Interim special

(Ed. note: In the February issue of The Interim, we reported an interview with U.S. pro-life activist Dan Zeidler on sterilization program abuses in Peru. Featured below is an update of the Peru situation).

On Jan. 11, 1998, The Miami Herald published a feature with the headline, “Sterilization debate in Peru: Are some women coerced?” The report described an aggressive sterilization campaign in Peru under which more than 100,000 women were sterilized between mid-1995 and November of 1997.

But the sterilizations were not all voluntary. In fact, says the Herald story, many women were enticed to accept the procedure with promises of free food, sterilized without their consent during other medical procedures, and, in some cases, abducted in public places and forced to undergo the operation.

On Feb. 12, 1998, The Washington Post reported the same charges, citing evidence of “a quota system” appearing in an internal government document that describes “credits” given to doctors for meeting sterilization targets. Those credits, says the Post, appear to be taken into account when decisions are made about retaining health care professionals for government employment.
Incentives for sterilization

The U.S. Department of State, in its 1997 Human Rights Report for Peru, mentions the same complaints, but adds: “In October allegations appeared that a number of physicians in hospitals and family planning clinics had enticed female patients to opt for sterilization, either by promising them quantities of food or by not providing them with complete information about the alternatives available. At year’s end, the ministry of health and the human rights ombudsman were investigating the validity of these charges. The health minister declared that anyone found to have committed any such acts would be punished.”

Still more information is contained in a report released Feb. 10, 1998 by Grover Joseph Rees, staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on international operations and human rights. And ALAFA (Alianza Latinoamericana para la Familia) has prepared a news release and fact sheet containing information about women subjected to involuntary sterilizations, operations performed under substandard conditions, and deaths resulting from these procedures.

The Africa 2000 organization has done a database search of USAID population activities in Peru from the 1960s to the present. Researchers noted efforts to pressure the government of Peru to adopt a firm policy — not only for the sake of providing family planning “services,” but, more important, to produce measuable reductions in the rate of population growth.

Persuading local government

Activities began in 1962 with a grant to the government of Peru to study population issues – with the help of USAID-funded technical advisors and consultants – and to survey public awareness of birth control techniques.

In 1966, USAID provided more funds, enabling the Peruvian government to establish a “semi-autonomous government agency” to undertake research on population and development (U.S. supervised) — with the intention of persuading the government of Peru to “provide adequate clinical … services for family planning on a national scale.” The final entry on the database summary is equally interesting. The undated abstract describes early interventions in Peru which were deemed in hindsight to have been “overly ambitious” because the U.S. had “underestimated the resistance of Peruvian leaders to altering their pro-natalist position.”

The same document also hints that the emphasis on “family planning” activities “should not be construed to imply that family planning programs will suffice to reduce Peru’s rapidly worsening population-related problems.”

An entry dated June 1995 makes reference to a “population policy statement” which had by then “been approved,” as well as to a “fledgling Population Unit” which had become “fully functional.” Another database abstract reveals the role of the U.S. government in “building consensus on national population and family planning issues,” securing “resource commitment” for the government population-control effort, and orchestrating changes in “laws and regulations.”

In a fashion reminiscent of old Cold-War CIA operations that involved planting operatives within foreign governments, the same text adds: “Long-term advisers have been placed by the project in four countries (Egypt, India, Niger, and Peru).”

A Sept. 21, 1988 project “design document” makes reference to American-sponsored “seminars for high-level officials” and “workshops and seminars for regional and local planners.” More than $34 million was spent on yet another activity designed, in part, to support the creation of a “governmental (family planning) delivery system in Peru.” And a 1995 project description for a “commercial family planning” exercise speaks of “behavior change” as its long-term objective.

Millions spent

During the 1970s and 1980s, millions of dollars were provided by USAID for the establishment of family planning centres in Peru, and by the1990s, project amounts increased to the tens of millions of dollars.

The consistent outcome-oriented emphasis – highlighting the importance of increasing the actual use of family planning – is likewise informative. A project titled “Strengthening Population Communication,” for example, stresses the need to “inform and motivate” both the public and political leaders. Another campaign carried out from 1992 to 1996 sponsored efforts by “community-based organizations, or “CBOs,” to engage in policy dialogue with government officials. Its primary purpose, as is explicitly stated in the program abstract, is to “increase the use of family planning” in Peru.

A 1993 project, in effect through 1998, provides $30 million (US) to expand family planning services to “rural and marginal urban areas.” An early project, which includes but is not limited to Peru, has a listed goal of creating “greater awareness and acceptance of family planning.” Still more campaigns are directed at using the mass media to “disseminate family planning ideas” and to introduce “small family norms and values.”

And there is even a 10-year effort (Population Council grant) for implementing “action programs” using “rural animatrices” and “person-to-person activities,” with special outreach to “the non-literate and semi-literate.”

One early project paper (1966-1968) implies that the U.S. government concealed its hand in the program, describing the role of USAID as “a low-key, low-profile effort.”
High priority for U.S.

Still more database abstracts describe opposition from “the Church” as a factor that “has delayed progress” and acknowledge the tactic of “linking population research to policy development.”

In short, this much-abbreviated index of USAID population activities in Peru makes it abundantly clear that a government population policy that markedly decreases fertility in Peru has long been an extremely high priority for U.S. leaders, and that USAID has expended enormous amounts of money to achieve this goal — despite resistance from Peruvian government officials, religious leaders and the people themselves.

These excerpts from the USAID Projects and Reports database strongly suggest that the current Peruvian government policy of coerced sterilizations would not exist had it not been for nearly four decades of extravagantly financed behind-the-scenes pressure tactics by the United States.

— via LifeSite News Service and the Africa 2000 website