Expert criticizes UN distribution of condoms in Peru

Dec 14, 2010 / 16:04 pm

The Latin American director of the Population Research Institute, Carlos Polo, recently charged that the United Nations' donation of 20,000 “female condoms” given to  Peru’s “family planning” programs are part of a “huge business” that involves more than $33 billion worldwide.

Peru’s Ministry of Health announced Dec. 12 that the U.N. Population Fund had donated 20,000 female condoms for the country to use in its campaign against AIDS.

Polo clarified on Dec. 13 that the 20,000 female condoms were given free-of-charge to Peru, but that once they are included officially as part of the government’s family planning program, “the Peruvian State will have to pay for them with tax-payer money.” 

“This is the same thing that has happened with other contraceptive methods,” he explained.

According to a report from the U.N. Population Fund, $33 billion was spent on population control in 2008, with $10 billion coming from international corporations. The other $23 billion came from the governments of poor countries and from consumer sales of contraceptives, Polo said.

“Contrary to what the international organizations – who portray themselves as ‘the good guys’ – say,” Polo continued, they only contributed a little more than “three percent of the total cost.”

The U.N. Population Fund report states that the goal for population programs is to spend some $65 billion “in order to meet the goals supposedly agreed to at the conference in Cairo,” he explained.

“This means the U.N. Population Fund needs to raise funds for its questionable population policies, from supporting China’s one-child-per-family policy and forced abortions to including this ‘novelty’ of female condoms,” Polo said.