Champion of Choice: The Life and Legacy of Women's Advocate Nafis Sadik

9 The UN

166 9 THE UN The ever-bold Nafis’s name became internationally known as she charged forward with her work at the Pakistani Family Planning Commission. Her aggressive management style incorporated the spirit of community building, a technique that would become a trademark throughout the doctor’s long tenure working for women’s rights. To this end she decided to host a global symposium to enable the sharing of information on methods to control fertility. She called the event “Beyond Family Planning,” a title that foreshadowed a showdown she would face in Cairo twenty-five years later: the battle over who has the right to control a woman’s uterus—the woman herself or the government that wants to impose its demographic goals? In 1969 Nafis organized a conference in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, and almost immediately ran into massive security issues, another situation she would face in Cairo. By comparison, however , her Dhaka organizational challenges were a joke . . . literally. Someone had advised that her opening speech should start off with a joke, but the mistress of ceremonies was so nervous that she couldn’t remember the punch line. At the point where the audience was supposed to burst into gales of laughter, she was greeted by raw silence instead. Considering all the possible pitfalls she had to negotiate to put THE UN 167 the event together—this being the first major one of her career—a flat one-liner was the least of her worries. She had asked usaid for guidance on the creation of such an undertaking, and they had sent out a seasoned veteran who advised how to organize a conference of this magnitude, one attended by vips from all over the globe. Nafis soon realized that the informational panels were just one facet of the experience; she had to consider protocol, booking flight and hotel arrangements, receiving 250 guests, meals, entertainment—oh, and the safety of some of the world’s most important leaders. She chose Dhaka for the conference’s location because the city was so densely populated that it served as a living testament to the necessity for population control. (This theory was confirmed two years later after the region was renamed Bangladesh, and the media focused a horrified gaze on the nation’s plight of overcrowding, squalor, and starvation.) Nafis reasoned that if the vehicle of a visiting dignitary even paused at a stoplight, the vip would be swarmed by hundreds of beggars, and this experience alone would do more to demonstrate the dangers of letting your population outpace an economy than any speech from a podium. Her government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was stunned when they learned that Nafis had invited all these individuals to Pakistan without informing their office—but typical of her style, she had decided what she wanted to do was the right thing to do and then didn’t wait around for permission. The problem with this approach was that East Pakistan was currently the scene of much political upheaval, with the citizenry rioting as they demonstrated against President Ayub Khan, demanding their independence. This chaos and the ensuing curfew were well publicized on the nightly news in the United States, and participants who had confirmed began to back out. Nafis assured them all that she had everything under control and to come ahead. “I then went to East Pakistan’s governor and told him I needed some passes for the conference guests so that they could avoid the curfew. 168 CHAPTER 9 “‘Okay,’ he said, ‘how many?’ I said, ‘Around 250.’ “He said, ‘What! You’re not allowed to organize meetings of more than five people!’ It took some negotiating, but I finally got him to agree to give me enough passes for two busloads so that I could pick up the guests arriving at the airport. Then I had to put everyone in the Intercontinental Hotel, and agree not to let them out into the city. I spoke to the hotel’s management and said for goodness sake, be sure you have enough food, because these people will be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner here for four days.” Talk about a captive audience! “Next, I knew I needed to arrange some sort of entertainment. The Intercontinental brought in some violinists—they also had to stay on the premises and couldn’t go out. But mainly what the conference is remembered for...