SAVING WOMEN�S LIVES
U.S. Cuts Funding for Maternal and Child Programs by $100 Million
The Boston Globe reported February 5 that the Bush administration�s AIDS initiative would reduce funding for child survival and maternal health programs from the current $495 million to $384.6 million for the fiscal year beginning in October. Spending for infectious diseases excluding AIDS would drop to $104.4 million, from $185 million. Felice Apter, Senior Health Policy Adviser at USAID, said there was a possibility that the cut in child survival spending, which includes money for routine vaccinations, could eliminate some programs. ''It depends upon what Congress will do, and Congress has watched these line items in the past,'' she said. Apter said the ''entire child survival account was very important,'' but the agency ''had to come up with a budget that had to fit within the ceilings of the child-survival account that we were provided.'' The spending limits, she said, came from the Office of Management and Budget and from an agency analysis. Read: The Boston Globe

U.S. to Host International Conference on Sex Trafficking
The United States will host a high-level international conference on combating the growing international sex trafficking trade later this month, the State Department said, according to a February 11 story by Agence France Presse. "The meeting will highlight strategies from throughout the world that have been successful in the prevention and prosecution of trafficking, or in the protection of its victims," the department said in a statement. "It will also recognize those who have devised practical solutions to the increasing problem of modern-day slavery.� U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios are set to appear, along with invited clergy, immigration officials, judges, local and national police chiefs and anti-trafficking activists. The meeting, entitled "Pathbreaking Strategies in the Global Fight Against Sex Trafficking," is to be held February 23-26 at a Washington hotel.

Safe Motherhood in Nepal
A woman dies every two hours in Nepal due to birth complications, Radio Nepal reported, according to a February 12 story by Xinhua General News Service. "Maternal mortality in the country is put at 539 per 100,000 births, the highest in South Asia," the state-run radio quoted Arju Rana Deuba, First Lady and honorary chairperson of the Safe Motherhood Network, as saying. "More than 80 percent of the women die before reaching hospital due to ignorance about birth preparedness and complication readiness prior to delivery." Medical facilities and services are available, but they will not be used until the Nepalese people are aware of them, Deuba added.

Female Condom Distributed in South Africa
National Condom Week kicked off in South Africa with an announcement that the government had distributed one million female condoms at 200 sites last year, reported UN IRIN on February 11. A social marketing campaign for the product has been running for the past two years and has been "hugely" successful, Society for Family Health (SFH) marketing manager David Nowitz told PlusNews. "As a result, we ran out of stock in July 2002." Compared to the 220-million free male condoms distributed in the same period, this number seems tiny, but interest in the female condom (FC) is growing, reproductive health researchers told PlusNews. Read: UN IRIN

International Conference on Female Genital Mutilation
High-level delegates from across Africa gathered in the Ethiopian capital for a three-day conference on female genital mutilation, a "silent tragedy" perpetuated by ignorance and superstition that has affected an estimated 120 million women, according to a February 4 story by Agence France Presse. "An intolerable number of women are mutilated, abused, abducted, battered, maimed, bruised and forced into early marriage in the name of tradition," Berhane Ras-Work, President of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC), said at the opening of the conference, entitled Zero Tolerance to FGM. UN IRIN reported February 5 that wives of leaders from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mali and Guinea condemned the traditional practice as barbaric and called for international action against it. Chantal Campaore, the First Lady of Burkina Faso, told UN IRIN, �Female genital mutilation is the most widespread and deadly of all violence, victimizing women and girls in Africa.� Read: UN IRIN and The New York Times

NEWS ABOUT UNFPA
U.S. Funding for UNFPA
The Associated Press reported February 15 that lawmakers passed this year�s spending bill on Feb. 13 that�opens the door for logging in many national forests, while continuing GOP bans on federal aid for abortion and providing a generous increase for sexual abstinence education.� Earlier in the week, fights over farm aid and logging in Alaska hindered the crafting of a compromise House-Senate $396 billion spending bill, but leading lawmakers hoped Congress would finish the wide-ranging bill by week's end. On February 12 the Associated Press reported, �Lawmakers were refusing to disclose details of the enormous bill until the final version was completed. According to aides and lobbyists, the compromise included $34 million for the U.N. Population Fund's international family planning efforts, but the money is unlikely to be spent. Bush could withhold it if he should decide, as he did last year, that the agency tolerates coerced abortions in China, which the U.N. agency denies.� Read: Associated Press Feb. 15 and Feb. 12

