March 31, 2000
Volume 2/ Number 9
Dear Friend and Colleague:
This week, members of Congress requested that USAID Administrator, Brady Anderson, investigate possible violations of the Tiahrt Amendment occurring within family planning projects run by the Peruvian Ministry of Health (MOH) and funded by USAID. The request stems from evidence presented by PRI at a 14 March Congressional Briefing that Peruvian woman continue to be abused in family planning projects.
Steven W. Mosher
President
Congress Calls on USAID to Investigate Family Planning Abuses
Congressmen Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) have sent a letter to US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator, Brady Anderson, requesting USAID investigate possible violations of the Tiahrt Amendment in USAID-funded family planning projects run by the Peruvian Ministry of Health (MOH).
The Tiahrt Amendment-part of the 1999 Foreign Appropriations Act-prohibits US funds from going to non-voluntary family planning projects in foreign countries. The Congressmen’s letter was prompted by evidence gathered in Peru during a December 1999 PRI investigation and presented at a 14 March Congressional Briefing (see: “Peru’s Coercive Family Planning Program and USAID Involvement,” PRI’s Weekly Briefing, Vol. 1 / No. 6, 6 March 2000, https://www.pop.org/briefings/perufamplan.htm).
“Detailed descriptions of human rights violations alleged to have taken place in the Peruvian family planning program during last year include sterilization of women without informed consent…” states the letter, “as well as pressure ‘to accept a family planning method’ in connection with the provision of other medical services or food. It has also been alleged that at least one woman was injected with Depo-Provera during her pregnancy, resulting in a miscarriage, and that targets and incentives are being imposed on family planning service providers…” (Letter to USAID Administrator Brady Anderson from Congressmen Christopher Smith, Todd Tiahrt, and Tom Coburn, 24 March 2000).
Congress moved to pass the Tiahrt Amendment, signed into law on 25 October 1998, after receiving reports of widespread violations of human rights in family planning programs, including reports of forced sterilization campaigns in Peru from PRI and congressional investigations carried out in late 1997.
“It is particularly disturbing,” the Congressmen’s letter to USAID continues, “that these abuses appear to have continued despite statements made by AID’s Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mark Schneider, to US Congress on 25 February 1998 that problems within Peru’s coercive family planning program would be corrected, and despite similar undertakings by the Peruvian Ministry of Health.”
PRI’s investigation has raised concerns that human rights abuses in Peru’s family planning projects continue to be widespread. At the Congressional Briefing, Congressman Smith pointed out that since USAID currently has approximately 30 workers in Peru it is difficult to understand how the agency would not be aware of the problem.
“We believe it would be helpful for the AID officials charged with monitoring and combating such activities in Peru to travel to Washington at their earliest opportunity to brief us and other interested Members of Congress on these matters,” the letter concludes.
At present, USAID contracts with the Peruvian MOH total approximately US$36 million. In addition, USAID also provides huge amounts of contraceptives to a semi-official Peruvian family planning NGO, AB Prisma, including tens of thousands of units of the controversial contraceptive Depo-Provera, whose wrongful injection can induce abortion.
According to Congressman Smith, Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, “The US family planning program in Peru is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest in the world” (“Markup of House Resolution 364, and the Peruvian Population Control Program,” 25 February 1998).
