Dear Colleague:
PRI has been observing
UNFPA operations in Vietnam for several years. We have ample documentation,
both from the Vietnamese government and from population experts, demonstrating
that UNFPA supports coercive population control in this communist nation.
UNFPA itself makes no claims that its operations in Vietnam involve "voluntarism."
Clearly, continuing to fund the UNFPA would be a violation of federal law.
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
1 February 2002
Vol. 4/ No. 4
UNFPA Supports Coercion in Vietnam
By Steve Mosher
In the summer of 1999, a PRI representative visited the headquarters of
the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam. The verbal exchange
was guarded, but PRI obtained a series of publications from the Hanoi office.
According to these publications, UNFPA operates seven Vietnamese county
programs, including programs in Thai Bin and Quang Nam counties.(1) UNFPA
efforts in Vietnam "are designed to mobilize the resources and political
will required to accomplish stabilization and population growth through
a broad range of population and sustainable development initiatives."(2)
How does the "political will" of Vietnam's communist regime—through
its National Committee on Population and Family Planning (NCPFP) and the
UNFPA—accomplish population "stabilization" in these counties.
In Thai Bin county, women testify that they long to have more than two
children, but cannot because of this county's unbending family planning
law.(3) Women are forced to use IUDs; punishment for non-compliance includes
fines and forced abortion.(4)
In Quang Nam county, another UNFPA county program, entire villages in
remote mountain areas inhabited by minorities have been forcibly sterilized.
Coercion among minorities in this and other areas is well known. Despite
government claims that women of the Montagnard tribe are only subject to
fines and incentives, other reports suggest otherwise.(5)
Vietnam's family planning policy is universally coercive, and includes
a two-child limit for cadres, manual workers, civil servants, soldiers,
families living in a municipality or in the Red River or Mekong Deltas;
and birth limitations for ethnic families in northern mountain provinces,
Central Highlands and Northwest. Families that have more than the stipulated
number of children must contribute "social support funds," or face punishments
stipulated by law by management agencies.(6)
Mandatory birth control policies are enforced nationally. Village leaders
who successfully implement the national policy are most likely to be promoted
to leadership positions in larger administrative units.(7)
Vietnam's family planning policy is coercive. It involves forced abortion
and forced sterilization. Abuses against women exist throughout the length
and breadth of the country, including those counties where UNFPA operates.
Unlike its China operations—which UNFPA claims are purely voluntary
(a claim which is patently false)—UNFPA has made no claim that coercion
has been lifted from its county programs in Vietnam. Yet over the decades,
UNFPA has spent tens of millions of dollars in Vietnam to strengthen the
political will of Vietnam's coercive family planning machine.
Has UNFPA ever condemned Vietnam for coercion? No. Rather the UNFPA
heaps on praise: "They have been very successful," Omar Ertur, the UN Population
Fund's Representative in Hanoi," was quoted as saying. "They have achieved
a tremendous reduction in a very short period of time."(8) Not a word about
how this reduction was achieved.
Has UNFPA ever sought to distance itself from coercive family planning
in Vietnam? Again the answer is no. Instead, the UNFPA has wholeheartedly
embraced the program, singling it out for special honors. The UNFPA presented
its "United Nations Population Award" to Vietnam's National Committee for
Population and Family Planning in 1999.(9)
Most Americans would be appalled to discover that they have been supporting,
with their tax dollars, an organization involved in coercive population
control programs. The Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which forbids U.S. funds from
going to countries or organizations which participate in the management
or support of a program of forced abortion or forced sterilization, was
passed by Congress precisely to prevent this kind of misuse of taxpayer
dollars. It should be invoked by President Bush. Zero for the UNFPA.
ENDNOTES
1. UNFPA pamphlet, "United Nations System, Vietnam," Hanoi.
2. Ibid.
3. Daniel Goodkind, "Vietnam's One-or-Two Child Policy
in Action," Population and Development Review 21(1):85-111 (March) 1995,
p. 98-99.
4. Ibid., p. 102.
5. The Montagnard Foundation, "Vietnam Ambassador Admits
Sterilizations of Montagnard Hill Tribes: Crime of Genocide: imposing measures
to prevent births," Press release, August 2001.
6. "Council of Ministers Decision 162 Concerning a Number
of Population and Family Planning Policies," published in Teachers of the
People, 5 December 1988; cf. Daniel M. Goodkind, "Vietnam's New Fertility
Policy," Population and Development Review 15(1):169-172 (March) 1989,
p. 169-172.
7. Goodkind, p. 103.
8. BBC, Owen-Bennett Jones in Hanoi, 8 November 2000,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pasific/newsid_1011000/1011799.stm.
9. UNFPA pamphlet, "Vietnam: Key Issues in Population
and Development," Hanoi, 1999.
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute,
a non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world
is overpopulated.
© 2002 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint
granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit requested.
PRI hosts the Global Family Life Conference in Santa Clara
California, April 3-7, 2002. Check out our website at http://www.pop.org/conferences
for more information.
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, send an email to:
Mail to:
JOIN-PRI@Pluto.Sparklist.Com.
To unsubscribe from the Weekly Briefing, please follow
the directions at
the bottom of this message.
The Population Research Institute is committed to ending
human rights abuses committed in the name of “family planning,” and to
ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the
myth of “overpopulation.”
Population Research Institute
1190 Progress Drive, Suite 2D
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, VA 22630
USA
http://www.pop.org
Media Contact: Scott Weinberg
540-622-5240, ext. 202