UN family planning chief says Trump policies 'unfair'

LONDON: The head of the UN Population Fund criticised US President Donald Trump's policies against family planning as "unfair" to women on Tuesday as she presented the organisation's annual report in London.
"We're really sad that it's come to this," UNFPA's executive director Natalia Kanem told reporters.
"There is nothing more unfair than having a girl or a mother be relegated ... to the bottom of the heap," Kanem said.
"We really believe that family planning ... is normal and natural in a country like the United States and in other countries as well."
The US government announced earlier this year it would stop funding the UNFPA and Trump has introduced a rule banning foreign charities from using US funding to provide abortion services.
Trump's administration also this month annulled a legal provision that obliged employer health plans in the US to pay for contraception, potentially stripping free birth control from millions of women.
Kanem said that as a result of cutbacks from countries including the United States, her organisation was now facing a funding shortfall of US$700 million (RM2.95 billion) by 2020.
She warned there was already "a deceleration effect" on UNFPA's ability to provide family planning in the developing world, particularly in rural areas.
The organisation's report emphasised that inequality in terms of reproductive rights was a vital component of wider social and economic disparities and could undermine global goals to end poverty.
"Inequality in countries today is not only about the haves and have nots. Inequality is increasingly about the cans and cannots," she said.
The report said that limited access to family planning led to 89 million unintended pregnancies and 48 million abortions in developing countries annually. — AFP