The Papua New Guinea Government (PNG) will be presented with a detailed design for a major population control project devised by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB). Indications are that the PNG Government is likely to accede to this population control project of its major donors.
In April 1992, a committee of the Australian Senate was informed by government that Australia was currently assisting the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in a “project identification and project design mission” to PNG in order to “assist in the implementation of a national population policy,” and that “it is anticipated that something like $15 to $20 million will be spent on the program over a five year period.” The committee was told that:
The mission members have so far recommended that the population family project [sic] comprise six components. They include family planning services, delivery, contraceptive supplies, storage and logistics, information on education, research, data collection and use, and program management.
This population control project came at a time when, under an agreement between the Australian and PNG governments, budgetary aid to PNG was being phased out and replaced by program aid. Some Australian senators were asking that the former budget aid be channeled into population control programs. Australian Senator Schacht asked, “By switching money from budget aid to program aid in PNG, that would be a real chance that we could make a major contribution to the funding of that [World Bank population] program?” Mr. Engel of the Australian International Development Assistance Bank admitted, “It is quite a possibility.”
The World Bank project follows the inclusion in the Papua New Guinea 1989–93 Development Plan of a population policy, and the establishment of a National Population Council with the Prime Minister as chair.
Evidence has surfaced that indicates the critical role foreign aid donors, notably Australia, have played in securing the adoption by the PNG Government of this population policy. In 1984, a reviewer of Australia’s overseas aid program commented that “It seems surprising that the Government of Papua New Guinea has no population policy.” In February 1985, then Australian Foreign Minister Bill Hayden visited PNG and held discussions with PNG Foreign Minister John Giheno. An official record of this meeting includes the following:
At the officials [sic] talks Mr. Hayden raised the question of growth in the context of GNP per capita and noted that in per capita terms PNG had stood still since independence. Mr. Hayden took up in quite strong terms the need for PNG to consider its population policy, noting that the rate of population growth was high by international standards. He said that many developing countries had been wrecked by high population growth rates. PNG responded by confirming that it did not have a policy on population; the [PNG] Foreign Minister remarked that they tended to think about population in terms of land and PNG had plenty of land.
Mr. Hayden also met with PNG officials, including the Secretary of the PNG Department of Finance, Mr. Noreo Beangke. The official record remarks:
Mr. Hayden noted that population growth in PNG was high and that high population growth seemed to have been a factor in declining per capita incomes. Mr. Beangke responded by referring to the government’s adoption ‘in the last couple of years’ of growth-oriented policies. Mr. Hayden noted that more than one developing country had been ‘wrecked’ by population pressures.
In 1985, the Development Studies Center at the Australian National University, Canberra, produced a report for the PNG and Australian governments which states:
Family planning services are presently offered through urban and rural health centers and clinics. Although they are currently designed to improve family health and welfare rather than to reduce the population growth rate, these services could provide the bias for an effective population control policy. What is needed now is a commitment by the [PNG] Government to the need for population control, reorganization of the administrative and delivery system, and an increase in the number of trained staff, especially females.
Strong pressures were brought to bear on the Government of Papua New Guinea to adopt a population control policy in line with the population control agenda of the international population control bureaucracy with its contraceptive-fix, anti-family, and anti-child mentality. In May 1991, Australian Senator Brian Harradine became aware of Australian assistance through its foreign aid budget for a population control project in PNG coordinated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Official documentation on this project indicated that 63.3% of the funds allocated for contraceptive purchases by UNFPA for the PNG project were for purchases of the controversial, injectable, contraceptive drug Depo-Provera.
Documentation also revealed that UNFPA had set targets for the increased acceptance of oral contraceptives, condoms, and Depo-Provera from an estimated 6% in 1989 to 35% by 1995. Information from the UNFPA Procurement Office in New York on relative prices of these forms of contraceptives indicates that UNFPA has decided that three out of every ten “targeted” women in PNG should receive Depo-Provera. This occurred in spite of the fact that the use of Depo-Provera for contraception is not approved in either the U.S. or Australia due to questions relating to its safety.
