November 8, 1999
Volume 1/ Number 23
Dear Friend and Colleague:
As this year’s Foreign Aid Bill approaches conference committee with $25 million in US taxpayer dollars for the UNFPA, the controversy over UNFPA’s Kosovo campaign continues.
Steven W. Mosher
President
UNFPA Bribes Kosovo Gynecologist
Genocide in the Name of Family Planning
The head gynecologist of the maternity ward in the Pristina Hospital in Kosovo, Sjedullah Hoxha, says that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) “bribed” him with promises of appliances, basic medical equipment and health supplies as a condition of his public support for UNFPA’s “reproductive health” campaign in the region, and for promoting birth control supplies to Kosovar women.
World magazine reports that UNFPA offered Hoxha a washing machine as an “‘inducement’ to accept UNFPA contraceptives,” (“Ethnic cleansing in a pill,” World, 30 October 1999, 23). Audio Link
PRI has confirmed this. When asked if UNFPA made the use of its “reproductive health” supplies in any way conditional to its offer of a washing machine, an English-speaking gynecologist in the Hoxha’s maternity ward responded in his behalf: “yes, yes.” Hoxha also “felt pressured” to serve on an advisory committee called the “National Committee for Healthy Families,” which fronts the local work of UNFPA; and that after publicly supporting UNFPA, no basic health supplies promised by UNFPA have arrived. UNFPA has not delivered incubators, and the infant mortality rate is high.
According to Hoxha, the rate of premature births in his maternity ward are high. The hospital lacks incubators, and there is an approximately 50 percent infant mortality rate among infants born prematurely (“Kosovar Partners and UN Population Fund Announce Launch of National Committee for Healthy Families,” 13 September 1999, UNFPA). But instead of dealing with these real maternal and infant health problems, the UNFPA only offers referrals for sterilizations and abortions to its regional office partner Marie Stopes.
UNFPA’s “reproductive health” campaign in Kosovo is directed at the same population targeted by the indicted war criminal Slobodan Miolosevic’s ethnic cleansing campaign (Rod Dreher, “UN Opens Kosovo to Anti-Family Zealots,” NY Post, 22 August, 1999, 22). UNFPA’s “reproductive health needs assessment report” admits that its efforts are perceived by the Kosovo population as an attempt to lower their birthrate.
Meanwhile, in the US Congress, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), a key member of the House-Senate Conference Committee, has said he will only support a Foreign Aid bill that includes funds for UNFPA, a position that has been criticized by some.
“The lesson of the Holocaust is to guarantee all human rights, and it does not add up that Senator Specter would not be opposed to funding this organization [UNFPA],” said Dr. Philip Rosen of Philadelphia’s Aitz Chaim Synagogue.
The US government resolved to provide no funds to the Yugoslavian government. But UNFPA’s Kosovo campaign, by UNFPA’s own admission, began “at the request of the Yugoslavian government” (https://www.pop.org/kosovo/spokesman.htm).
