The Trump administration continues to withdraw funding to American and international organisations that pursue policies on sexuality, diversity, and minority rights that contradict its isolationist and conservative agenda.
Since February, the US has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN reproductive and sexual health agency. On Thursday, the US announced that it intended to deny future funding to UNFPA by triggering the so-called Kemp-Kasten Amendment from 1985.
The amendment was originally intended to restrict funding to UNFPA after concerns arose about China’s population control policies and UNFPA’s work in China. However, evaluations by the US government and others found no evidence that UNFPA directly engages in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China.
More generally, UNFPA does not promote abortion as a method of family planning or fund abortion services. In its annual reports, UNFPA analyses population data to support governments to adopt policies aimed at raising, lowering or maintaining fertility rates at odds with women rights.
The 2023 report highlighted the fact that 44 percent of partnered women and girls in 68 countries do not have right to make informed decisions about their bodies when it comes to having sex, using contraception and seeking health care. Millions of women worldwide have an unmet need for safe contraception.
The situation varies very much by country, with a majority of all countries having fertility rates below the reproduction rate, leading to an aging population, and other countries increasing their populations well above available resources.
In a press release, UNFPA noted with deep regret the US decision. “Following the abrupt termination of development assistance grants, this move will add further strain to the already-stretched global public health system. It will cut essential support for millions of people living in humanitarian crises and for midwives preventing mothers from dying in childbirth.”
The decision ends abruptly UNFPA’s decades-long partnership with the US, “a founding partner, (that) has made the world safer, stronger and more prosperous. Together, we have strengthened health systems, saved millions of lives, and improved the economic prospects of families and communities worldwide.”
Over the past four years alone, with the US Government’s life-saving investments, UNFPA prevented more than 17,000 maternal deaths, 9 million unintended pregnancies and nearly 3 million unsafe abortions by expanding access to voluntary family planning.
The Brussels Times
