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The United Nations was an inspired and
glorious concept when it began in 1945, born out of the rubble of World War
II. It was established as a forum for
the nations of the world to meet in a spirit of dignity and goodwill, to discuss
problems and reach consensus –while respecting the national sovereignty of
member countries and their differing cultural and religious values.
Preservation of the natural family was
one of the major concerns of the UN in its early years. This was reflected in 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which is now accepted worldwide as the
international standard for human rights.
This Declaration included an endorsement of the traditional family in
Article 16, which provides as follows:
Article 16
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Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race,
nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to
marriage, during marriage and its dissolution.
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Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the
intending spouses.
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The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is
entitled to protection by society and the State.
The Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, which came into effect in 1976, also included protection
for the natural family.
Article 17
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No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home ….
Article 18
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The States Parties to the present
Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when
applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of
their children in conformity with their own convictions.
Article 23
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The family is the natural and
fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and
the State.
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The right of men and women of
marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.
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No marriage shall be entered into
without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
Beginning in 1994, however, at the UN
Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, a major change
occurred. It was at this conference
that attempts were first made at the UN to undermine the natural family
worldwide. Fortunately to date, these
attempts have been generally thwarted, but it is a continuing battle to keep
the anti-family forces at the UN at bay.
The reason behind the attempt to
undermine the natural family at the UN is due to the fact that global
statistics began to reveal a marked demographic decline in the west. This fact caused great alarm in western
countries as it portended difficulties for the west to hold the balance of
power worldwide – both politically and economically. Consequently, the population issue became an obsession with the
west. The west was concerned that the
large population of the developing world would precipitate both increased
migration to the west and increased civil unrest, which could lead to a loss of
access to natural resources in the developing world by the west.
The western nations, therefore, began to
use the UN as a tool by which to attempt to curtail Third World
population. This was carried out by way
of anti-family policies, such as reproductive rights (abortion), contraceptive
and sterilization programs, adolescent access to these services without parental
knowledge or consent (WHO defines an adolescent as anyone from 10 to 19 years),
and homosexual rights. These policies,
however, were in open defiance of the values of Catholic and Muslim countries
in the UN. Such policies also
contradicted the fact that Europe was on the brink of economic and political
upheaval because of its precipitous drop in fertility. In 2003, the UN was forced to revise its
population projections downward worldwide.
This reality did not stop the UN, however, from continuing its
relentless battle to impose population control on the developing world.
As most of the nations of the developing
world have refused to support the anti-life / anti-family policies proposed at
the UN, the influential western officials at the UN realized they had to devise
a new approach to overcome this resistance.
The tactic used to break the resistance
of the developing world to anti-family policies was to export the failed
feminist revolution of the west to the developing world. That is, under the guise of raising the
status of women in the developing world by promoting gender equality and the
empowerment of women as prescribed by feminist ideology, it was anticipated
that women, once educated and economically independent, would voluntarily
separate themselves from the “liability” of religion and culture, family and
children. Allegedly, these impediments
have enslaved women for centuries. An
emancipation from these responsibilities would make population control programs
acceptable to these women. Thus the
promotion of women’s rights became one of the major issues promoted at the
UN.
Ironically, however, such a policy is
doomed to failure. It does not take
into account the fact that home and children are central to a woman’s life
whether she is illiterate, educated, affluent or poor.
In addition, pushing feminist policies
for women in an attempt to undermine the natural family, the UN also began to
advocate the following anti-family policies, designed to curb population and
also break down the family unit.
1.
Homosexual/lesbian Relationship Rights
The anti-family strategists at the UN
are attempting to redefine the family away from the traditional model of
husband, wife and children. Instead,
they want a fluid definition that does not require heterosexuality as the
family’s foundation. The premise argued
at the UN is that the traditional family is only one among many alternate
lifestyles; including same-sex marriages, common law unions, transgenerational
sexual liaisons, etc.
Thus the strategists have tried to
insert in the UN documents the expression “families in all their forms.” The expression is, of course deliberately
ambiguous as it can also refer to the extended family unit of grandparents,
aunts, uncles and cousins, prevalent in many cultures.
Further, arguments are being pushed that
homosexuals and lesbians are a disadvantaged minority, and are entitled to the
same provisions and privileges under human rights protection as are now enjoyed
by legitimate disadvantaged racial, ethnic and religious groups. This point is at this very moment, being
debated at the 60th Session of the 53-member UN Commission on Human Rights in
Geneva (March 15 – April 23, 2004). The
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLARC) is seeking to
amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the protection
of homosexuality. This is the first
resolution in UN history to link homosexuality with human rights. Pro-family NGOs, including two from my own
organization, REAL Women of Canada, are now in Geneva lobbying against this
proposed amendment, which, if passed, will have far-reaching implications for
the natural family worldwide.
2.Adolescent Access to Birth Control and
Abortion Counselling and Services
UN strategists are attempting to
implement in UN documents the controversial provision that adolescents must
have access to birth control and abortion counselling and services, without
parental knowledge or consent. This
provision has caused long and heated negotiations at the UN during the past
decade, pitting the western nations against the developing nations.
