Gender Ideology -

Pro-life optimism abounds at UN women’s Commission

Published on March 20, 2026March 21, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

There is a spirit of optimism and momentum among pro-life and conservative advocates gathered at the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). This optimism has been bolstered by the U.S.’s leadership at the UN this week, both in negotiations and in participation in side events with civil society.

By Iulia-Elena Cazan and Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

For the third year in a row, the pro-life and pro-family coalition hosted a two-day conference near the UN, where speakers addressed packed rooms about the importance of family, motherhood, defending the unborn, and the dangers of gender ideology. The U.S. sponsored five of the events at the Conference on the State of Women and Family (CSWF), and the government of Burundi sponsored two others.

The harm of transgender ideology to women and children was a frequent theme. Representatives of the Trump administration discussed recent executive measures to ban sex-rejecting surgeries and hormones for minors.

Bethany Kozma, Director of Global Affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, said, “Parents should never be dismissed when raising concerns about what children are being taught. Families are the first and most important institution in any society.”

Chris Elston, a Canadian known as “Billboard Chris,” spoke about his efforts to educate the public about the harms and his fight against pediatric “gender affirming care,” which he called “the greatest child abuse scandal in the history of modern medicine.”

“In the name of inclusivity, and acceptance, and diversity, we are sterilizing children and sending teenage girls into menopause with its side effects of its own,” Elston continued, adding, “Puberty blockers are not reversible because time is not reversible.”

Elson rejected controversial narratives suggesting children are born in the wrong bodies. Instead, Elson emphasized that there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or a girl, that there are “two sexes, zero genders, and infinite personalities.”

Former college swimmer Paula Scanlan shared her story of having to share a locker room with a female-identified male teammate, while Amie Ichikawa, who spent time in a women’s prison, spoke about the dangers of housing biological men—some of them sex offenders—alongside vulnerable incarcerated women.

At a separate event at the mission of Nigeria, UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, spoke on the danger and the “dehumanizing” effect of erasing women as a “material, distinct category in law but also in reality” through gender-neutral terminology or definitions of “women” that include men. Alsalem mentioned that in some countries, the “official statistics of female sexual offenders or female rapists have jumped by 700%” because statistical bureaus now classify some biological males as females.

An event by the International Youth Coalition (a program of C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax) featured young leaders in the international pro-life movement. A young mother and lawyer from Costa Rica shared how her family was a source of joy and meaning, and not a barrier to her professional advancement. A young leader from Students for Life USA discussed his visits to college campuses, helping to start pro-life groups, and encouraging young leaders to find the confidence to find each other and speak out.

The CSWF conference was originally launched after conservative groups were repeatedly denied space for events by the “official” CSW civil society parallel event platform. Its events draw crowds of like-minded advocates and volunteers, delegates from foreign capitals and missions, as well as some critics who call its message “antithetical to gender equality.”

By Iulia-Elena Cazan and Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. . C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

About the authors:

Iulia-Elena Cazan joined the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) in the summer of 2023 as Associate Director of UN Government Relations and International Youth Coalition (IYc) in NY. She graduated from Drexel University in June 2023 with a degree in Political-Science and minors in French and Philosophy.

Rebecca Oas is the Director of Research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) in Washington, D.C. Before joining C-Fam, Rebecca earned her doctorate in Genetics and Molecular Biology at Emory University. She has written for Human Life International as a Fellow of HLI America and is has served as a Contributing Editor for HLI.

US resolution to protect women and girls faces uphill battle at the UN

Published on March 20, 2026March 20, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is wrapping up this week amid historic disagreement between delegations over what it means to be a woman. You read that right. Diplomats at the annual international meeting focused on “women’s issues” are engaged in negotiations and backroom maneuvers to avoid clearly defining what they mean by the word “gender.”

By Grace Melton

Last week, when the meeting opened, it was the first time in the commission’s 70 years that the “agreed conclusions”—the negotiated document that the diplomats usually adopt by consensus—had to go to a vote.

The U.S. diplomats requested that the commission members take more time to negotiate a document that all countries could agree to, and then subsequently proposed amendments to the document that would have brought it more in line with U.S. policy. The U.S. opposed the “ambiguous language promoting gender ideology,” as well as references to “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” which U.N. agencies use to promote abortion.

But the chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, Costa Rica’s Maritza Chan Valverde, used procedural machinations to require that the proposed U.S. amendments be packaged together, effectively killing their chances of passage. She was able to censor the countries that shared some of the U.S.’ objections to the document but were unwilling to join in opposition to all of them.

