WASHINGTON, January 13, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the primary governmental foreign aid agency, issued a major report last week to “to inform and focus international development assistance.” The report, “Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security, and Opportunity” suggests that the agency will ease up on population control pressure and concentrate resources on other strategies to improve development. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) points out that the report could signal “a major shift in USAID policy away from promoting fertility decline as a chief means to achieve international development.” The report states, “As far back as the mid-1980s, it was reported that demographic factors such as fertility decline and population growth play a role in economic development – but that good governance, adequate resources, sound economic policies, and lack of corruption are even more important. The conclusion, then, is that good economic policies do more to reduce poverty than fertility and family planning programs.”
C-Fam focuses attention on the portion of the report which asserts that, for the majority of developing countries, health care programs should expand beyond a reproductive health mentality in order to address the needs of all members of a family. “Global health programs can shift their focus from women of reproductive age and children under 5 to entire families, including income earners and elderly dependents,” the report states.
With this latest development it appears that, under the Bush administration, the U.S. government is finally changing its pervasive population control policies initiated under the Nixon/Kissinger era NSSM 200 document . See the full report online at: https://www.usaid.gov/fani/ See C-Fam online at: www.c-fam.org See LifeSite’s NSSM 200 page https://www.lifesitenews.com/waronfamily/nssm200/index.html