WORLD AIDS DAY

Media outlets reported on HIV/AIDS trends in dozens of articles leading up to World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. Many of these stories focused on a new UN report released in advance of the worldwide observance.

The United Nations' annual AIDS Epidemic Update stated that "the rate of new HIV infections is finally falling in Africa--but only because the epidemic has already struck so many people," according to a Nov. 30 Reuters News Service story. Link

To stem new infections, UNAIDS called for "'bold and imaginative approaches to sex education for teen-agers,' including education about family values, abstinence, relationships without sexual intimacy, and safe sex, and assuring access to condoms," the Associated Press reported Nov. 30. Link

Gannett News Service and Inter Press also reported on the UNAIDS study Nov. 29, as did the Nov. 29 Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post, among other media outlets.

National Public Radio's Nov. 20 Morning Edition program interviewed Botswana President Festus Mogae in a story about "how to bring Western-style AIDS drugs to the millions of Africans infected with HIV." Recently announced drug discounts "would cut the prices of some of the most advanced AIDS drugs by 80 to 90 percent in Botswana and other African nations" and a recent $100 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "would help Botswana develop the medical infrastructure to get the drugs to the people." Botswana is serving as "a crucial test case," the program reported.

[NOTE: Our next analysis will report on the extensive coverage World AIDS Day received on Dec. 1.]

OTHER GLOBAL POPULATION COVERAGE

Population trends in China continued to make the news in the wake of China's fifth national census. Time magazine's Nov. 20 international edition reported that "reluctance of millions...to answer forthrightly could drastically skew the [census] data." The story noted that "even a miscalculation of 2% could result in an uncounted 26 million people, roughly equivalent to the population of Scandinavia."  Link

A Nov. 16 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service story reported that "China's census le[ft] out at least 12 million people," particularly because of the "tens of millions of Chinese--more than 100 million, by some estimates, [who] are part of a 'floating population' that has migrated illegally from
impoverished rural areas to urban areas in search of work."

National Public Radio's Nov. 19 Weekend Edition Sunday program also reported on the "difficulty of performing a census in China" because of the reluctance of migrant workers and those in violation of the one-child policy. Link

The Nov. 16 Agence France Presse reported "corruption and bureaucratic bungling have...complicated the already difficult task of counting how much the population in the most populous country has grown since the last census 10 years ago put the figure at 1.13 billion people."

In Ethiopia, the population will reach 129 million by 2030, according to projections from a 1994 National Population and Housing census reported by Africa News Nov. 28. A preliminary government report stated plans to raise the current 8 percent rate of contraceptive use to 44 percent by 2015.  Link
Xinhua General News Service also reported on the story Nov. 29.

In Russia, a population decline of nearly six million in the past eight years has Russian politicians "alarmed and scrambling to reintroduce Soviet-era rewards for big families and hero mothers," according to a Nov. 23 news story on CNN Today.   Link  The Russian news agency TASS reported Nov. 21 that "the Russian permanent population dropped by 550,600 people, or 0.4 percent, in January- September 2000."

Many news stories worldwide also detailed the "failure of the sixth United Nations conference on global climate change (COP6) to reach an agreement on how to reduce emissions of 'greenhouse gases,'" as reported by the InterPress News Service Nov. 26. Several outlets covering the conference
highlighted the complex relationship between population size and consumption, including a Nov. 23 Washington Post article that reported the United States "represents 4 percent of the world's population but produces 24 percent of its greenhouse gases."  Link   The negotiations, which were suspended Nov. 25, are scheduled to resume in May or June 2001.

INTERNATIONAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND FAMILY PLANNING

Safe motherhood made the news with a Nov. 16 Africa News story that described results from an international conference organized by the Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group, a consortium including Family Care International, the Population Council, UNFPA, UNICEF, IPPF, the World Bank and others. The conference focused on national strategies for combating the "complications from pregnancy and childbirth [that] account for more than 514,000 deaths per year or one woman dying every minute." The story noted that "nearly 99 percent of maternal deaths occur in the developing world where almost one in 20 women dies from pregnancy-related cause."   Link

The Nov. 27 Independent (Bangladesh) reported that a seminar on Bangladeshi women's health revealed 96 percent of women give birth at home, aided by untrained attendants. This causes a "magnitude" of reproductive health problems for Bangladeshi women, the article said. Link

The Independent (Bangladesh) also reported Nov. 26 that a draft of the country's population policy states a goal of raising family planning use to 65 percent of the Bangladeshi people to achieve replacement level population growth by 2005.  Link   Several stories also ran about legal and policy responses to the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). A Nov. 24 Associated Press story profiled
attorney Linda Weil-Curiel, who took part in a high-profile trial in France of an African immigrant who was convicted of practicing FGM. The Associated Press reported on "tough new sentences for genital mutilation in France," and noted that "an estimated 130 million women, most of them in Africa, have
been subjected to ritual genital mutilation, and some two million girls are at risk of undergoing it."

