The United States has withdrawn funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that promotes family planning in more than 150 countries.
The US State Department said it was withholding $32.5 in funding for the fiscal year of 2017 because the UNFPA "supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization".
The UNFPA said it "regrets the decision" and has not broken any laws, calling those claims "erroneous" and that all of its work promotes the rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination.
The money that had been allocated to the UNFPA for the fiscal year 2017 will be "transferred and reprogrammed to the Global Health Programs account," the State Department said. The account will be used by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to support family planning, maternal and reproductive health activities in developing countries, it added.
The cut marks US President Donald Trump's first move to curtail funding for the United Nations and is likely to raise further questions about how deep those cuts will eventually go throughout the organization, where the United States is the top donor.
With the support of the US, last year UNFPA says it was able to save the lives of thousands of women from dying during pregnancy and childbirth, prevent unintended pregnancies, and unsafe abortions. The cut follows Trump's proposed 28% budget reduction for diplomacy and foreign aid, including an unspecified reduction in financial support for the United Nations and its agencies, announced last month.
On Monday, the Inter-American Development Bank announced that the United States will not renew its contribution to the Multilateral Investment Fund that supports pilot development projects.
Source: QNA
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