U.S. Funding Cuts for UNFPA Affect Nepal
The US decision to withhold funds from UNFPA has irked policymakers in Nepal as elsewhere. Sharat Singh Bhandari, an outspoken health minister in the government, said, "We respect the U.S. right to decide its own policies, but we urge it to take a wider perspective in issues that might have global impact and implications." Minister Bhandari has battled social taboos about discussing sex and was embroiled in controversy for advocating the legalization of prostitution, but he maintained, "Our present reality demands that women should be given a right to decide what happens to their bodies and how they want to plan their families. We should keep politics out of it." Read: Nepali Times

34 Million Friends Campaign Approaches $500,000
The Chicago Tribune reported February 2 that after a slow start, momentum for the "34 Million Friends" campaign has accelerated recently, and the UN agency is now being flooded with 2,000 letters a day. As of Jan. 30, it had received nearly $447,000 in about 40,000 envelopes, some of which contained donations from more than one person. "A lot of the world thinks of us as unilateralists," said Jane Roberts, �Friends� co-founder. "They think we're eager for war. I think this is a healthy antidote that shows the American people are generous people, and they do care about the world and not just themselves." Read: The Chicago Tribune

OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS
The big problem with liberals in international affairs is that ever since Woodrow Wilson, they've been too idealistic, stated Nicholas Kristof in his February 18 column in The New York Times. Liberals hamstrung the C.I.A. (thus impairing intelligence collection), scorned the military (undermining a humanitarian force in places like Bosnia and Afghanistan), campaigned against sweatshops in Bangladesh and Cambodia (forcing teenage girls out of manufacturing jobs and into the sex industry), and imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar (destroying the middle class and propping up military dictators). Now, alas, President Bush is also trying to be a foreign policy idealist�from the right�and is showing the same cavalier obtuseness to practical consequences. Kristof cited the example that Mr. Bush is outraged at the way the Chinese government sometimes forces peasants to have abortions. Fair enough. But his solution was to cut off all $34 million in U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund, leading to the cancellation of programs in Africa to train midwives, fight AIDS and help pregnant women. The upshot is that women and babies are dying in Africa because of Mr. Bush's idealism. Kristof concluded, �Let's hope President Bush learns from liberal mistakes and worries less about ideals and more about practical results. The world may not be able to afford much more of his idealism.� Read: The New York Times

Many conservatives are deeply sincere in their revulsion for abortion. But they have blindly pursued moralistic policies -- like cutting funds for family planning, undermining sex education and stigmatizing condoms -- that lead to more abortions. The U.N. estimates that cutting the money for the Population Fund will lead to 800,000 more abortions per year.After returning from a recent trip to Kenya, Rick Mercier of The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA) wrote in his February 9 column that the U.S. religious right's recent attacks on condom use have distorted the work of groups that promote condom distribution as one of the ways to combat HIV/AIDS. Mercier noted that in a letter sent to the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development in October, Republican Rep. Jo Ann Davis and nine other members of Congress�including the influential Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.�protested funding for a reproductive health organization called the Population Council on grounds it "focuses only on condom promotion." Dr. Sam Kalibala, a medical associate for the Population Council, said Davis and the others are spreading misinformation. "They say if you have the word condom anywhere in your program, you don't promote abstinence." Kalibala added, "The virus is wiser than us, but we're trying to get a handle on it. Everybody should use their tools." The faith-based folks, he said, have the tool of what is right and what is wrong, which "can be synergistic with the tool of damage control." Mercier concluded, �The religious right would do well to put aside theology and listen to the doctor.� Read: Free Lance-Star

In their February 11 op ed in The International Herald Tribune (France), Mia MacDonald and Danielle Nierenberg of Worldwatch Institute noted that the prospect of war with Iraq, tight budgets, recession and waning support for foreign aid have sent the environment and Third World development well down the list of global priorities. They called this �a tragedy� and recommended that governments collaborate on public education programs that promote sustainable consumption by individuals and institutions, especially in the industrialized world, noting that gender appears to have a role in consumer choices. In the developing world, they called for widely available alternatives such as fuel-efficient stoves that use less wood and protein options that reduce reliance on bushmeat, which is devastating primates and other animals in Central Africa. The op ed concluded, �With sufficient political will and funds, the Earth's resources can be better protected and shared, while unleashing the full potential of women.� Read: International Herald Tribune

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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.If you would like us to add a name or remove your name from our e-mail list, please e-mail your request to