Invest in Women, Invest in Change
04/01/2009
Sarah Craven, chief of UNFPA's Washington Office, discusses the impact of the restoration of UNFPA funding.
In his first 100 days on the job, President Barack Obama has begun to deliver on his promises to make life better for women around the world – and through them for their families and their countries. Among other initiatives, President Obama's restoration of funding to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will help transform women's lives in villages and communities in more than 150 nations. With better health and opportunities, women can devote more energy to the well-being of their children, families and communities. President Obama has made a wise investment.
The President's decision to release Congress appropriations of $50 million for UNFPA means continued support for practical health interventions such as voluntary family planning, HIV prevention and safe motherhood. These measures promote health and freedom, and save women in developing countries from dying unnecessarily in pregnancy and childbirth. Of all international development goals, the goal to reduce maternal mortality lags the furthest behind.
Today, every minute of every day, a pregnant woman bleeds to death or dies somewhere from infection, high blood pressure, HIV complications or simple obstructed labor, the pregnancy-related complications that afflict 42 percent of all women worldwide.
While in most of the United States, we deal with these difficulties more or less routinely – with the daily miracles of modern medicine, In less developed countries, women are not so lucky. Poor water and sanitation, bad roads, lack of transport, lack of understanding that the problem is urgent, shortages of health workers and grossly inadequate clinics and hospitals mean that half a million women die needlessly every year from pregnancy-related complications. The vast majority of maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Maternal mortality is the worst health disparity in the world. In the top ten countries on the United Nations' ranking for women's safety in pregnancy and childbirth (all industrialized nations), the average risk of death is one in 16,700. In Niger and Afghanistan, at the bottom of the list, one in every seven women risks dying while trying to give life.
And the women who die are just the tip of the iceberg. Another ten million women or so will suffer long-term infection, illness or disability such as obstetric fistula, a devastating injury to the birth canal that leaves a woman with uncontrollable leaking of urine or feces. Children are also affected. When a mother dies, her children are three times as likely to die as well, without their mother's care.
For all these women and their families, lack of reproductive health care drives them and their countries deeper into poverty. And this threatens prospects for peace and prosperity around the world. It is estimated that access to family planning alone could reduce maternal deaths by 25 to 40 percent and reduce child mortality by more than 20 percent. Family planning is also the best way to reduce the incidence of abortion. Yet today more than 200 million women in less developed countries have no access to modern birth control methods, which puts their health at risk and limits their life options.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have expressed their strong support for UNFPA and its mandate of reproductive health and rights worldwide, arguing that women's rights are central to U.S. foreign policy goals to create a more equitable and stable world.
As leaders confront the worst financial crisis in generations, it is time to invest in women and invest in change that will benefit current and future generations.
As much as I would like to be in full support of the funding, it is hard to overlook the fact that UNFPA has a history of pushing abortion as the answer. Women’s health…really? It does not require one to see the details to realize that much of the disease and death reductions listed above are based on ‘population control’ via abortions and pushing birth control pills. Or to put it simply, if UNFPA can reduce the number of babies being born, they can claim victory for women’s health. That is not women’s health; that is simply population control. To take it a step further, the last comment of the article reads, “As leaders confront the worst financial crisis in generations, it is time to invest in women and invest in change that will benefit current and future generations.” So is the wellbeing of women the goal? Or is population control being implemented for financial reasons?
— Mike on 2009-04-01
UNFPA does not fund or provide support for abortion services anywhere in the world it works.
Women’s rights, including reproductive rights, have been ignored for the last seven years because of ideology. The Obama administration has shown it will rely on science and not ideology to make important policy.
— Nancy Roberts on 2009-04-02
Mike - Where have you been for the past 15 years? In 1994, 179 countries forged a new vision for “population” that put women in the center of development policy and promoted a rights-based approach rather than top-down demographic “control”. The “Cairo Consensus” as some call it, serves as the blueprint for UNFPA’s work in promoting voluntary family planning as one part of a comprehensive life-cycle approach to reproductive health. Ironically, many hard-line “population-controllers” are critical of UNFPA’s approach.
Moreover, UNFPA does not support or support abortion anywhere in the world - period.
I would encourage you to visit UNFPA’s website http://www.unfpa.org and read it with an open mind and heart. You might be pleasantly surprised.
— Matt G. on 2009-04-02
Family planning includes the reproductive health of women and it is recognized by men and women as critical to the health of families and their communities. It saves the lives of children and their mothers.
UNFPA with its partners in communities around the world continues to provide education to families and make family planning accessible and affordable for families who want the services.
Family planning saves lives. And mothers & children, men & women and various forms of the family agree that this is a good thing.
— pmsears on 2009-04-02
Mike is so misinformed and misleading here that it’s hard to know where to begin. UNFPA has never pushed abortion as an answer to anything anywhere. He’s trying to equate abortion with family planning and women’s right to decide when and whether to have children. That’s a classic radical anti-woman right-wing tactic, going back to the Vatican position. It won’t work. UNFPA is working to give women voluntary family planning options and better reproductive health worldwide.
