I am interning at the UN Population Fund China office this summer (UNFPA). I believe it was called the UN Family Planning Assistance at one point, but they obviously didn't change the acronym when they got the new name. There are many acronyms in the UN, I am usually quite confused when sitting in internal meetings that would go something like this: In CP6, we will be switching from using PAD to BBS, because CTS at HQ wants us to.... Go figure.
I wanted to dedicate a posting to the agency I'm working for because it is one of the lesser known ones because they are relatively small. The US has denied funding to UNFPA for the last few years and have again done so this year. So due to my humble office here in Beijing, the US is once again making itself popular by denying funding to every UNFPA program in the world. They stand alone in this matter in the world community, as usual.
The reason given by the Bush administration is that UNFPA China office supports the coercive family practices in China - which we don't really. Although many of the practices in the provinces are quite horrible, we cannot tell the provincial government what to do - that is not the job of the UN. What this office has done, however, is advocate for, promote, and provide assistance for more human-centered population services. Good news is, country programs get renewed every 5 years, and despite opposition from the US, the China program has full support from other member States and will be renewed for the next 5 years. One of my projects involve evaluating and planning for a couple of potential programs for the next 5 years which is quite interesting.
The website of an organization called 34 Million Friends (and donate a dollar while you're there) has great information and was started to help raise awareness of the work at UNFPA and provide more in depth information on the US's decision to cut funding:
34 Million Friends of the UNFPA emerged as a spontaneous reaction to President Bush's initial decision in July, 2002 when two women, Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham, decided to write letters and send emails to everyone they knew, urging them to send in $1 to help make up for the lost funds. Their point was less to let the U.S. government off the hook as it was to put them on it. By generating thousands of $1 bills, they hoped to send a message to Washington and the world about UNFPA's important role in saving the lives of women and their children.
Here are a couple recent news articles with two different points of view:
This article gives some brief but good background information. Another article by the pro-life news source obviously has a completely different point of view, and I have to say it makes me a little upset.
This China office is quite unique, mostly because we're working with the Chinese government and our work here is a bit different from other UNFPA offices in other developing countries. It's small, has a great staff and is relatively efficient, especially for an UN agency office. It's been quite interesting so far, learning about the UN system and getting a crash course on Chinese politics.
Posted by Karen at June 30, 2005 10:21 PM