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

10 The Director

197 10 THE DIRECTOR As the gestation of her career advanced, Dr. Sadik was required to birth more than babies. She had arrived at unfpa in October 1971, and in 1972 Executive Director Rafael Salas sent his new technical adviser to Yugoslavia with the dictum to raise capital. He was eager for Eastern Europe to support his fledgling fund and sent an ob-gyn to deliver contributions. This mission came shortly after Nafis’s very first assignment: to prompt the creation of more methods of birth control—the project she worked on in the daytime between leaving the five kids at home while she took the train into snowy Manhattan and returning home to eat her Shake and Bake drumstick and frozen peas. Luckily she was well fed, because Nafis would need her strength. Salas had determined the need to stimulate advances in contraception after witnessing a disturbing trend: “The private sector at that time was moving out of investment in research and development, so Salas suggested I organize a meeting by inviting some of the people I knew, like the Population Council and the donors.” Dr. Sadik set to work and discussed strategy with her colleagues at the un. At the time unfpa, the tiny start-up agency, was under the umbrella of the un Development Program (undp), a much larger branch assigned the staggering task of eliminating world poverty. But 198 CHAPTER 10 it seemed everywhere the doctor turned within the gigantic bureaucracy , instead of finding assistance to help resuscitate research on birth control, she met with skepticism about this project—even from her friends there. They commented that this was not an appropriate undertaking for unfpa, which was merely a funding agency designed to dispense financial assistance to developing countries. “They felt we shouldn’t get involved in ‘substantive matters.’” She informed everyone: “Salas has given me this assignment, and I’m going to do this regardless of whether you help me or not. Just because I don’t know the un people very well doesn’t mean I don’t know lots of other people in the field.” And with that, Nafis fired off personal letters under her own signature , writing to the men she knew, such as General Draper and the other top brass at the Population Council, the folks at the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, major donors like usaid, and the heads of major pharmaceutical companies—all of whom she had dealt with in Pakistan—and consequently all of whom attended her meeting in New York City. Reporter Kathleen Teltsch covered the event for the New York Times in a story headlined “Family Planners of 23 Nations Voice Optimism at un Parley.” “Salas wanted to know how I got this interview and I said, ‘I didn’t. She just came to me, and I invited her to join the conference .’” He had been trying since unfpa’s inception to get some coverage from the Times and was particularly impressed by this breakthrough . Nobody deduced the real reason for the press coverage: in the early 1970s era of women’s liberation, having this female in such a visible position of power was noteworthy. Not coincidentally, rather than discussing the fine art of contraception, about 50 percent of the copy was devoted to Nafis: “a slim sari-clad woman with a cloud of dark wavy hair, she volunteers that her own children, aged 17, 15 and 11, were ‘well planned,’ and adds, ‘I say with certainty that regardless of country or culture, no woman in the world wants a baby every year.’” Fresh on the heels of this victory, Salas sent Nafis to garner a THE DIRECTOR 199 contribution from the Yugoslav government. When she arrived at the airport in Belgrade, nobody was there to greet the diplomat—her first clue to what lay in store for her on the rest of the trip. Luckily as she wandered through the airport, she ran into an old friend, Iqbal Akhund, the Pakistani ambassador to Yugoslavia. Akhund asked Nafis where she was staying, and when the bleary traveler—fresh off an international flight—told him, he replied, “Well, that’s not a very nice hotel. You better just come stay with me and my wife.” The next morning the ambassador supplied Dr. Sadik with a car and driver, and she arrived at the un Development offices fresh and ready for business. Clad in her signature sari...