ONE Big Oversight

Washington, DC - May 29, 2007

 As the U.S. Presidential campaign season begins to heat up, a number of advocacy groups are beginning to develop policy platforms for candidates to support and endorse in their campaigns.  The ONE Campaign, which develops these platforms for policymakers around the world on the topics of poverty and HIV/AIDS, is putting together such a document right now.  Regrettably, rumor has it that ONE’s platform will give only passing mention of one of the most effective methods of fighting poverty and hunger, curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and reducing child and maternal mortality: family planning and reproductive health care.

A platform that is intended to truly address the solutions to these global development concerns must stress the key intervention that is family planning and reproductive health care – particularly access to contraceptives including condoms, crucial to HIV/AIDS prevention programs. How can we expect to curb the spread of this pandemic without giving people the education, health care and tools they need to protect themselves?  How can parents pull themselves and their children out of poverty if they lack access to contraceptives that enable them to plan the size of their family based on the number of children they desire and their ability to provide for them?  How can we curb maternal and child mortality if young women are unable to delay pregnancy until they are healthy and mature enough to survive childbirth and care for a child?

Recognizing the important links between family planning and many larger development goals, such as poverty reduction, is crucial to making progress.  Bono, co-founder of ONE’s partner organization DATA (Debt. AIDS. Trade. Africa.), recognized this connection when speaking about DATA’s recent report finding shortfalls in the G8 nations’ aid to Africa.  “These statistics are not just numbers on a page, they are people begging for their lives, for two pills a day, a mother begging to immunize her children, a child begging not to become a mother at age 12,” Bono said.  When women and girls are able to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS, they are empowered to get an education and to live a longer, healthier life. 

In light of these truths, why would ONE want to promote a presidential campaign platform on poverty and HIV/AIDS that’s lacking legitimate discussion of the need for family planning and reproductive health care, including access to condoms? We must have heard wrong.

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.