Dr. Nafis Sadik, former Executive
Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) explained the need for this
provision at a conference on women’s health in Ottawa, Canada, in August 1996:
Adolescent
education programs and access to reproductive services are critical and central
to achieving reproductive health. This
concept of adolescent right was first introduced in Cairo where the objective
was not achieved because many countries regarded it as an issue relating to
parental authority. It is one of the
most controversial and difficult issues to deal with on the international level
as even in industrialized countries like the US it is the subject of intense
ideological and emotional debate.
The reason why the west is so determined
to include the provision that adolescents should have access to birth control
and abortion without parental consent, is that this would lead to a separation
of adolescents from parental authority on the crucial issue of their
sexuality. If the adolescent can be
released from parental authority in the area of sexuality, then it follows that
the adolescent can also be released and reject parental authority in other
matters, including culture and religion.
Regrettably, this advocacy for birth
control and abortion services for adolescents at the UN is the exploitation of
adolescents to be used as pawns in the larger struggle to undermine and destroy
the family unit. Again, whenever it has
arisen, this provision has been beaten back by the pro-family NGOs at the UN.
3.Reproductive Rights Key to Population
Stabilization
Although there appears to be a
reluctance to define “reproductive rights” on the international level, in
practice at the UN, the expression means providing unrestricted access to
abortion, birth control and sterilization procedures. These procedures are being represented at the UN as human
rights. In order to advance the
acceptance of these procedures since the Cairo conference, the UN has tried to
link them to the empowerment and human rights of women, allegedly the key to
women’s economic and social security.
Unfortunately, the linking of
reproductive health to the social, technological and economic advancement of
women has made it difficult for nations to separate this package into its
component parts, and therefore reject abortion, homosexuality, birth control
and sterilization procedures for what they are - measures to instigate
population control in developing nations.
Again regrettably, the acceptance of
abortion and family planning policies are frequently used by the UN as
bargaining tools and pre-conditions of obtaining assistance from UN agencies,
such as the World Bank.
4.Gender Differences in Males and Females
A struggle erupted over the inclusion of
the word “gender” in the platform of action for the UN Fourth World Conference
on Women held in Beijing, China in September 1995. The UN strategists wanted to substitute the words “women” or
“female” in the document with the word “gender” in order to express the
proposition that the division of labour, common to all societies between men
and women, is not based on their biological differences, but rather is due to
socially and culturally constructed considerations. The only point that is being made is that women are supposedly
interchangeable with men in their life roles; and that women are bound to the
home and motherhood only by societal and cultural dictates, not by their
natural instincts or personal wishes.
Further, the word “gender” in UN
documents to supplement the words “men” and “women” leaves the word open to a
broader interpretation so as to include not merely males and females, but also
transsexuals, transvestites, bisexuals, etc.
Implementing
Anti-family Policies at the UN
In order to incorporate the concepts
that undermine the natural family accepted at the UN, several strategies have
been used to overcome the reluctance of member states to accept them. These strategies include the following:
(a)
Feminist
NGOs at work at the UN
The UN has greatly encouraged the number
of anti-family, mostly feminist NGOs accredited to it, to serve as enthusiastic
partners to promote the western government’s anti-family policies. Western governments heavily subsidize these
NGOs and give them easy access to the corridors of power within the UN. These NGOs, who refer to themselves as
“civil society,” are, in fact, non-elected representatives of no one but their
own ideological supporters.
Unfortunately, however, these non-elected, unaccountable NGOs have
acquired enormous influence at the UN.
At the first UN conference I attended in
1994, the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, I was shocked
to hear New York-based American feminist, Bella Abzug, proclaim to her “women’s
caucus” that they represented the “women of the world” (some presumption), and
that the Cairo Plan of Action was a document that they had written. Clearly, something seriously was wrong at
the UN that a handful of feminists had the power to change the wording of an
international document which would affect the lives of billions of people
around the world!
Feminist NGOs, such as Ms. Abzug’s
organization, were first used as a democratic varnish to dignify any group
(even those consisting of 3 people meeting in a basement) at the 1992 UN
Conference on the Environment held in Rio de Janeiro. Such phantom NGOs, who supposedly represented “the public” or
“civil society” at UN conferences, are often actually members of their
country’s own delegation or frequently as is done by my own Canadian
government, the NGO’s expenses are paid by a government to attend these
conferences to enable them to lobby delegates from the developing world. Grants to these NGOs were an inspired way to
extend western government influence into the private domain, both domestically
and abroad, without attracting attention.
There were only 635 NGOs accredited to the UN in 1992. Today, there are over 2000 such
organizations, of which only a small fraction have a pro-life/pro-family
perspective.
(b) UN Treaty
Monitoring Committees
Many of the UN treaties were drafted in
previous years and did not include the currently desirable, by Western
standards, feminist, anti-life/anti-family provisions. It was determined, therefore, to do an
end-run around these treaties. The
strategy for this was developed at a secret meeting held at Deep Cove, NY, in
December 1996. This meeting was
attended by the heads of the UN agencies, as well as the representatives from
the most influential feminist NGOs at the UN.
