treaty. Read: The Chicago Tribune

Health Services for Women

Amid the hunt for al-Qaeda, the brutality of Afghan warlords, the political intrigues in Kabul and other exotic-sounding dilemmas, it is easy to forget just how basic Afghanistan's problems are, reported USA Today on August 14 in a full-page spread. In Afghanistan, where women die in childbirth because their husbands don't know to take them to the hospital or won't let them see male doctors, Loretta Hieber Girardet, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Kabul remarked, "It's a lethal combination – Ignorance and lack of access to health care." Girardet noted that building hospitals and overcoming health problems rising from years of conflict and drought will take time. Read: USA Today

The Associated Press reported August 15 that the global economic slowdown is making it more difficult for poor countries to maintain family planning programs aimed at reducing their high birth rates, according to a report by the Population Reference Bureau. Carl Haub, who prepared the "2002 World Population Data Sheet," said that in poor nations with high fertility rates, women typically bear four or more children in their lifetimes, compared with one or two in industrialized countries. The trend is most noticeable in sub-Saharan Africa. "The relationship between poverty and fertility is hardly a surprise," Haub wrote. "But it is taking on added importance with the increasing cost of maintaining national family planning programs in a time of world economic slowdown." Read: Associated Press

HIV/AIDS
Teen Prevention
“Here in Zambia, it's becoming hip to say no – to sex, that is,” reported The Christian Science Monitor on August 1. A program funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), dubbed HEART - Helping Each other Act Responsibly Together - is sending a strong abstinence message and promoting consistent condom use among youths as part of an attempt to combat the spread of AIDS. "Most youths here, including me, have sex for the first time because of peer pressure," says Holo Hachonda, the program's young director. "What we're trying to do is reinforce the message that it's ok to be abstinent...The idea is to encourage youths to adopt more healthy sexual behaviors." Read: The Christian Science Monitor

South African Program for Mother-to-Child Transmission
South Africa's drug safety board is considering reversing a decision that would have allowed the AIDS drug nevirapine to be used to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to newborn babies, a move that is stirring outrage among advocates for AIDS patients, reported The New York Times on August 7. Officials from South Africa’s Medicines Control Council pointed to questions raised recently by the F.D.A. about procedural problems found in a nevirapine drug trial in Uganda in 1999. The officials said they were also worried about creating resistance to the drug among the pregnant women who took it. Precious Matsoso, the registrar of the Medicines Control Council, said the board had yet to make a final decision about whether the drug should be used to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus. She said the council would not be swayed by the flood of criticism from advocates for AIDS patients. "We are not going to promote bad science," Ms. Matsoso said in an interview. "If someone challenges the data's credibility, we have to make sure it is correct." Read: The New York Times

ENVIRONMENT
In August 13 story by Agence France Presse listed “surging population” as a part of the snapshot of the Earth's main environmental problems. It noted that human population stands at more than 6.1 billion and is likely to grow by 50 percent to 9.3 billion by 2050. The world's 49 least-developed countries will see numbers triple from 668 million to 1.86 billion. Without major wars, famines or other disasters, the global population will only start to fall in the latter part of the century, driven by declining birth rates. The article also listed poverty inequality, resource overuse, climate change, the ozone hole, threatened species, shrinking forests, water problems, soil erosion and vanishing fisheries as other environmental problems.

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
“In the preparations for the [World Summit on Sustainable Development ] Johannesburg meeting, there has been a strange silence on population issues that are at the very core of the coming deliberations,” wrote Werner Fornos of the Population Institute in an August 8 Christian Science Monitor (MA) op ed. “By inexplicably ignoring or neglecting the simple truth that the world's people are not only the principal beneficiaries of sustainable development, but also a chief obstacle for achieving it, the summit in South Africa could become little more than an expensive gabfest.“ He said the summit’s final document should “at least call for urgent action to ensure universal access to voluntary family planning and reproductive health services, and the empowerment of women as partners in development.“ Read: The Christian Science Monitor and Jeffery Sachs’ August 14 op ed in The Financial Times

In an August 2 editorial, The Washington Post reminded its readers that only nine months ago the United Nations was racing to avert mass starvation in Afghanistan, where 6 million people were put at risk by years of drought and war and the tyranny of the Taliban. The editorial noted: that hunger remains a severe problem in North Korea, where millions may have perished from lack of food in recent years despite massive international aid. Now in southern Africa, nearly 13 million people in six countries are said by the U.N. World Food Program to be at risk of famine. “Meanwhile, rich nations store up $100 billion in surplus food obtained from subsidized farmers; Europe and Japan decline to dispose of theirs through aid programs, and complain in trade talks of dumping when the United States makes such donations. Just one percent of this stockpile, which mostly goes to waste, would fill the yawning hunger gap this year in southern Africa, Afghanistan and everywhere else.” Read: The Washington Post

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistribution is encouraged with credit to CCMC.