You may have heard that the Bush administration is once again withholding funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).  Because UNFPA provides funding for health services -- including voluntary family planning -- in China, where the government maintains a “one-child policy,” the Bush administration decided Thursday to unjustly withhold U.S. funding to UNFPA, as it has for the last seven years. That’s no surprise (and it’s barely even news-worthy), though it is disappointing.  Contrary to the administration’s assertions, UNFPA provides alternative and voluntary approaches to China’s compulsory family planning program.
 
But you may have missed the potentially even bigger news.  Now the Bush administration has threatened to dramatically expand the interpretation of the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which until now has been limited only to UNFPA, to also cut off funding to other organizations solely because they operate health programs in China. Buried in the statement released by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is the following ominous warning:

This Los Angeles dinner started in a limo. This is not my usual transport when dining with my Ethiopian colleague Boge Gebre. But tonight I was introducing friends from different worlds. Our Los Angeles hosts generously provided the transportation. The car's black velvet interior with blinking lights on the ceiling gave a surreal setting to our conversation about stopping the unbearable practice of female genital mutilation (FGM).

Boge is a modern hero. As a successful catalyst for change she (through her NGO, the Kembatta Women's Self Help Center) has virtually wiped out the practice of FGM in several districts in Southern Ethiopia. A decade ago she returned to her country with one burning goal, "to stop even one girl from being cut!" I asked her how many girls have been spared and she grabbed my hands beaming, paused, and said with great satisfaction, "I don't know the exact number but in 7 of the 8 districts where we work, there is no mutilation of any girl!" Many thousands I told our hosts! In 2006 I was at one of her rallies where some 15,000 people -- from several villages -- came together to celebrate the end of the practice. I've never seen anything like it!

Continue reading Amy's blog entry on The Huffington Post!

Ellen Knickmeyer’s article “Egypt’s President Urges Family Planning” (June 11) effectively highlights the challenges that continued population growth can pose for countries’ development by increasing demands for jobs, food and education. 

It has been shown the world over that investing in women is essential to the well-being of families, communities and nations.  As Egypt’s president has recognized, voluntary family planning results in smaller families and is a cost-effective means to ease demographic pressures.

Last week I had the good fortune of being in Mexico for a PAI study tour of the country's family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs. Thanks in part to twenty years of U.S. FP/RH assistance (from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s), Mexico has made major improvements in the health of women and children and its demographic situation.  Although challenges on these issues certainly remain, particularly in terms of the needs of its adolescent and indigenous populations, Mexico is a clear success story when it comes to the effectiveness of investments in voluntary family planning programs.  

Consider a few statistics that underscore the progress Mexico has made.  In 1970, a few years before Mexico initiated its national family planning program -- with significant assistance from the United States and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) -- less than a quarter of women used contraceptives, average fertility rates were about seven children per woman, infant mortality rates were 69.0 per 1,000 live births, and average life expectancy was 62 years of age. 

Christine Bixiones is a Development Associate at PAI.

Mexico City, with its bustling streets, vibrant public art, and mixture of progress and need turned out to be an excellent location for an educational “tour” of a society’s public health challenges and success stories. Population Action International’s Friends’ Study Tour to Mexico gave its participants the opportunity to speak with passionate Mexican women leaders about their work to advance women’s status and health in a conservative “machista” culture and to see first-hand what these amazing leaders have accomplished and what challenges lie ahead.

Our group was particularly impressed with a dynamic group of youth leaders who work as community health promoters with the organization Mexfam (the Mexican Foundation for Family Planning).  At Mexfam clinics, sexual and reproductive health services are offered at a subsidized cost and are targeted to youth; outreach activities also reach youth in their schools and neighborhoods.

I've been in Mexico for almost a week. There's a growing behavior change challenge here: persuading Mexicans to change the way they eat and the way they have sex.

Why change the way they eat? Diabetes is on the rise in Mexico. Currently 9% of the population has type 2 diabetes and 18% are intolerant to carbohydrates. This is quite a challenge when the dietary staples are beans, rice and tortillas and more Coca-Cola is consumed here than anywhere on earth. It's VERY cheap.

Continue reading Amy's blog entry on The Huffington Post.

Wendy Turnbull is PAI's Sr. Policy Research Analyst. She is in Kenya with other colleagues working on PAI's latest documentary.

The small, one-room primary school building in Kibera has broken windows in a few spots, but is otherwise in good shape.  Located in the heart of Nairobi, Kibera competes with Soweto, South Africa to lay claim to being Africa’s second largest slum: it is home to more than one million people.

Colleagues from PAI and Pathfinder International and I are in Kibera to film and participate in a Muslim bridal shower.  We’re here in Kenya for the week producing a short documentary about the vulnerability of married women to HIV/AIDS.  Because the bridal shower is a women-only event, our male filmmaker, Nathan, is unable to attend, so we’ve lined up a local female camera-person. We women have been advised to “bling up” and wear as much gold, sequins, and makeup as possible.  We do our best to comply but we’re utterly out of our league in this crowd.  Jeans are a no-no.

Craig Lasher is PAI's Senior Policy Analyst.

The lead from Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post on Tony Blair's newfound faith references the Global Gag Rule:

The American kickoff of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation last week unintentionally revealed the mountain of misunderstanding the former British prime minister has undertaken to scale. At an event designed to further mutual religious sympathy, two of the panelists -- including the president of Yale University, Richard Levin -- casually asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists. Pro-life Catholics and evangelicals? Wahhabi extremists? What's the difference?

Tamar Abrams is PAI's Vice President of Communications.  She is in Kenya with other colleagues working on PAI's latest documentary.

On a cool Saturday afternoon, the day before Kenya celebrates Madaraka Day (June 1, 1963 -- the date the country attained internal self-rule), I and several colleagues from PAI are having lunch at the home of Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando in Nairobi. Rosemarie, the director of the Centre for the Study of Adolescence and a dear friend of PAI's, has been instrumental in arranging logistics and interviews as we film our latest documentary. She has gathered over a dozen people in her lovely living room for a traditional Kenyan meal, many of whom work in reproductive health. Our conversations span topics from our children to USAID to Nairobi's biblical traffic jams.

It is only after many of the guests have left and there are just six women remaining that the conversation turns to the presidential elections in the U.S. There is such passion as the Kenyan women talk about Barack Obama. "He is our son," one states emphatically. They speak with awe of his father's birthplace in Nyanza Province, more than five hours away from where we are sitting in Nairobi. Barack's father was "brilliant," a woman says. "Everyone talked about how smart he was. It is the fish they eat there. You eat the head of the fish and all the wisdom goes straight to your own head." The women nod in agreement, assuming the senior Obama ate a lot of fish heads.