United States President Donald Trump is pulling his country’s funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that assists 22 Caribbean countries in their efforts to tackle teen pregnancies and other reproductive health issues. UNFPA works in more than 150 countries and territories. Those include the Caribbean nations of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Sint Maarten, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. In those countries, UNFPA works to improve the reproductive health of the most vulnerable, including responding to the high numbers of unintended pregnancies and gaps in maternal health. The US State Department has announced that it will not forward congressionally-approved uS$32.5 million to the UNFPA because of its partnership with a Chinese government programme that includes forced abortions and sterilizations.
“While there is no evidence that UNFPA directly engages in coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations in China, the agency continues to partner with [China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission] on family planning, and thus can be found to support, or participate in the management of China’s coercive policies,” it said.