Don’t support UN agency’s sterile policy
Almost all of these women were poor and many were members of the indigenous Indian populations.
We were advised by the Department of Foreign Affairs at that stage that the UNFPA itself had conducted an ‘independent investigation’ of its own activities in Peru and found that no evidence existed to support these allegations.
However, a recent investigation by the democratically elected Peruvian Congress concluded, contrary to what the Department of Foreign Affairs had previously advised, that the UNFPA was indeed involved in the compulsory sterilisation campaign.
The report concluded that UNFPA played a leading role in President Fujimori’s “restrictive and controlling” national population programme.
The coercive sterilisation campaigns, the special commission report notes, were “induced and financed by international organisations, especially UNFPA.”
It, along with other international groups, “brought not only special financing but also demographic goals for the localised reduction of the Peruvian population and the fecundity of Peruvian women, especially the women of rural areas.”
One can only imagine the pain and suffering of the victims of this inhumane regime.
It is also apparent now that the UNFPA is clearly more concerned with curbing population growth than the protection of human rights and it is wholly inappropriate that the Government should continue to fund it.
Sjef Schutte,
Chairperson,
Galway For Life,
Ozanam House,
St Augustine Street,
Galway.
