REALity – Volume XXXIV Issue No.10 October 2015
At the UN, in recent years, a bitter struggle has been taking place over the definition of family and the issues of abortion and homosexual (LGBT) rights.
The anti-family member states from the western world are determined to use the UN as a tool to require all nations regardless of their culture, tradition and faith to conform to western beliefs and demands on these issues. They do this by repeatedly presenting resolutions, or by slyly inserting new wording in long established UN treaties under review which, if accepted by member states in the developing world (who are generally not aware of the interpretation of these expressions in the English language) end up trapping them like fish caught in a net.
It is amazing, under these circumstances, that the UN bureaucracy, many anti-family/life organizations at the UN, and the western member states, especially the US and the European Union, have repeatedly failed to make headway at the UN in achieving their goals.
In the two months of July and August, 2015, however, the pro-family/life cause experienced some successes and losses at the UN.
You will never hear of the successes from the west’s mainstream media, because these achievements are directly contrary to the agenda that the media relentlessly push. The media can’t abide successful pro-family/life achievements. When they do occur, they steadfastly pretend that they didn’t happen and refuse to report them. This is one reason that no one today trusts the media. They play their own game by unabashedly pushing their own liberal agenda, at the expense of truth.
The 2015 Outstanding Success at the UN
During the first week of July 2015, the Human Rights Council in Geneva passed a resolution, by a vote of 27 to 14, to protect the natural family as the fundamental unit of society, recognizing the prior rights of parents to educate their children and calling on all nations to create family sensitive policies and to recognize their binding obligations under treaties to protect the family. This was a shattering development for LGBT advocates as member states insisted on using the singular “family” rather than “various forms of family”, which would then have included homosexual relationships.
The US, UK, Ireland and other European countries, supported by feminist and pro LGBT NGO’s, pulled out all the stops during these negotiations. They exerted tremendous pressure on member states to prevent the resolution from passing. Opposition to the resolution was led by the US, which, under President Obama, has placed the LGBT agenda as one of its primary foreign policy objectives. The US and other developed countries threatened to withhold foreign aid from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Macedonia if they voted for the resolution. As a result, these countries abstained from voting. However, the sponsors of the bill, Russia, China, Belarus, and more than a dozen Muslim and African countries handily won the vote. Canada is not a member of the Human Rights Council and was not involved in these negotiations.
The passage of this resolution was predictably condemned by feminists and sexual advocacy groups who were apoplectic as a result of their loss. These activists claimed that this resolution was “a set back to the advancement of the human rights of individuals … without acknowledging the harms and human rights abuses that are known to occur within families …” and that “families perpetuate patriarchal oppression, traditions and harmful practices…”
The UN General Assembly Sustainable Development Goals 2015 – 2030
Member states at the UN have been negotiating an overhaul of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to be enacted between 2015 and 2030. These SDG’s have been the basis of multiple negotiations at the UN for the past three years.
Over 70 organizations, including REAL Women of Canada, signed a letter to the negotiators requesting they uphold the goals of the UN including the definition of traditional family and marriage.
On August 2, 2015, an historic, unprecedented agreement was reached which did not include abortion as a human right, or gay rights, – the twin goals of the anti-life/family forces at the UN.
There is concern, however, that the SDG do refer to “universal access to sexual and reproductive rights”. This is language that has been interpreted in the past to mean providing women “with modern contraception” and with abortions in countries where they are legal. This language has also been used as a vehicle to fund abortion groups world-wide to provide and promote abortions. Inevitably, therefore, this expression is going to cause problems for third world countries.
The SDGs are massive in scale with total cost expected to be in the trillions of dollars per year from all funding sources, including national budgets controlled by legislators. NGO health care providers, including those that perform abortion, are preparing for the unprecedented influx of funding as sexual and reproductive health and health-care services are integrated into national health strategies and programs while a target to provide “universal health coverage” is also pursued.
General Assembly Approves SDG
The General Assembly of the UN met in New York on September 25th, 2015 and approved these negotiated SDG goals including the expression “sexual and reproductive rights”. This SDG remains a cloud on the horizon for the pro-life cause.
Also at the General Assembly, the US, EU and their allies, despite every effort, did not succeed in having included abortion and homosexual rights in these new global development goals.
In the absence of making headway on these issues, however, the Obama administration with its homosexual (LGBT) supporters, moved to erode the pro-life and pro-family principles that underpin the UN by having “the family” removed from the sustainable goals document.
While this is not a gain for LGBT rights, it is a loss for the pro-life and pro-family cause. The exclusion of the family does not re-define the family, nor does it imply any recognition for same-sex couples. But the exclusion creates a space for mischief to re-define the family, despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights not contemplating any recognition of same-sex relationships as capable of constituting a family.
At the heart of the UN is the recognition of the family as the “natural and fundamental group unit of society.” First stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every major UN agreement, and just about every UN resolution, touching on social policy has included a reference to the family. As a result of the omission of the word “family” in the SDG, several countries gave strong statements that the new goals should not be interpreted to include LGBT rights.
The Story Behind the Push for LGBT Rights at the UN
The push for LGBT rights at the UN comes from the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which has been funded, since 2011, by the Nordic countries in order to campaign specifically for LGBT rights. This is taking place even though that UN agency is pleading for funds to carry out its basic work. At the same time, the office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights is caught up in a scandal. It is accused of corruption by deliberately mishandling an investigation of French soldiers sexually abusing African boys. Children as young as nine were induced to trade oral sex and sodomy with the French soldiers for food. This UN agency should deal with its own problems before creating problems for the rest of the world.
African and other delegates have repeatedly expressed their frustration with the obsession of the UN bureaucracy and some governments with pushing controversial LGBT issues, when there obviously is no consensus on it.
Deeply Grateful for Work of Pro-family NGO’s at the UN
We can only be grateful for the stalwart work of the pro-life/family NGO’s at the UN, who are there to encourage and assist pro-life countries to stand firm for their beliefs. It is a tough, never-ending job. As long as they are there, however, the small but persistent group of sexual rights NGO’s and their powerful supporting countries and UN bureaucracy and agencies, will continue to face an uphill battle in pushing their agenda.
Hopefully a pro-life president will be elected in the US in 2016. This will undermine the efforts of those promoting abortion and homosexual rights at the UN.