The
United Nations Population Fund
(
UNFPA) began operations in
1969 as the
United Nations Fund for Population
Activities (the name was changed in
1987) under the administration of the
United Nations Development
Fund. In
1971 it was placed under the
authority of the
United
Nations General Assembly.
The UNFPA supports programs in four areas, the Arab States and
Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and
the sub-Saharan Africa. UNFPA personnel work in more the 140
countries, territories and areas. Around three quarters of the
staff work in the field.
Some of the UNFPA's work involves providing supplies and services
involving
reproductive health.
They also encourage participation by young people and women to help
rebuild their societies who are affected by poor reproductive
health, which expands out into areas such as prevention of
sexually transmitted diseases,
including HIV/AIDS.
Role
The UNFPA works in partnership with other United Nations agencies,
governments and communities to attain the
Millennium Development
Goals.
Its stated mission is to promote the right of every woman, man and
child to enjoy a life of "health and equal opportunity." UNFPA
supports countries in using population data for policies and
programs to "reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is
wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of
HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and
respect."
The agency’s main goals are:
Leadership
Executive Directors and Under-Secretary General of the UN
2000 -
present Ms. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
(Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia
)
1987 - 2000 Dr. Nafis
Sadik (Pakistan
)
1969 - 1987 Mr.
Rafael
M. Salas
(Philippines
)
Areas of work
UNFPA is the world's largest international source of funding for
population and
reproductive
health programs. The Fund works with governments and
non-governmental organizations in over 140 countries with the
support of the international community, supporting programs that
help women, men and young people:
According to UNFPA these elements promote the right of
"reproductive health", that is physical, mental, and social health
in matters related to reproduction and the reproductive
system.
The Fund raises awareness of these needs worldwide, advocates close
attention to population problems, and helps needy countries
formulate policies and strategies in support of
sustainable development. Since 2001,
it has been led by
Thoraya Ahmed
Obaid. The Fund is also represented by
UNFPA Goodwill Ambassadors.
Program of Action
UNFPA's work is guided by the Program of Action adopted by 179
governments at the
International
Conference on Population and Development in
1994. The conference agreed that meeting people's needs
for education and health, including reproductive health, is a
prerequisite of sustainable development.
The main goals of the Program of Action are:
- Universal access to reproductive health services by 2015
- Universal primary education and closing the gender gap in
education by 2015
- Reducing maternal mortality by seventy-five percent by
2015
- Reducing infant mortality
- Increasing life expectancy
These goals were refined in 1999. One of the most important
additions concerned
HIV:
- HIV infection rates in persons 15-24 years of age should be
reduced by 25 percent in the most-affected countries by 2005 and by
25 percent globally by 2010.
Approach to health care
The Fund promotes a holistic approach to reproductive
health care that includes access to a range of
safe and affordable
contraceptive
methods and to sensitive counseling;
prenatal care, attended deliveries, emergency
obstetric care and post-natal care; and
prevention of
sexually
transmitted infections by promoting safer sexual
behavior.
UNFPA looks to improve the lives and expand the choices of
individuals and couples because, according to UNFPA, in time the
reproductive choices, multiplied across communities and countries,
affect population construction and trends.
The work of the agency revolves around improving reproductive
health, making motherhood safer, supporting adolescence and youth,
preventing HIV/Aids, promoting gender equality, protecting human
rights, and securing reproductive health supplies; throughout all
this they use a culturally sensitive approach. Their major
countries in need are third world countries who deal with these
major problems.
Example projects
Campaign to End
Fistula
- This UNFPA-led global campaign works to prevent obstetric fistula, a devastating and
socially isolating injury of childbirth, to treat women who live
with the condition and help those who have been treated to return
to their communities. The campaign works in more than 40 countries
in Africa, the Arab States and South Asia.
Ending Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting
- UNFPA has worked for many years to end the practice of female genital mutilation
(sometimes called female circumcision), the partial or total
removal of external female genital organs for cultural or other
non-medical reasons. The practice, which affects 100-140 million
women and girls across the world, violates their right to health
and bodily integrity. In 2007, UNFPA in partnership with UNICEF,
launched a $44-million program to reduce the practice by 40 per
cent in 16 countries by 2015 and to end it within a generation.
UNFPA also recently sponsored a Global
Technical Consultation, which drew experts from all over the
world to discuss strategies to convince communities to abandon the
practice.
Y-PEER (Youth
Peer Education Network)
- This umbrella organization, which was piloted by UNFPA to
address the AIDS epidemic among young people, supports hundreds of
peer education projects in more than 20 countries in Eastern
Europe, Africa and the Arab States. It seeks to bring common
standards of excellence to a wide variety of peer-to-peer
activities, by providing training, training manuals, an extensive
website for sharing knowledge and experience, and many other
resources.
