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WASHINGTON--The charges made against the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) by the Population Research Institute's president, Steven Mosher ["Rep. Davis: Champion of women, opponent of UNFPA funding," March 21], fit an old discredited pattern.
The method is simple. Fabricate a story, lace it with innuendo, and throw mud. When objective people see through the lies, repeat them, re-moisten the mud, throw it again, and hope it sticks.
But the lie that UNFPA supports coercive abortion in China, or anywhere else, can't be allowed to stick. The lives and rights of literally millions of women are at stake.
UNFPA's program in China is specifically designed to move China away from coercive practices.
Will coercion be eliminated overnight in China? Definitely not. It will take time and patient, hard work to do so. Even still, UNFPA has already achieved some important successes that deserve the support of the United States.
Since PRI made its allegations in 2001, at least three independent investigative teams have visited UNFPA programs and reached the same conclusion: The fund is working to end the use of coercion.
The latest of these was the three-person independent assessment team sent to China in May 2002 by President Bush. The team found no evidence UNFPA supported or took part in managing a program of coercive abortion or sterilization in China. In fact, they specifically recommended that the United States support UNFPA.
The team wrote: "During our visits to five of the 32 counties we asked many SFPC [State Family Planning Commission] officials, doctors of the local hospitals under the Ministry of Health, County administrative officials, and ordinary Chinese in spontaneous/no-notice encounters on the street, in a school, or in factories whether they were aware of any recent coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations. All answered in the negative although some admitted that prior to the joint SFPC/UNFPA program there had been such cases."
And, it added: "In sum, based on what we heard, saw, and read, we find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC [People's Republic of China]. Indeed, UNFPA has registered its strong opposition to such practices." This is exactly the opposite of what PRI and Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-1st District, claim the team said.
The UNFPA program in China is perhaps the most heavily monitored international project in the world. Only PRI--an organization opposed to contraceptives and dedicated to ending all public support for family planning--has found any "evidence" that UNFPA supports coercive practices. No other independent monitoring organization makes that claim.
Among the recent investigators to monitor the program, in addition to the United States team, were an international team headed by a former Dutch ambassador to NATO, and three members of the British parliament--including a leading opponent of UNFPA in the House of Commons. Each found that UNFPA serves as a "force for good" in China. And the UNFPA opponent, after witnessing the program firsthand, changed his position and now strongly supports the fund.
But UNFPA's work is not limited to China. It is working in more than 140 of the world's poorest countries to provide access to contraceptives, to fight the AIDS pandemic, to ensure safe childbirth, and to end horrific abuses against women.
PRI's aspersions against UNFPA work only when the facts are obscured. When people actually see the work the fund does, they, like the British members of Parliament, understand the enormous value it provides.
As more and more objective people reject his fabrications and misrepresentations, we should expect the PRI president to try more desperate attacks. Most recently, he suggested that United States foreign-aid officials are plotting an "abortion Jihad in Iraq." One of the major evils he focused on is that after the war, women in Iraq might be encouraged to leave the home and enter the marketplace.
His real objective in opposing UNFPA is not to ensure human rights for women in China or anywhere else; it is to deny them the right to choose for themselves whether or not to use contraceptives. If PRI were concerned about improving human rights in China, it would be supporting the only agency that has had any success in moving that country away from coercion and toward a rights-based approach.
Your newspaper was right ["Davis is out on front on family planning 'gag rule'," March 10]: Were it not for the fact that PRI is a useful tool for a few powerful persons, it would receive scant attention.
BRIAN DIXON is the director of government relations for Population Connection.