POPULATION: NGOs Warn of World Bank ”Fundamentalists”
NEW YORK, 7 May (IPS): When the United States tried to water down a longstanding policy on reproductive health and family planning at the World Bank last month, there was a storm of protests from population experts and activist groups worldwide.
The protests came from several non-governmental organisations, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Bretton Woods Project, CARE International UK, Global Population Education, Action Aid and the Centre for Health and Gender Equity.
All of them complained that a proposed draft strategy on population, backed by the US, did not acknowledge womens sexual health and reproductive rights.
Although the move was thwarted (forhindret), “this immediate victory requires eternal vigilance (agtpågivenhed) against actions by the neo-cons (ny-konservative) now in powerful positions – all political appointees of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, says Werner Fornos, president of Global Population Education.
He said “a near-fatal anti-population policy appears to have been stopped at the World Bank, thanks in large part to European executive directors who insisted on staying with a 10-year policy of including population and family planning programmes in country specific plans.”
– For the Bank to abandon reproductive rights and turn the clock back on major environmental initiatives would be a reprehensible (forkastelig) retreat from reality, Fornos told IPS.
One of Wolfowitz appointees, Juan Jose Daboub, a managing director at the World Bank, has been accused of trying to eliminate references to reproductive health and family planning from a Bank strategy document
After strong protests by several European members, specifically Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Norway (sidder på den nordisk-baltiske plads i bankens bestyrelse), the Banks executive board decided to sustain its policy on population and womens reproductive rights in its strategy document.
– This is a victory for women throughout the world, said Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).
She said that a Wolfowitz appointee “obviously working in line with the ultra-conservative forces in the US and abroad tried to impose his own fundamentalist religious agenda on women worldwide.”
According to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, the World Bank representatives from France, Germany, Italy, and Norway “fought to keep out language proposed by US representative Whitney Debevoise during discussions on the Banks strategy for Health, Nutrition and Population Results.”
The United States moved to change the phrase “reproductive health services” to “age appropriate access to sexual and reproductive health care”, but the Europeans charged that the US phrasing would deny access to young women, the Institute said.
Over the last 30 years, the Bank says it has provided over three billion dollars in assistance for population and reproductive health worldwide.
Serra Sippel, deputy director of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity, said that lack of access to basic sexual and reproductive health services is “a major reason that we have seen little progress in reducing maternal deaths worldwide.”
– These problems also have exacerbated womens vulnerability to HIV infections, Sippel said.
Women now represent two-thirds of those infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. – It is critical that a multilateral organisation such as the World Bank promote public health and human rights, not ideology, she said.
Sippel said the challenge now is to monitor application of Bank agreements at the country and regional level and ensure that efforts to address sexual and reproductive morbidity (sygelighed) and mortality (dødelighed) and to promote womens fundamental human rights are at the core of each country strategy.
Kilder: IPS og The Push Journal
