Health workers refute forced abortion charges

Health workers have rejected accusations by a US-based anti-abortion group, the Population Research Institute (PRI), that the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) promotes abortion and sterilisation among Afghan refugees. "Its just a scandal," Fouzia Iqbal, a Programme Officer with the international NGO World Population Foundation told IRIN in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. "UNFPA is not involved in any forced abortion," she added. The NGO is an implementing partner of the UNFPA in many projects in Pakistan. In a 14 August statement, PRI said interviews with returning refugees in the Afghan capital Kabul said that Afghan refugee women were being coerced into abortions and forced to accept contraceptives. "Not one women stated that abortion or contraception services were wanted or needed," the PRI said. Reacting to the accusations, UNFPA maintained that such allegations puts the lives of women, UN staff and international relief workers in danger. "UNFPA is providing life-saving services which are urgently needed," an agency press statement said. One in 17 Afghan women die during childbirth - a very high figure by global standards. Commenting on the issue, Jose Hulsenbeck, a Project coordinator with international medical relief organisation, Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), in the southwestern Pakistani border town of Chaman maintained that it was very difficult to force people into abortion. "I can’t imagine forced abortions will be possible," she told IRIN. MSF provides emergency healthcare services to some 30,000 Afghan refugees in Chaman. "It’s difficult to influence Afghan women for such decisions because the society is male dominated," she said. The refugees in Chaman receive little reproductive healthcare and there are no sighs of contraceptive use, Hulsenbeck added. Ana Zaratiegui, an MSF field doctor working in a hospital in the central Afghan province of Bamiyan told IRIN that she had never witnessed contraception, sterilisation or abortions being forced on any woman. "Healthcare for pregnant women [antenatal care] and contraception are voluntary," she told IRIN, adding that she has not seen any forced abortions. UNFPA, the world’s largest multilateral population assistance agency, has raised some US $10 million for Afghanistan, providing medical supplies, safe motherhood services, family planning and midwifery training.