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UNITED
NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com,
UN/
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11
July 2006
--
We were angry and
decided it was time to
take a stand!
In 2002
the Bush administration
refused to release $34
million for the United
Nations Population Fund,
UNFPA,
even though the US
Congress had approved
the funds.
Why
were Lois Abraham and I
outraged?
Every
year over 500,000 women
die as a result of
pregnancy or childbirth.
Every
year ten million
children, under the age
five, die. And
forty percent of these
babies die in their
first month, many of
them in their first
hour. Why? Their mothers
were not taken care of!
UNFPA
saves women’s lives in
childbirth and offers
voluntary family
planning.
UNFPA
works in more than 140
countries to educate
adolescents about
HIV/AIDS.
UNFPA
educates against the
harmful practices of
forced marriage and
child marriage. It is
very active in
discouraging female
genital mutilation.
UNFPA
promotes the human
rights of women and
girls, particularly
their rights to
education and health.
UNFPA’s
Fistula
Initiative has
brought this horrendous
childbirth-related
injury to the forefront
of world attention.
With
all of that, the Bush
Administration has
refused to help. Why? They
did it for spurious reasons
having to do with
Chinese government
policies and to please
his anti-family planning
and anti-U.N.
political
base.
So
Lois Abraham and I
decided to raise $34
million --
one dollar at a
time from 34 million
people! Yes! And you are
going to help us!! The
plight of millions of
the world’s women and
girls is
unconscionable.
This
Tuesday, July 11, is
World Population Day and
we need your help
now!!
Please
join our grassroots
movement, now called 34
Million Friends or
directly to “Support
UNFPA” .
We
are approaching one
tenth of the way to our
goal. People
tell us that this is
wonderful, but people --
it is time to take a
stand!
Many
Americans and a few
people from over 30
countries have
contributed.
Our ultimate goal
is a worldwide
grassroots movement
dedicated to ensuring
the full humanity and
individual rights of
women and girls.
If
resources and real
commitment matched
rhetoric, this world
would be a better place.
All people, perhaps even
particularly men, must
take a stand for the
women and girls of the
world.
We
can not leave it to
governments, to the
United Nations, or to
the Bill Gates and
Warren Buffetts of the
world. We
all must do our part.
Achieving equality for
women and girls is the
right thing to do. The
head and the heart come
together in a perfect
circle for 34 Million
Friends.
Here
is the “heart” part.
When the world takes
care of women, women
take care of the world
and the world is doing a
terrible job.
Individuals,
governments, religions,
cultures and customs are
at fault.
United
Nations Population Fund
is at the forefront of
this struggle for the
human rights of women
and girls, particularly
their rights to
education and health.
UNFPA
sponsors co-educational
elementary schools where
girls and boys learn how
to read. I
visited such a school in
Senegal
where UNFPA’s
message on the front of
a children’s school
booklet was, in French,
“Little girls have as
much right to food,
education, and health
care as little boys.”
Unfortunately,
in much of the world,
that is a revolutionary
message.
Illiteracy
is a recipe for
powerlessness and women
and girls constitute two
thirds of the world’s
illiterate.
There
is a worldwide shortage
of family planning
commodities that 34
Million Friends
aims to help alleviate.
Population growth is
actually outrunning
increased supplies.
Would this shortage
exist if men were faced
with undesired
pregnancies? No.
UNFPA
educates against the
harmful practices of
forced marriage and
child marriage. Both cut
off many choices for
later in life. UNFPA
educates against and
tries to find acceptable
cultural alternatives
for female genital
mutilation. FGM, as it
is known, often poses
short and long term risk
to a girl’s health and
even to her life.
Lois
Abraham started 34
Million Friends
in large measure because
of an opinion piece
about obstetric fistula
by Nicholas Kristof of
the New York Times and
we have been working
together ever since.
I
visited the Point G
hospital in Bamako,
Mali,
where Dr. Kalilou
Ouattara does the
fistula surgeries.
This hospital has
a new operating room
thanks to 34 Million
Friends. Prevention is
the key and UNFPA trains
the midwives and doctors
to bring timely
assistance to women in
labor. And trained
health workers in poor
countries must be paid
enough to arrest their
migration to developed
countries.
Two
weeks ago in
Brussels, Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA’s
Executive Director,
lamented the rampant
violence and rape
committed against women
especially in areas of
conflict. She stated
that the international
response has often been
weak.
