By John-Henry Westen
NEW YORK, February 2, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The executive board of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) last week approved the sixth UNFPA programme of assistance to China, totalling $27 million over five years.Â
Last September, the United States denied, for the fourth straight year, funding to the UN agency over its support of China’s coercive population program. US law prohibits the country from contributing to any organization that participates in coercive abortion – a practice widely acknowledged in Communist-ruled China. Independent investigations have found evidence of UNFPA’s collusion in the coercive Chinese program. A recent Amnesty International report ( see coverage https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05052706.html ) notes thatÂforced abortion, forced sterilization and economic penalties are still a feature of China’s one-child policy.
Explaining the US inability to fund UNFPA Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration said: “UNFPA support of, and participation in, China’s population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion, thus triggering the Kemp-Kasten prohibition on support to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
Nevertheless, the ten European countries that provide most of UNFPA’s funding: the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany praised the UN agency’s support for China andÂpraised the UNFPA funding of China’s population program. In a statement on their behalf by the United Kingdom, the countries declared: “unequivocally…in our view, UNFPA’s activities in China, as in the rest of the world, are in strict conformity with the unanimously adopted Programme of Action of the ICPD, and play a key role in supporting our common endeavour, the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Joseph D’Agostino, spokesman for the Population Research Institute – the organization which first exposed the horrors of China’s coercive population program – commented, “It really shows that some people don’t care about human rights.”
D’Agostino told LifeSiteNews.com, “These governments make noises about human rights but they obviously don’t care about them because there is no doubt UNFPA supports China’s coercive population program which includes forced abortion and sterilization. In some cases women are imprisoned and fined and their husbands are subjected to the same treatment. The fact that Western governments continue, even if indirectly, to fund China’s coercive program, is unbelievable.”
D’Agostino noted that the news about China’s forced abortions is wide-spread and was as recently as September reported on in Time magazine.
D’Agostino concluded, “Why don’t these governments demand at least an easing of the coercive measures? Why is the money always given no strings attached?”