POPULATION-ASIA: U.S. Bullying Tactics Come under Fire at Meet

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 6 2003 (IPS) - A conference on reproductive health began here Monday with U.S. President George W Bush being cast as a villain for his attempt to bully health clinics in the developing world to follow his conservative political agenda.

While some speakers did not specifically name the Bush White House as they warned about the dangers that Washington’s policies pose for the Asia-Pacific – the denial of funding to groups that offer abortion-related services – others were more direct.

The White House is trying to make up for what it cannot achieve domestically by pushing its policies overseas, Nancy Northup, president of the U.S.-based Centre for Reproductive Health Rights, said in her address on the opening morning. ”In some Asian countries, groups have stopped performing abortions for fear of losing funding.”

Northup also drew attention to another course of action used by Washington to stamp its narrow reading of reproductive health in Asia-Pacific countries – having U.S. government delegations ”turn the clock back on reproductive rights” at international conferences.

Even the representatives of the two major sponsors of the conference – the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, both U.S.-based – did not spare the Bush administration from accusations on has been perceived as an open assault on the advances made to secure reproductive health rights over the past 10 years.

”We need to resist conservative efforts attempting to force us into a moral approach than an evidence-based approach” in shaping reproductive health policies, Rosalia Sciortino, regional representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in her remarks at the opening session.

The Second Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health, which runs from Oct. 6-10 in the Thai capital, has attracted some 1,500 participants, including doctors, policymakers, activists and social workers, from 41 countries across Asia. The first conference was held two years ago in Manila.

The discussions this week are expected to shape a course of action to help vulnerable communities secure noticeable improvements in their respective reproductive health environments.

And as was evident on the first morning, Washington’s current policies – dubbed the Gag Rule – have emerged as a challenge that the Asia-Pacific countries will have to surmount in their quest for progress.

In January 2001, the Bush administration reimposed the Gag Rule, or the Mexico City Policy, as it is officially known. Under this policy, which was first endorsed by former President Ronald Reagan and given further backing during the presidency of Bush’s father, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is prohibited from giving funds to foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have as their mission any activities Washington sees as abortion-related.

Such restrictions included NGOs involved in performing abortions, offering counselling services on abortions and even those who sought to make it a political issue by lobbying for women to have the right to determine if she wanted to have an abortion.

In July this year, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) too became a victim of the new conservative mood that governs Washington’s thinking. The U.S. Congress voted to stop the U.N. agency from getting its annual contributions for the years 2004 and 2005, amounting to 100 million U.S. dollars. The London-based International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) estimates that close to 50 million abortions are done every year, of which 20 million are unsafe. ”This results in the death of about 78,000, but many more suffer injuries and illnesses.”

It adds, that ”at least a quarter of all unsafe abortions are to girls 15 to 19 years.”

In Asia, unsafe abortions are the reason for 12 percent of all maternal deaths, claiming the lives of 38,000 women each year, Sheila Macrae of the UNFPA told the conference. ”This is a human tragedy that must be squarely addressed.”

Currently, USAID coughs up an estimated 425 million dollars annually in assistance to 65 countries in the developing world, 16 of which are in Asia. But in the wake of the new conditions placed on receiving such assistance, a number of family planning associations in Asia have agreed not to accept such funds, Northup revealed.

But as has become increasingly obvious in some quarters, the implications of such a decision on top of those being denied funds by Washington can have devastating consequences on poor countries afflicted by a host of health-related problems, including HIV/AIDS.

Cambodia, in fact, has emerged as the prime example of how deadly the Gag Rule can be. It is one of four Asian countries – the others including Bangladesh and Nepal, both with a majority of the population living on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day, like Cambodia – that has seen funds drying up due to family planning programmes that run counter to Washington’s stance.

This poor, war-ravaged South-east Asian country has lost over three million dollars ”for HIV prevention, adolescent sex education and counselling” as a result of the Gag Rule, states the IPPF.

It comes at a time when Cambodia is staggering under the spread of HIV infections, making it the country with the highest HIV rate in Asia. According the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), over two percent of the population has been struck by the pandemic.

Besides that, Cambodia has also to grapple with its disturbing maternal mortality rate – 900 deaths per 100,000 live births per year. By contrast, states the IPPF, a developed country like Japan has 18 maternal mortality cases per 100,000 live births and the region’s largest country, China, has 95 maternal mortality cases per 100,000 live births.

NGOs working in the field of reproductive health in Asia ”must make it clear that U.S. government policies are an attack on their work,” Northup argued. ”The Bush administration is not going to change its stance on the global gag rule.”