UNFPA works in
refugee camps and areas
of conflict to help stem
the tide.
Every
year over 500,000 women
die as a result of
pregnancy or childbirth.
If “paternal
mortality” existed,
would these statistics
remain static year after
year?
I don’t think
so.
The
problem is that the
world does not take care
of women. Women are
under-nourished,
under-educated, and
under-valued. This
shortsightedness goes
down through the
generations. That’s
the “heart” part.
Here
is the “head” part.
If demographers are
correct, there will be
about 9 billion people
on the planet by 2050,
up from 6.5 billion
today.
This
growth will come in the
poorest countries where
reproductive health
services are often
lacking and women
usually suffer from
lower status. These new
human beings will be
migrating to the cities
by the millions, cities
whose infrastructures
are already straining.
On
a worldwide scale there
will be added
humanitarian crises,
added conflicts over
resources, particularly
land, water, food, and
energy.
Conflicts
over religious beliefs
within and between
countries are likely to
increase. Women and
children will suffer
disproportionately.
The
most humane, acceptable
answer is to achieve
equal status for the
girls and women from the
very moment they are
born. It’s
really that simple. But
where is the resolve?
The
International Conference
on Population and
Development (ICPD) held
in
Cairo
in 1994 adopted a
twenty-year Programme of
Action which called for
universal primary
education which in large
measure targeted girls.
It
called for reducing
infant, child, and
maternal mortality.
It
reaffirmed the right to
family planning, the
“basic right of all
couples and individuals
to decide freely and
responsibly the number,
spacing, and timing of
their children and to
have the information and
means to do so.”
That
sounds good. But
there has been a trail
of broken promises with
the developed world
fulfilling less than
half of its financial
commitments. The
United States
ranks last. The Bush
Administration at
international meetings
has often refused to
reaffirm the
Cairo
Consensus.
The
huge majority of
Americans have never
heard of the Millennium
Development Goals, the
MDGs, although they mean
much to the
international community.
The
MDGs are the world’s
plan to eradicate
extreme poverty and
hunger by 2015. I
was recently on a panel
at
Columbia
University
with Jeffrey Sachs whose
book, The End of
Poverty, is a blueprint
for how the Millennium
Development Goals could
be achieved.
He
is director of the UN
Millennium Project. He
was adamant that
population, poverty, and
development issues must
include special measures
to empower the world’s
women, not only with
education but with
health including
reproductive health and
family planning. He had
high praise for the
United Nations
Population Fund.
But
to the disappointment of
many, the Millennium
Development Goals did
not include explicit
mention of the human
right to the highest
standard of reproductive
health which of course
would include family
planning.
Fortunately
the 2005 World
Summit
corrected that
oversight. World leaders
committed to achieving
universal access to
reproductive health by
2015.
But one could
reasonably ask why the
“oversight” existed
in the first place.
So
what should we do?
We
all must insist that
governments keep their
promises and that
resources match
rhetoric.
If
feasible, a small
financial gift is also
in order. That is the
idea behind 34
Million Friends.
Our gift says that the
plight of millions of
women and girls is
unconscionable, that
things absolutely must
change.
In
my recently published
book “34
Million Friends of the
Women of the World,”
I share my vision of a
worldwide grassroots
movement for the women
and girls of the world.
$34
million is not much when
compared to the needs. But
having 34 million people
take a stand would
really be something. My 34
Million Friends
poem includes these
verses:
Every baby welcome now
Loved and fed and
vaccinated
Mother’s children
learning now
Reading
writing educated
Every child a
heartfelt joy
Every child a book and
toy
Every child with wings
unfurled
Whether it be boy or
girl
No more death while
giving birth
Because a midwife’s
taking care
No more mothers in the
earth
Because a midwife’s
helping there
To AIDS and violence
we say no
To family planning we
say yes
Human rights are the
way to go
Surely we can do no
less
And all of us who have
so much
One dollar we can
share
To show the women of
the world
That we the people
care
We are 34 Million
Friends
And we are going to
have our say
We are reaching out to
the world
Through the UNFPA.
We
hope that you will count
yourself as one of 34
Million Friends
of the United Nations
Population Fund and of
the women of the world.
Together we can
do this.
Lois and I invite
you to take a
stand.
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