— Nicole on 2009-04-03
UNFPA provides lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, care during pregnancy and childbirth, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. As Matt pointed out, UNFPA adheres to the principles set forth at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that reproductive health programs should provide the widest range of services without any form of coercion.
— kelly on 2009-04-03
Improving global maternal and child health is a moral imperative and will benefit long-term global growth. Keep up the good work!
— Jan on 2009-04-05
Under President Obama, the U.S. has rejoined the world community on the side of the world’s women with a $50 million contribution to UNFPA and an 18 percent increase in overseas reproductive health funds. WHEW!! UNFPA does invaluable work in the world. The Bush Administration withheld a total of $244 million so that the 34 Million Friends of UNFPA grassroots campaign will keep going and going. http://www.34millionfriends.org. We as Americans can all take a stand for the women of the world.
— Jane Roberts on 2009-04-06
What is wrong with population control? How woman can be healthy being a reproductive machine? How woman can feed many babies? Educate them? Treat them without health care? Poor people do not have any rights - it is all hypocritical.
They are slaves of poverty.
I do not see anything wrong with advice to decrease the population level and decreasing number of slaves.
— Tatiana on 2009-04-06
Unmet need for family planning is immense around the world. So is the need to improve woman’s reproductive right. Family planning is key to solve these issues. However abortion must never be used to control population. Abortion is not a method of contraception.Every woman should have access and dignity to choose the number of children she wants to have.
— Shabina Hussain on 2009-04-07
I’d like to know what Mike’s background is and where he gets his news. Sounds like a slanted news source. Get informed and you’ll understand UNFPA is so much more and that it does NOT push abortion.
— Cherrie on 2009-04-07
Giving money to these aid, humanitarian agencies is a waste. There will be no change or percieved development in the communities and villages among women as alleged. How long have we had these agencies and what is their impact? They are just huge bureacracies where a few western elites(or rather elites) get free money, live posh lives and patronise the poor. what do they produce- tonnes and tonnes of documents. The development model has to change and these UN Agencies are not effective- they are a waste.
— Lawrence Michelo on 2009-04-08
We are running organisation in Nigeria for the prevention of obstetric fistula and we are the only NGO in nigeria who are working in the area of prevention, couseling and reintegrating women back to their respective communities with proper folow-ups to ensure sustainability.
With all this effort UNFPA are not including organisation like ours in the programs and we are the organisation who are working directly with the Fistula survivors.
Given them such prevelege by the President Obama for me is not necessary because the they are not even utilizing the available resources they have due to the kind of staff they have.
— Galadima Muhammad Sani on 2009-04-08
Adele Reproductive Health Foundation, a community-based reproductive health and family planning NGO, adds it voice and that of the youth, and volunteers to the President Obama’s initiative and the efforts UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, in helping to transform women’s lives in villages and communities in Bafut and Mambanda in Cameroon. $10 - can provide a pregnancy prevention method (Depo provera or pills) to one woman for 12 months.
$50 - can diagnose and treat at least three vulnerable children presenting with reoccurring diseases (for example fever, malaria, syphilis).
$120 - can train and build the capacity of five community healthcare providers in one week to understand circumstances affecting culturally appropriate care for vulnerable and orphan of HIV.
Our initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty and advancing young women’s reproductive health. We have plans to screen 300 vulnerable children and orphans of HIV, providing counselling, diagnoses and treatment of reoccurring diseases in the month of May 2009. According to Ngum the coordinator ‘through this project we will work to reduce inequality and abuse while empowering women to delay early marriage, plan pregnancies and access quality health care’. To learn more about Adele Reproductive Health Foundation go to http://orgs.takingitglobal.org/2196. You can also email us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
— Dr Gwewasang C. Martin on 2009-04-08
Oh, dear Mr Michelo, I dare say you have not witnessed communities that UNFPA serves as I have. The testimonies from Sari & Martin speak for themselves. I hope you will try to learn more about the work and impact of the work of partnerships between UNFPA, other NGOs and communities they serve that not only have made a distinctly positive difference, they have saved lives and enhanced the quality of living for women, children and men.
— pmsears on 2009-04-08
I applaud the Obama administration’s support of reproductive healthcare worldwide. Thank you, UNFPA, for your efforts in this arena!
-Dr. J Tamez
— Dr. Jaime Tamez on 2009-04-13
As far as I am concerned, women’s lives mainly lie on te birth rate per every woman. I say so because it is evidence that without proper measures put in place, then our women will be messed up as a result of misinformation and interpretation of newly introduced family drugs.To me I therefore tend to think that UNFPA should put strict measures to guard this by creating awareness to all in a very easy and understandable way through the informers.
— MICAH ODOYO OPONDO on 2009-04-14
I think the most cost effective way to help women is to introduce male sterilization so we may save money from expensive contraceptives with a lot of side effects. I agree with UN not effective way as humanitarian agency. Real waste of money to support them!
It is paycheck for program management and expensive offices (did you see them?!!!) Shame!
— Tatiana on 2009-05-14
Yes a waste to help the UN AID agencies. They think they are larger than governments.They are just halls of nepotism favouring western elites and ‘experts’- recycled dinosours living like kings off the poor peoples backs. Shame
— Lawrence Michelo on 2009-05-14