Senegal
- A successful UNFPA program which carried out three specific
maternal mortality reduction projects that focused on the
construction and renovation and equipping of health centers &
rural maternity units.
Mali
- Through interagency team work, the country was enabled to build
and provide seven new community health centres in three areas plus
one new maternity unit.
Relations with the U.S. government
The UNFPA has been accused by different groups of providing support
for government programs which have promoted forced-abortions and
coercive sterilizations. Controversies regarding these allegations
have resulted in a sometimes shaky relationship between the
organization and the United States government, with three
presidential administrations, that of Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush
and George W. Bush withholding funding from the UNFPA.
The UNFPA provided aid to Peru's population control program in the
mid-to-late '90s, when it was discovered the Peruvian program had
been engaged in carrying out coercive sterilizations. The UNFPA was
not found directly involved in the scandal, but continued to fund
and work with the population control program after the abuses had
become public. The issue played a role in the Bush administration's
controversial decision in 2002 to cut off funding for the
organization.
From 2002 through 2008, the Bush Administration denied funding to
UNFPA that had already been allocated by the U.S. Congress, partly
on the grounds that the UNFPA supported Chinese government programs
which include forced abortions and coercive sterilizations. In a
letter from the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
Nicholas Burns to Congress, the administration said it had
determined that UNFPA’s support for China’s population program
“facilitates (its) government’s coercive abortion program”, thus
violating the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which bans the use of United
States aid to finance or support abortions overseas.
UNFPA claims that it "does not provide support for abortion
services". Its charter includes a strong statement condemning
coercion.".
UNFPA's connection to China's administration of forced abortions
was disputed by investigations carried out by various US, UK, and
UN teams sent to examine UNFPA activities in China. . Specifically,
a three-person U.S State Department fact-finding team was sent on a
two week tour throughout China. It wrote in a report to the State
Department that it found "no evidence that UNFPA has supported or
participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or
involuntary sterilization in China," as has been charged bycritics
.
However, according to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, the
UNFPA contributed vehicles and computers to the Chinese to carry
out their population control policies. Rep. Christopher H. Smith
(R-NJ), criticized the State Department investigation, saying the
investigators were shown "Potemkin Villages" where residents had
been intimidated into lying about the family-planning program. Dr.
Nafis Sadik, former director of UNFPA said her agency had been
pivotal in reversing China's coercive population control methods,
but a 2005 report by Amnesty International and a separate report by
the United States State Department found that coercive techniques
were still regularly employed by the Chinese, casting doubt upon
Sadik's statements.
A 2001 study conducted by the pro-life Population Research
Institute (PRI) claimed that the UNFPA shared an office with the
Chinese family planning officials who were carrying out forced
abortions."We located the family planning offices, and in that
family planning office, we located the UNFPA office, and we
confirmed from family planning officials there that there is no
distinction between what the UNFPA does and what the Chinese Family
Planning Office does," said Scott Weinberg, a spokesman for
PRI.
President Bush denied funding to the UNFPA. Over the course of the
Bush Administration, a total of $244 million in
Congressionally-approved funding was blocked by the Executive
Branch.
In response, the EU decided to fill the gap left behind by the US
under the
Sandbaek report. According
to its
Annual Report for 2008, the UNFPA received its
funding mainly from European Governments:Of the total income of
845.3 million US$, 118 million US$ were donated by the Netherlands,
67 million US$ by Sweden, 62 million US$ by Norway, 54 US$ by
Denmark, 53 million US$ by the UK, 52 million US$ by Spain, and
(remarkable for the size of the country) 19 million US$ by
Luxembourg. The European Commission donated further 36 million US$.
The most important non-European donor State was Japan (36 million
US$).
In America, nonprofit organizations like
Americans for UNFPA worked to compensate
for the loss of United States federal funding by raising private
donations.
In January of 2009 President Barack Obama restored U.S. funding to
UNFPA, saying in a public statement that he would "look forward to
working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the
U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will
be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to
reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent
HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154
countries."
The Obama Administration's policy in this regard has been
challenged by critics of UNFPA, who claim United States funding
will be used by the UNFPA to support unethical population control
tactics and provide abortions. These critics say that the work of
UNFPA focuses on the eradication of the poor rather than of
poverty. The Fund was created to prevent population growth, and it
allegedly does so by promoting not only contraceptive techniques,
but also abortion, including coercive abortion.
See also
References
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search