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Volume 6, Number 45

October 24, 2003

UNFPA Report Shows Agency's Faith in Condoms for Kids Remains Unshaken

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) According to the UN Population Fund's latest "State of the World" population report, released this month, the most effective way to address the fact that condoms have not succeeded in protecting adolescents from either unwanted pregnancies or HIV infection is to make condoms even more widely available, with even less parental control over their distribution and use.

     In the report, entitled "Making 1 Billion Count: Investing in Adolescents' Health and Rights," UNFPA admits that "Promoting condoms as providing 100 per cent protection could inadvertently encourage high risk behaviour" among young people. UNFPA also acknowledges that, even after two decades of its massive condom promotion program, "adolescents are less likely to practise safer sex or to use contraception. Contraceptive use is still infrequent in most early sexual experiences."

     However, UNFPA blames this failure on adolescents' "limited knowledge and guidance," especially from parents, rather than on adolescents' admittedly "impulsive" behavior and "feelings of invincibility." Thus, UNFPA encourages international development agencies to continue, even expand, their efforts to distribute condoms. UNFPA states that "Nearly any place where young people spend time and congregate, from school to work to discos, is a potential site for information provision and condom availability." UNFPA also praises a Nicaraguan program in which "Condoms were distributed at bars, discos and petrol stations," and cites a survey in which "young men said that they would like to be able to get condoms in game arcades, public toilets, nightclubs, music shops, internet cafes and vending machines - and from their peers rather than from adults."

     The paper makes it clear that adults, especially parents, present an obstacle to this project. According to UNFPA, "Adolescence is a growth process. Guiding children as they grow to adulthood is not and never has been a job for parents alone." UNFPA further states that parents' rights relating to their children's reproductive health need to be circumscribed. According to UNFPA, "Laws ostensibly designed to protect adolescents, for example by denying them access to contraception without parental consent, can jeopardize their health."

     UNFPA calls for universal "formal" sexual education programs. "In Mongolia, with UNFPA support, the Government made an explicit policy decision to support sexuality education for all, every year beginning in grade three, stressing gender as a key concept," the report says.

     UNFPA seems so intent on condom promotion that it labels an Indonesian "campaign to increase condom use among commercial sex workers [prostitutes]" "successful" because "the percentage of sex workers using condoms increased from 36 to 48." The program involved "the education of brothel owners."

     The report does mention the importance of abstinence training, but cites no programs in which such training appears to be a major component. Instead, UNFPA measures the success of programs for adolescents according to any reported increase in contraceptive use.