The Nov. 30 Guardian (London) reported that "third world countries that refuse to ban the controversial practice of female genital mutilation could be stripped of their right to receive European Union development aid." Link

In Rwanda, "60 percent of Rwandans have sexual encounters before the age of 18, and 83 percent before 23," according to a Nov. 29 Agence France Presse story. As a measure to fight sexually transmitted diseases in that country, Population Services International is overseeing a trial of the female condom "after similar tests in neighbouring Uganda proved relatively successful."

NEWS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL ABORTION TRENDS

The New York Times reported Nov. 21 on the Women on Waves foundation, which plans to offer off-shore "abortions and other reproductive services...to women who cannot obtain them legally" in their countries, and "publicize a public health issue that remains taboo in many parts of the world, despite
estimates ranging from 60,000 to 100,000 deaths a year from unsafe abortions." The Times reported that "just over a quarter of the world's people live in 74 countries where abortion is generally banned, including much of Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to the United Nation's
Population Division and the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy."

The Nov. 23 Korea Times reported unofficial figures that indicate as many as 1.5 million women had abortions in Korea in 1994. The "number of pregnancy terminations is attributed to a variety of factors such as the failure of contraceptives, governmental policies to control population size and
deep-rooted customs such as the preference for boys," according to the
article.  Link

RIGHT-WING NGO ACTIVITY AT THE UNITED NATIONS

The Nov. 21 Mother Jones Magazine reported that "right-wing religious groups are now more active than ever in lobbying the United Nations against contraception, sex education, and other 'anti-family' programs," and "building international coalitions which could cripple future UN efforts on
women's rights, population control, and other global policy issues."  Link

U.S. LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The Nov. 21 Washington Post reported that Sec. of State Madeleine Albright called on the next president to "pay attention to the issues important to the United States in the 21st century," including "nonproliferation, HIV, drugs and women's needs."  Link

Cox News Service also reported Nov. 20 on Albright's "Dollars for Diplomacy" speech during a luncheon at the Women's Foreign Policy Group, where she said "we rank dead last among the industrialized nations in the percentage of wealth devoted to fostering democracy and development overseas." The Washington Times also reported on the speech.

OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS

Editorials and opinion pieces following the unsuccessful resolution of the sixth United Nations conference on global climate change were printed by The Los Angeles Times Nov. 27; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Dallas Morning News, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), The Washington Post and The Washington Times Nov. 29; and The Boston Globe Nov. 30. Many highlighted population and consumption issues, like the Nov. 29 op-ed in The Washington Post by Harvard professor James K. Hammit, which stated "to stabilize global climate...will require reducing the emissions needed to support today's global population and economy, as well as controlling the dramatic increase in emissions that will be stimulated by future worldwide growth in population and economic activity."  Link

The Capital Times (Madison, WI) ran a Nov. 28 op-ed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin's Paige Shipman, who noted that despite the fact that "family planning saves lives," international family planning "is in jeopardy due to policy developed in our own back yard." She called on "the American public
[to] make clear that anti-choice propaganda should not get in the way of services that save lives and improve the health of women and their families worldwide."

A Nov. 22 editorial in The Indianapolis Star supported "a provision to the foreign aid bill passed by Congress" that opposes user fees in developing countries for medical services and primary education. The Star argued user fees trigger drops in visits to health clinics, noting that "when user fees
were brought in at Nairobi's Special Treatment Clinic for Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Kenya, attendance dropped 40 percent for men and 65 percent for women over a nine-month period."

Spirited debate continued in the Nov. 27 issue of The Nation between sociologist Amartya Sen and readers of his July piece affirming the need to empower women as part of a sensible population policy. The magazine printed three letters raising issues of energy, water scarcity and patriarchy, and
included Sen's reply countering the critiques, in which he noted "the most immediate adversity caused by a high rate of population growth lies in the loss of freedom that women suffer when they are shackled by persistent bearing and rearing of children."

The above analysis was written by Ketayoun Darvich-Kodjouri 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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