Ultimately, the controversial “agreed conclusions” were adopted by a vote of 37 in favour, with six abstentions and only the U.S. voting “no.”

This ideological battle is nothing new. The U.N. bureaucracy and European countries routinely push gender ideology and a radical abortion agenda under the guise of women’s rights and gender equality. And over the past several years they have labeled their opposition—those who hold traditional beliefs about the sanctity of life and the protection of the family—as “the pushback” or “anti-rights actors.”

Last year, the newly reelected Trump administration opposed the business-as-usual progressive agenda at the Commission on the Status of Women. And this year, the U.S. is taking its defense of women and girls a step further. As the new Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance Policy illustrates, the Trump administration intends to “promote human flourishing” by opposing abortion, gender ideology, and DEI activities at home and abroad.

After losing the vote last week, the U.S. delegation is now proposing a new resolution on the “Protection of Women and Girls Through Appropriate Terminology.” It seeks to reaffirm the original language from the 1994 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which defines “gender” according to “its ordinary, generally accepted usage, as referring to men and women.” It rejects any expansion of the term to include “gender identity” or other subjective and ideological terms.

Pro-life and pro-family organizations, including Family Watch International, are encouraging the many countries that consistently oppose radical gender ideology to join with the U.S. in sponsoring the resolution.

While the U.S. resolution faces an uphill battle—some say insurmountable—these countries would be wise to support it nonetheless. A strong showing of support would challenge any assertion that customary international law has developed to expand the meaning of gender to include “transgender” or other so-called gender identities.

Such support would build on the momentum of the successful vote late last year in the General Assembly to remove controversial “sexual orientation and gender identity” language from a resolution on implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. And it would send a clear message to U.N. bureaucrats that U.N. Member States have the sovereign right to define U.N. policy through transparent processes.

The dangers of gender ideology are not theoretical. Reem Alsalem, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has highlighted many of them in her recent report on sex-based violence against women and girls. Women’s dignity, privacy, safety, and opportunities are at stake when men can violate female-only spaces by claiming to “identify” as women.

Sadly, much of the world is only beginning to understand the horrific physical and psychological harms that those who have attempted to “transition” to another sex, boys and girls alike, have experienced under the euphemistically named “gender-affirming care” regimen of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries that aim to change the appearance of their bodies.

For too long, activists on the Left have insisted that abortion is necessary for women’s empowerment, that motherhood and family are impediments to personal fulfillment, and now, that “gender identity” is something real that others must validate.

These are lies that hurt women and girls. In the decades since the Beijing conference, more people have come to recognize them as ideological deceptions that hurt men, women, and children alike. Now it’s time for more countries to confront those lies at the U.N., even when that means they’ll likely lose a vote.

Republished from The Daily Signal.

About the author: Grace Melton is senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Human Flourishing.

CIA promoted LGBT & abortion to Muslims

Published on February 27, 2026February 27, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Redacted reports show how CIA analysts recommended “discrete” promotion of LGBT rights in the Middle East, increased funding for “sexual and reproductive health services” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has ordered the intelligence agency to retract and revise nineteen “intelligence products” because they were determined to be highly politicized and contained substandard work. Three of the reports were published by Ratcliffe in a redacted format.

The published reports show how CIA analysts recommended “discrete” promotion of LGBT rights in the Middle East, increased funding for “sexual and reproductive health services” during the COVID-19 pandemic relying primarily on reports from abortion industry groups that stood to receive those funds, and meddling in German politics through “tailored gender-conscious approaches” to prevent the recruitment of women with traditional views of motherhood by “white extremists.”

The three products released until now may be the tip of the iceberg. They are likely the least controversial of the nineteen, the ones deemed least dangerous to national security. This raises the question of how bad the other sixteen CIA intelligence products are that have not been published.

The reports were produced while Obama, Trump, and Biden were in the White House. A CIA press release that accompanied the reports said they show how the intelligence agency failed to remain “independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”

“The intelligence products we released to the American people today — produced before my tenure as DCIA — fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned,” said Director Ratcliffe. “There is absolutely no room for bias in our work, and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record.”

The reports were reviewed by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) alongside hundreds of other reports containing intelligence assessments and analyses produced in recent decades.

Notably, a CIA “Wire” report titled “Middle East-North Africa: LGBT Activists Under Pressure” produced in 2015 shows the inherent dangers of attempts at cultural engineering abroad, something C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, has reported for many years.