In June 1991, the 19th Waigani Seminar was held at the University of Papua New Guinea with the theme “Population, Family Health, and Development.” Financial assistance was provided by, among others, the Australian High Commission, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank, and USAID through the South Pacific Alliance for Family Health (SPAFH). Keynote speeches were given by UNFPA and IPPF, and the World Bank gave the keynote speech to “introduce the theme Demographic Trends.” Topics discussed during the seminar included: “Strengthening Family Planning Programmes,” a discussion panel conducted by IPPF, UNFPA, and UNICEF; “Health and Development,” with a report on PNG population policy by the PNG Department of Finance and Planning; and “Papua New Guinea Population Policy,” with a panel session led by the World Bank, UNFPA, IPPF, UNICEF and SPAFH.
The tenets of the population control creed are rarely questioned, least of all by Governments in developing countries relying on foreign donors for assistance. Recent questioning of AIDAB officials, and documents subsequently tabled in the Senate on 29 April, reveal that AIDAB had already sent a demographer and a “human resource specialist” as part of the project identification and project design mission. AIDAB also commissioned a “pre-feasibility study” by an Australian consultant who reported in October 1990. The opening paragraph of the Executive Summary states:
Population size, population policy and family planning are very sensitive issues in PNG. However, rapid population growth is the major threat to the achievement of PNG’s declared goals and objectives. It is time, then, that leading citizens and foreigners seek to influence attitudes to and trends in PNG population growth. [emphasis added].
The report is critical of the PNG Governments approach which “shows a strong preference for an indirect influence on fertility, thus limiting the scope for donors who have an interest in family planning and contraception as part of development policy and action” [emphasis added]. The report refers to the “direct action option” to reduce fertility, and argues that “there would be some justification in donors being involved in the setting of research agenda, in order to direct scarce ability to the solving of the problems most critical to direct action on fertility [emphasis added].” The report notes that the direct action option would need “to overcome the cultural and religious resistance to consideration of population policy and contraception.”
The report, repeating the utopian vision of the simplistic population control line, claims that “the delay in births would make for a more efficient society with less waste of resources, a healthier, better educated and less repressed population, with improved status of women and children and with less pressure on environments” .… The term “Contraception Dividend” is used to describe the message which should be “propagated amongst the political and bureaucratic leaders, to promote the message that ‘less is more.’” Also, “the message should be propagated within donor countries, to gain support for assistance programs.”
The callous and disturbing nature of the report is reflected in the following comments:
Overall efficiency of donor assistance would dictate against the allocation of resources to ameliorating living conditions in ‘stressed’ and ‘peri-urban’ regions until capacity to improve and sustain improvements is released by declining fertility. This strategy would recognize the government’s recurrent effort in indirectly influencing fertility, but would not add to the resources so applied. Similarly, assistance to NGO’s should take advantage of their flexibility by tying support to direct activities in the stressed and peri-urban areas.
Australian aid officials have made recent statements justifying Australia‘s involvement in population control activities in PNG on the basis that, after all, they are only assisting the PNG Government which has officially cited population policy as a priority. At the same time, however, it is clear that considerable pressure continues to be brought to bear on the PNG Government to ensure that the emerging population policy in PNG moves in a direction predetermined by foreign donors. Now that the PNG Government has opened the door, population control groups are descending on PNG or increasing their activity.
The Townsend Report for AIDAB lists the groups that have been or are now actively supporting the PNG population policy. These include: the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); The United Nations Development Program (UNDP); the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); Family Planning International Assistance (FPIA); The Johns Hopkins University Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics; and Population Concern.
The PNG Government has given Australia, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank an open cheque book to design a nationwide project to implement the objectives in the PNG national population policy. It is ironic — and a telling lesson — that the very same entities which have consistently urged PNG to adopt a population control policy have now been given the task of devising the means to implement it. Acceptance by the PNG Government of this population control project will have far-reaching ramifications for PNG, and is a litmus test of the extent to which PNG has the capacity to refuse to bow to the failed prescriptions of foreign population control elites.