It was decided at that meeting, that the UN human rights treaties would
be “re-interpreted” to fit the feminist agenda. This was to be done by way of the UN’s Treaty Monitory
Committees.
That is, each ratifying country is
required to report at 5-year intervals to a UN Committee to provide information
on its compliance with the Treaty provisions.
These Committees are made up of so-called “experts” selected by secret
ballot from a list of nominees submitted by governments that have signed the
treaty. When a committee considers the
report of a state party, representatives of the government are invited to
appear to present the report and to answer committee members’ questions. Records of these meetings are made, and,
together with the reports, they form the primary source of information about a
nation’s implementation of its obligations under the treaty.
Based on the strategy developed at the
1996 Deep Cove meeting, these committees began to “re-interpret” or “read in”
the treaties, anti-family concepts that were not there when the treaties were
ratified, and clearly are not included in the actual wording of the
treaties. Some of the “read in”
provisions of the Monitoring Committee, for example, of the Convention for the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) include the
following:
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Although the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) document does not mention abortion, mainly
Catholic countries, such as Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, have been criticized
by the Treaty Monitoring Committee for their restrictive abortion laws.
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The CEDAW document condemns prostitution, but the Treaty
Monitoring Committee has directed China and Kyrystan to liberalize their
prostitution laws. (Feminists object to
only the trafficking in women
and regard the sex trade as an acceptable occupation for a woman – either by
choice or from necessity.)
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The CEDAW committee criticized Belarus for instituting Mother’s
Day (an undue emphasis and sexual stereotyping of women, according to the
Committee).
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Libya was directed by the Committee to reinterpret the Koran to
abide by the Committee’s new feminist “guidelines.”
Another example is the UN committee
monitoring the UN Convention of the Child “re-interpreting” a treaty, is in
regard to the committee’s prohibiting the disciplining of children by
spanking. Both Canada and England have
been criticized for continuing to allow parents to discipline their children in
this manner, even though no such provision was included in the actual treaty.
The decisions of the Monitoring
Committees, fortunately, are not binding.
However, the criticism of a government’s failure to implement this new
agenda “read in” to the various treaties does create unfavourable publicity for
government – the publicity being magnified by sympathetic NGOs in that country
who inform the media of the problems and who lobby government to “correct” the
problems identified by the committee.
In order to
protect the natural family at the UN, our efforts should including the
following strategies:
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We must remain ever vigilant.
It is crucial that we closely monitor all UN conferences, and ensure
that pro-family NGOs are always present to lobby on behalf of the natural
family.
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Governments should ignore the phony provisions that UN Treaty
Monitoring Committees are reading into UN treaties. Governments should publicly denounce this practice, both at the
UN and in their own countries. Exposure
of this travesty and the subsequent embarrassment to the UN should serve as a
powerful weapon against this practice.
(Australia has led the way in this regard
in that in September 2000, its Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that
Australia would no longer report to the UN’s Treaty Monitoring Committees. As stated by Mr. Howard, the Australian
government is perfectly capable of monitoring its own UN treaty record.)
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Future policies of the UN depend on the proposals put forward,
openly and democratically, by its member states. Government delegations, such as my own Canadian government at the
UN, consistently promote anti-family positions, which are not a reflection of
the views of the majority of its citizens.
Most citizens in a country are not even aware of the positions taken by
their government at the UN. We must
question our individual governments on their family policies at the UN and
pressure them to support pro-family policies only.
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Pro-family NGOs should not only be subsidized by our governments
at UN conferences, but they should also be appointed as member(s) of their
country’s own national delegations. At
the UN at the present time, western nations have appointed so-called “gender
experts” to their delegations. It’s
time that “family” experts are also appointed to government delegations.
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More pro-family NGOs must seek permanent consultative status with
the UN, with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN, to enable them
to automatically attend UN conferences and other UN meetings worldwide. It’s a tedious, but not difficult task, to
become accredited, and we desperately need the pro-family presence at UN
conferences to off‑set the influence of numerous anti-family NGOs.
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Pro-family policies, such as those set out in the Declaration of
the World Congress of Families III here in Mexico City, as well as the previous
Declarations from the World Congress I in Prague and the World Congress II in
Geneva, should be deposited with the Social Development Commission at the UN in
New York to indicate the world’s concern about and support for the natural
family, and to serve as a basis for future negotiations at the UN. These Declarations will help to offset the
anti-life, anti-family agenda now dominant at the UN. The Congress Declarations are far more representative of the
beliefs of the majority of the 190‑member states of the UN.
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The Declarations should be forwarded to every world government
with the request that the provisions of the Declarations be implemented, so
that the natural family initiative will be promoted and protected, not only within
the UN but also in each country, to provide the safety and security for its
families in order to preserve the culture and religions of each country and to
strengthen the country, both internally and externally.
If we have the will, we can turn back
the vicious tide of family destruction that is sweeping through the UN. Our efforts will be a determining factor in
what the future looks like for our children and grandchildren. Let’s not let them down.
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