This report should be understood in the context of the Obama White House designating LGBT issues a U.S. Foreign Policy Priority beginning in 2011 and expanding that commitment with several subsequent executive actions by Obama and Biden. The Trump administration revoked all those actions.

The report warns that the governments of majority-Muslim countries in the region would “almost certainly” portray U.S. efforts to advance LGBT rights as “foreign meddling” and that this in turn would undermine the U.S. goal of protecting LGBT rights abroad. It cites the reactions of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, calling this “cultural imperialism” in the context of United Nations debates, as an example of the resistance to be expected.

The report specifically warns of backlash against the very individuals intended for protection.

“Discreet international support could help avoid drawing undue attention and possibly counterproductive backlash against activists,” the report reads.

It warns that “Egyptian civil society organizations –already vulnerable to government scrutiny—have warned US officials that overt engagement puts them at risk” and that “a Lebanese activist in May 2014 stated that public outreach by the US would be counterproductive.”

Nevertheless, it calls for “community engagement with local police forces and the Ministry of Interior to limit the targeting of LGBT individuals” and “supporting gender studies in academic institutions in the Middle East and North Africa.”

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. . C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Scathing review of Cairns gender clinic

Published on February 24, 2026February 27, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

A Queensland Health review of Cairns Hospital’s paediatric gender clinic raises serious concerns about safeguards, oversight, and the treatment of vulnerable children in Australia.

By John Steenhof

A newly released review of the Cairns Hospital paediatric gender service has raised serious concerns about the treatment of vulnerable children and the clinical culture surrounding youth gender medicine in Australia.

The Queensland Health investigation identified a “negative patient safety culture”, with troubling shortcomings in assessment practices, oversight, and clinical governance at the paediatric gender clinic at Cairns and Hinterland Hospital. The review found incident reporting and risk management processes were inconsistent or absent.

In some cases, young patients with developmental delays were on medication despite not understanding the treatment they were receiving. Among the most concerning findings were reports that children as young as 12 were prescribed puberty blockers without adequate multidisciplinary assessment or robust psychological evaluation.

While some defenders of gender medicine may seek to characterise Cairns as an isolated or poorly managed service, the broader significance of the report should not be overlooked. The findings add to a growing body of international and domestic evidence calling for greater caution, stronger safeguards, and more rigorous clinical standards when dealing with children experiencing gender distress.

Global reassessment of youth gender medicine

Across the Western world, medical authorities and courts are increasingly scrutinising the “affirmation-first” model. Reviews in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and parts of the United States have already led to tighter restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex interventions for minors. The Cairns report now places Australia squarely within that global reassessment.

The developments are particularly striking given the treatment of clinicians who have urged caution. For years, Queensland child psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer has advocated for a careful, holistic approach to children presenting with gender distress. Rather than being welcomed as part of a legitimate clinical debate, she has faced disciplinary action and professional pressure.

The Cairns findings underscore why open medical discussion is so important. When complex and evolving areas of medicine become insulated from scrutiny, the risk of harm increases – especially where children and irreversible interventions are involved.

Calls for open debate and stronger safeguards

This is not merely a question of process at a single clinic. It raises deeper issues about whether clinicians feel free to exercise independent professional judgment, whether parents are receiving balanced information, and whether Australia’s regulatory environment allows genuine debate about the best interests of vulnerable young people.

At HRLA, we continue to support professionals who speak carefully and conscientiously in contested areas of practice. Protecting freedom of conscience and evidence-based care is essential to maintaining trust in the medical system and safeguarding children’s wellbeing.

The Cairns review should prompt serious reflection across Australia’s health sector. Robust safeguards, transparent oversight, and open clinical debate are not obstacles to good medicine – they are its foundation.

John Steenhof is the Principal Lawyer at Human Rights Law Alliance. This article first appeared at The Daily Declaration and is reproduced here by permission.

The Daily Declaration is Australia’s largest Christian news site. It is dedicated to providing a voice for Christian values in the public square. Its vision is to see the revitalisation of our Christian values for the common good.

UK: Evangelist arrested for criticizing Islam after complaint

Published on February 19, 2026February 19, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

A British pastor has been arrested for criticizing Islam and gender ideology, his latest encounter with law enforcement amid concerns about the state of free speech in the United Kingdom.

By Ryan Foley for the Christian Post

The conservative nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom International announced in a statement Monday that Pastor Dia Moodley was arrested by Avon and Somerset Police for criticizing Islam and transgender ideology while preaching in Bristol city centre on Nov. 22.

Moodley was arrested on suspicion of violating a provision of the Public Order Act 1986, which bans “inciting religious hatred.”

