Bush again withholds money from Population Fund

WASHINGTON, June 26 – The Bush administration today said it would withhold $39.7 million authorized by Congress for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, for the seventh straight year.

Congressional critics immediately slammed the long-expected decision as once more based on spurious charges. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said she was “deeply disappointed, but not surprised,” calling it proof the administration remains in a “retrograde rut” and is “blinded by political extremism.”

Since 2002, the administration has withheld a total of US$235 million from UNFPA, which supports voluntary family planning and reproductive health care programs in 154 countries worldwide. In his letter notifying Congress of the decision, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte once again cited UNFPA’s program in China as the reason, saying that by providing “financial and technical resources” to the government, UNFPA “provides support for and participates in the management” of coercive abortions and sterilizations there.

Allegations about UNFPA’s work in China originated in 2001 from a private US group opposed to family planning. Several State Department and other blue-ribbon investigative teams have repeatedly found that no link to coercive practices exists, and in fact reported that UNFPA’s pilot programs demonstrating voluntary family planning methods in 80 counties have been “a force for good” in China.

UNFPA officials have repeatedly noted that nearly all other countries recognize the value of UNFPA’s work to support family planning and safe motherhood education and services. The agency, supported by voluntary contributions from UN member states, works in all the world’s poorest countries and in many where US aid agencies do not operate. A record 181 UN member states contributed US$419 million to the fund’s operating resources in 2007, the highest number of donor nations and the largest amount of contributions since the fund began operating in 1969. Donors included every country in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The top ten donors in 2007 were the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, Japan, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Spain and Canada, leaving the United States alone as the only country to withhold funding for political reasons.

The statement said the funds earmarked for UNFPA would be redirected to other US family planning assistance programs. In 2007, U.S. population assistance totaled $435.6 million, down 24 percent from the 1995 high of $576.6 million, and down 45 percent in terms of constant 1974 dollars, according to calculations by Population Action International (PAI). (Click here to see a chart of U.S. population spending.)