Life After Death

agenda on developing countries. This has opened up another front between secular societies and nations where religious values shape public policy. Since the first major world population conference was held by the UN, in 1974, Western nations have increasingly made development lending and economic assistance contingent on adherence to the West's population targets. Shortly after that conference, the United States Government participated in drawing up the National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM200). When it was de-classified in 1990, it revealed a strategy to 'educate' non-complying leaders in the virtues of the World Population Action. It also proposed using the United Nations as a front, so that the link with the United States would be less apparent: "Development of such a perception could create a serious backlash adverse to the cause of population stability". The report singled out non-governmental organistions (NGOs) and bodies such as the World Bank, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Family Planning Association (UNFPA) and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, as useful instruments for promoting population control. The potentially pressurising role of the World Bank was especially stressed: "With a greater commitment of Bank resources ... a much greater dent could be made on the overall problem". To make population control more acceptable, it would be piggybacked onto more health-care programmes. In voting for the latter, you would get the former. Few of the developing nations were, however, fooled by the subterfuge, and it gradually became apparent that if overt liberal governments and surreptitious pressure did not work, a more coercive approach would be required.

Malthus and the Irish Famine In 1798, Malthus wrote his famous essay on population, in which he advised repealing the Corn Laws as they "create the poor which they maintain". Five years later, he revised his proposal, urging coercive legislation targeted at poor families who reproduced. Any child born within a year or two of the passage of the new law would be ineligible for relief. Malthus offered a solution: "The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept away from the soil. " He was largely responsible for the policies pursued by Britain in Ireland during the famine years, and which punished the destitute by withholding food. It was claimed that the Irish population of eight million was unsustainable (Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity, Gill & Macmillan, 1994). Modern followers of Malthus dominate the United Nations and its agencies. Like Malthus, their first strategy was a tougher economic approach.

In 1992, the World Bank published Population and the World Bank: Implications from Eight Case Studies. This study cited the example of Senegal, and showed how the US Administration exerted economic pressure to establish a Government population policy. Once it had the status of a programme, a framework was created "under which the many donors wishing to fund discreet population projects may now do so in a more co-ordinated and rational manner". Having established a