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Expansion Of Mexico City Policy Will Endanger The Lives Of Refugee Women

New York, NY

The recent announcement by the White House to expand the “Mexico City Policy” beyond the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) population funding will impact refugee women’s ability to access quality health care in a timely manner. The Mexico City Policy as it currently applies to USAID Population funding prohibits U.S. aid to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that offer abortion counseling or services, even with their non-U.S. money. The Women’s Commission supports the amendment of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) offered during the Senate Appropriations Committee consideration of the Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations bill on September 4 to block White House efforts to expand the ban.

An estimated 80 percent of refugees are women and children. These women and children are most vulnerable to the consequences of displacement such as gender-based violence, including rape and its consequences: unwanted pregnancies, unsafe delivery and sexually transmitted diseases, like HIV/AIDS. Expansion of the Mexico City Policy will degrade health care services for women and endanger their lives by delaying the funding of critical health programs with cumbersome reporting requirements.

Refugees and the internally displaced will suffer the effects of these new restrictions most in emergencies, when the availability of health services is limited and implementation must be immediate. As it stands, the Mexico City Policy places unwieldy certification requirements on recipients that delay needed care to women. Specifically, the policy requires beneficiaries of U.S. funding who partner with local and foreign organizations in the delivery of family planning services to verify that their local partners are not providing abortions or counseling on the availability of abortion. This certification process places the burden of time-consuming reporting requirements on the recipient and its local partner, who will be unable to provide the necessary information quickly in a humanitarian emergency, when time is of the essence.

The expansion of the Mexico City Policy follows on the heels of the recent denial of previously-approved State Department funding for refugee and HIV/AIDS programs run by the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium and sets a dangerous precedent for U.S. funding for all reproductive health programs for the future. As we have seen happen under the existing Mexico City Policy, the expansion will have a chilling effect on programming not covered under the ban: groups unsure of the scope of the restrictions will overcompensate to safeguard their funding and deny a larger range of reproductive health services.

In these uncertain times, the United States should do more to protect refugee and internally displaced women, not less. These new restrictions will result in refugee women becoming even more vulnerable; they will also tie the hands of groups that are ready and able to help them. The Women’s Commission urges other senators and members of Congress to support Senator Reid in his effort to overturn the expansion of this policy.