House to Consider UNFPA Funding; U.S. Support for Key International Family Planning Agency at Risk

June 12, 2003

The House of Representatives will soon consider the State Department authorization bill and debate whether the United States will resume its contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Last year, Congress appropriated $34 million for UNFPA, but these monies were later withheld by the White House, depriving UNFPA of critically needed support for its global health programs. It is imperative that funding for UNPFA be restored.

As the world's largest international source of funding for population and reproductive health programs, UNFPA plays a key role in improving access to essential family planning, and maternal and child health services in the world’s poorest places. In addition to providing reproductive health services, UNFPA engages in HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and advocacy campaigns across the globe, and is the world’s second largest donor of condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention.

U.S. Must Restore UNFPA Funding, Revise Kemp-Kasten

What’s at stake is whether the full House of Representatives will restore funding to UNFPA in the State Department authorization bill, and support language redefining the Kemp-Kasten provision of law. The bill authorizes $50 million each for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 for UNFPA, and includes language clarifying the intent of the Kemp-Kasten amendment. As currently written, Kemp-Kasten prohibits U.S. assistance to organizations determined by the President to "support or participate in the management of a program of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization." Revised language would specify that no funding go to any organization that “directly supports or participates in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

Through an overly broad interpretation of this language, the Bush administration last July justified withholding the entire U.S. contribution to the UNFPA because of its presence in China. Kemp-Kasten must therefore be revised, to ensure that it can no longer be used to deprive highly reputable humanitarian assistance organizations such as UNFPA of desperately needed funds.

Support the Crowley Provision

When the State Department authorization bill goes to the House floor, representatives can restore funding to UNFPA and help ensure that Kemp-Kasten isn’t inappropriately applied in the future by opposing any effort to strike the provision Reps. Joe Crowley (D-NY) offered in committee. The Crowley amendment requires that a UNFPA contribution be released promptly unless the President certifies that UNFPA "directly supports or participates in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." The phrase "directly supports or participates" is defined as "knowingly and intentionally working with a purpose to continue, advance, or expand" coercive practices. If enacted into law, the Crowley provision would make it much more difficult for the Bush administration to declare UNFPA complicit in the human rights abuses of the Chinese government and to withhold a U.S. contribution based on bogus allegations.

UNFPA funding in focus: Background on the debate

The dispute over the U.S. contribution to UNFPA began in January 2002, when the U.S. administration froze the $34 million UNFPA allocation approved by Congress as part of the FY02 foreign aid bill. President Bush halted the U.S. contribution in response to concerns raised by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) regarding the Fund’s program in China. At the White House’s direction, the State Department sent a blue-ribbon, three-person team to China to investigate, hinging any formal decision regarding UNFPA on the outcome of the team’s report. In May 2002, the team declared they had found, “No evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion…” They further recommended that the $34 million be released to UNFPA.

In July 2002, however, the Bush administration ignored these findings and halted the U.S. contribution to UNFPA, interpreting Kemp-Kasten more broadly than ever.

Concerned about human rights in China? Support UNFPA.

While it is widely acknowledged that problems exist with Chinese population policies, international delegations sent to visit UNFPA’s programs consistently report that UNFPA is part of the solution in China, helping promote voluntary family planning and positively influencing attitudes toward women’s reproductive healthcare.
UNFPA’s China program is approved by the Fund’s Executive Board, which consists of 36 U.N. member states including the United States, and adheres strictly to the voluntary, human rights-based approach to reproductive health and family planning stipulated by the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The program covers 32 Chinese counties that have abolished family planning quotas and targets, and aims to replace compulsory use of family planning and birth quotas with good counseling and informed consent, a greater range of contraceptive method choices, and higher quality services.

Since 1999, nearly 60 delegations and 145 diplomats from around the world have visited UNFPA’s China program. None of them have found any evidence to suggest that UNFPA is doing anything other than making the situation better.

Ironically, not one penny of the U.S. contribution to UNFPA has gone toward the China program for the past ten years, due to legislative restrictions. Instead, U.S. funds are held in a restricted account, none of which may be used for abortion or in China.

Legislative background: The Kemp-Kasten Amendment

The Bush administration justified the de-funding of UNFPA by authority granted to the President under a little-known provision of law called the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which was first incorporated in foreign aid appropriations bills as an amendment in 1985. Kemp-Kasten prohibits foreign aid funding for any organization that, as determined by the President, “supports or participates in the management of a program of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The Reagan and Bush administrations interpreted the language very broadly, resulting in presidential determination that UNFPA was ineligible for funding because of its projects in China.

That same year, a review of UNFPA programs by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) determined that UNFPA neither funds abortions nor supports coercive family planning practices through its programs. Since then, various studies of China's family planning program have documented its compulsory nature and the presence of coercion in China's program overall, but UNFPA has never been implicated in any coercive practices. These findings had no impact on the Reagan and Bush administrations however, and UNFPA was still denied funding.
The Clinton Administration formally announced it would resume funding UNFPA in May of 1993. Using its authority under the Kemp-Kasten amendment, President Clinton gave $14.5 million to UNFPA the following August. In subsequent years, U.S. funding for UNFPA has fluctuated, although a contribution has been made in every year except 1999.

In 2001, the Bush Administration reviewed UNFPA’s activities and determined UNFPA was not in violation of Kemp-Kasten, and provided $21.5 million to UNFPA. Yet in July 2002, President Bush changed his mind, and invoked Kemp-Kasten, canceling the $34 million appropriated by Congress for UNFPA. There was no change in UNFPA’s activities during this time.

A review of the analysis released by the State Department justifying the application of Kemp-Kasten in 2002 indicates that the principal reason for denying funds to UNFPA is the existence of regulations in China that require families to pay “social compensation fees” for unauthorized or “out-of-plan births.” Given that such fees or fines are sometimes significant, the analysis concludes that such fines will therefore force women to have abortions. Thus, by virtue of working with an agency of the Chinese government operating in such a legal environment, UNFPA is culpable and, therefore, in violation of the Kemp-Kasten provision.

Under this logic, any recipient of U.S. funds should be disqualified if they cooperate with Chinese government institutions judged to be involved in the enforcement of the “one-child” policy. Many multilateral and other U.S.-supported organizations (such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank) have ongoing relationships with the same Chinese agencies, and many even work on reproductive health-related programs. In fact, last year the White House approved a $15 million joint initiative between the National Institutes of Health and the Chinese Ministry of Health to address HIV/AIDS.

The disparate treatment of UNFPA relative to other multilateral and U.S. organizations illustrates unmistakably that President Bush’s decision to defund UNFPA was clearly not about China but about politics, which unfortunately come with a human cost. Regrettably, without U.S. support, the programs that will suffer most are those in the 150 other countries where UNFPA works, including UNFPA’s international AIDS prevention programs.

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.