Inter Press Service - December 16, 2002
Marwaan Macan-Markar

On Monday, the text of the action plan due to come out of the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference revealed the wide gulf between this region's governments and Washington: More than 40 countries except for the United States had agreed to endorse the plan.

"All countries excepting the U.S. government have agreed on the draft text," a member of a South Asian government delegation told IPS. "The U.S. delegation has refused to compromise. It has stuck to one position, and the gap between the U.S. and others have widened."

The Republican administration of U.S. President George W Bush was all but named for trying to undermine the regional gathering - and setting back international commitments agreed many years ago -- during the ministerial-level segment of this conference, which ends Tuesday.

"One major power, which played an important leadership role at (the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development or ICPD in) Cairo, has completely reversed its position," Steven Sinding, director-general of the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, said at the opening of the ministerial meeting.

"In the past few days it has continued to block consensus - a consensus deeply sought by every other country in attendance," he added. "Such backsliding and intransigent opposition on the commitments to sexual and reproductive health, made just eight years ago, should not be allowed to continue."

The U.S. delegation, however, is hitting back at its critics. It is a "deplorable disinformation campaign," Eugene Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said during a hurriedly-arranged press conference.

"We have made some efforts to improve the language of the text. This has been interpreted as pulling away from the ICPD," he added. "We are not trying to overturn anything."

As it stands, the 22-page plan of action has large chunks of bracketed paragraphs, indicating the language in the document that Washington's negotiators are disputing.

Among the sections with language that the U.S. is objecting to are those on 'Gender Equality, Equity and Empowerment of Women,' 'Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health,' 'Adolescent Reproductive Health' and 'HIV/AIDS'.

By contrast, Asia's Muslim countries that have at times backed the Bush administration's conservative views on reproductive health policies, including Iran, and the region's largest Catholic country, the Philippines, are supporting the action plan.

This regional conference, which runs from Dec. 11-17, seeks to affirm and advance the landmark population policies endorsed by 179 countries, including the United States, at the Cairo meeting.

Activists had hailed the Cairo programme of action as a milestone, since it secured universal support for gender equality and reproductive health services and rights.

It guaranteed women services to ensure safe motherhood, to enjoy the benefits of voluntary family planning, to be guaranteed protection from gender-based violence and be helped in the event of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

The global debate at that time grew after some groups, including church-based ones, interpreted reproductive health services as encouraging early sexual activity and promiscuity, or abortion.

But the Cairo document did not have a "hidden agenda, nor any secret codes," Thoraya Ahamed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said in a pointed reference to the emerging U.S. policy on reproductive health that opposes services that it views as advocating abortions.

"The phrase 'reproductive health services' is not a code for the promotion or support for 'abortion services," she said. "Nothing in the proceedings at Cairo, or the five-year review, justifies describing them as such."

But Washington does not see it that way, says a hard-hitting statement released by more than 40 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) following the negotiating process here.

"The current U.S. administration is being held hostage by an extreme conservative minority with little regard for the health, welfare and freedoms of women of Asia and the Pacific," Ninuk Widyantoro of Indonesia's Women's Health Foundation was quoted in the statement.

If the U.S. delegation gets its way, add the NGOs, the "real progress" made by the Asia-Pacific since Cairo -- including programmes on gender equity, women's empowerment, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, access to sexual and reproductive health services and HIV/AIDS care -- will be undermined.

"The United States clearly does stand alone in its efforts to black what is obviously a regional consensus to continue this vital work in the struggle to improve health and improve poverty in the region," the statement asserted.

"They (the U.S.) wants to take out language on condom use for young people," said Sally Ethelston of the Washington D.C.-based Population Action International. "This is criminal in the time of spreading HIV/AIDS. "In the U.S., they are promoting a policy of abstinence for youth."

U.S. official Dewey confirmed that the United States "advocates abstinence as the healthiest form of behaviour for adolescents".

The U.S. stance in Bangkok comes in the wake of similar tough positions that the Bush administration has taken on reproductive health.

In July this year, the UNFPA announced that Washington had decided to withhold 34 million U.S. dollars to this U.N. agency, saying that funds were being diverted to fund abortions.

Earlier, in January, Bush announced a freeze on U.S. funding for overseas organisations that provide family planning services, including advice on abortions and counselling on parenthood, to women in the developing world.

"They (the Bush administration) are playing to a domestic constituency," said Ethelston. "The onslaught on reproductive health in the U.S. is getting underway."

"What we are witnessing in Bangkok is ideological gynaecology," she argued. "It is stunning." (END/IPS/AP/NA/HE/DV/MMM/JS/02) .

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