USAID/UNFPA Discord over Support for China's Family Planning Program

Abstract

Since 1974, US law has explicitly forbidden the use of US foreign assistance funds to pay for the performance of abortion as a method offamily planning. Perhaps the most widely noted passage in the US Policy Statement for the International Conference on Population (Mexico City, August 1984) was one signaling the intent to extend the application of that restriction considerably. [T]he United States will no longer contribute to separate nongovernmental organizations which perform or actively promote abortion as a method offamily planning in other nations. With regard to the United Nations Fundfor Population Activities [UNFPA], the US will insist that no part of its contribution be usedfor abortion. The US will also callfor concrete assurances that the UNFPA is not engaged in, or does not providefundingfor, abortion or family planning programs; if such assurances are notforthcoming, the US will redirect the amount of its contribution to other, non-UNFPA, family planning programs. (See PDR 10, no. 3, pp. 574-579.) With the announcement of the US Agency for International Development (AID) that $10 million originally earmarked by AID for UNFPA has been reprogrammed, the policy announced in Mexico City has been applied to the largest multilateral donor agency in the population field, with potentially highly damaging consequences for international population assistance as it has evolved, with the strong support of the US Government, during the last 20 years. The first of the documents reproduced below (''AID Reprograms UNFPA $10 Million) is an AID News Release, issued on 25 September 1985, that summarizes the official US stance concerning this matter. The announcement of the withdrawal of US funds came after long and complex maneuvering in the US Congress concerning US funding for UNFPA. China is one of the major recipients of UNFPA funds, and that country's family planning program has been criticized as coercive. Abortion, with services provided by the program, is also widely used (the level of abortion rates in China is comparable to that in the United States). US funds to UNFPA, it was argued, thus indirectly support and encourage practices and abortion. On 10 July 1985 the US House of Representatives voted on an amendment to the foreign aid bill, condemning China's one-child policy and characterizing what it calls China's use of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization as crimes against humanity. Other legislative and executive actions are referred to in the statement below. The second document reproduced below is a statement by Rafael M. Salas, Executive Director, UNFPA, issued on 25 September 1985 in reply to the AID announcement.