Starving people need real aid not population control

WOODY ALLEN, in one of his early comedy records, tells the joke of what his parents allegedly did when he went missing once as a child: "They snapped into action, and rented out my room."

When the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) snaps into action, it is usually to give out do-it-yourself abortion kits and pills in situations where people haven’t basic medicines or even clean water. They did that during the Balkans war; they have backed China’s coercive one-child policy, and the efforts of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori to pressurise Peruvian women to be sterilised.

Our Government, in the person of Minister of State Tom Kitt, has protested against the recent defunding by the Bush administration in the US of the same UNFPA. The European Union, has stepped in to pay the money the US are refusing to the UNFPA. While backing the EU on this, we ourselves have cut Third World aid.