ADF International clarified that the arrest stemmed from Moodley’s remarks, insisting that there is a “gender binary” and his discussion of Christianity and other religions, including Islam.

While Moodley engaged in respectful dialogue with several people gathered in Bristol city centre, one couple objected to his comments about trans-identified people and called the police. After taking statements from those who objected to Moodley’s speech, police arrested the pastor for “inciting religious hatred” and committing a “religiously aggravated” offense.

Video footage of the arrest shows Moodley urging police officers to place the handcuffs on the front of his body since he has a heart condition. A supporter of Moodley, who was not visible on camera, told the officers, “You’re making a big mistake,” and “You’re not checking eyewitnesses,” and accused them of bias by “taking one eyewitness over another.” The officers defended their actions, asking, “We’re duty bound, aren’t we?”

Moodley spent eight hours in custody and was released with bail conditions prohibiting him from entering Bristol city centre throughout the Christmas season. Although the charges were later dropped, law enforcement officials visited Moodley’s home in January to question him about the November incident and invite him to participate in a voluntary interview. Moodley is still unsure whether he will face criminal charges for his speech.

“This latest arrest has had a profoundly negative effect on me and has been extremely challenging personally,” Moodley said. “I am a law-abiding citizen and it feels surreal that the police have criminalized me so harshly and repeatedly merely for peacefully expressing my Christian views in the public square.”

“The police view me, a Christian pastor, as an easy target and are afraid of others being offended by my lawful speech,” Moodley added. “This is two-tier policing in action.”

Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF International, cited Moodley’s arrest as evidence that “police are using public order legislation to impose de facto blasphemy laws in the UK.” Igunnubole said Moodley’s case “is far from an isolated incident” and “part of a clear pattern” by local police of targeting the pastor for his “peaceful expression in the public square.”

“[Police] have failed in their duty to investigate serious crimes committed against him, by those who objected to his speech,” the lawyer stressed.

“The police must stop their two-tier approach of criminalizing lawful speech. There has long been a pressing need for Parliament to pass legislation to ensure the right to freedom of expression is robustly protected in this country,” Igunnubole added. “Pastor Dia’s case is all the more pressing as the government finalizes its broad and ambiguous definition of ‘anti-Muslim hatred,’ which risks censoring legitimate speech related to Islam.”

The attorney explained that the pastor’s case is an example of how authorities “can misconstrue peaceful comments on Islam as ‘hateful’ and criminal.”

“This misconstruction will be repeated unless clarity is provided to preserve the ability of citizens to peacefully comment, discuss and criticize in accordance with their core beliefs,” Ingunnubole stated.

Moodley was previously arrested in March 2024 for making similar comments about Islam and the binary nature of sex. In addition to spending 13 hours in custody, Moodley had signs stolen from him by students at the nearby Bristol University.

When he preached in Bristol on another occasion, Moodley encountered hostile protesters, including a Muslim bystander who threatened to stab him and a group of Muslim bystanders who pinned him to the ground and attempted to steal his Quran. Moodley held the Quran as he preached in Bristol in an attempt to highlight the differences between Christianity and Islam.

When law enforcement arrived at the scene, they did little to subdue the hostile protesters, one of whom continued to threaten him. While a senior inspector later arrived at the scene and assured Moodley he would not be arrested, the pastor filed a complaint against the police.

This article first appeared at the Christian Post and is republished here with permission.

By Ryan Foley. Ryan Foley joined The Christian Post in August 2020. He currently covers abortion, politics, education and U.S. news. He was a participant in the National Journalism Center’s spring 2018 internship program and has previously written for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters blog and The Western Journal.

ChristianPost.com is the America’s most comprehensive Christian news website and was launched in March 2004 with the vision of delivering up-to-date news, information, and commentaries relevant to Christians across denominational lines. It presents national and international coverage of current events affecting and involving Christian leaders, church bodies, ministries, mission agencies, schools, businesses, and the general Christian public.

Unholy alliances: how divorcing sex from procreation married two movements

Published on January 30, 2026January 30, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

The abortion and transgender movements have been linked for a very long time; parents and lawmakers must first understand where these ideas came from in order to combat them.

by Sheena Rodriguez

(Live Action News) In 2023, Planned Parenthood Action claimed that abortion and ‘transgender care’ go ‘hand-in-hand.’ But few know the history behind transgender ideology and why the nation’s number one abortion provider became so invested in trying to reach young people with pro-transgender sex-ed materials and services.

Activist groups such as Advocates for Youth (AFY), Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, and other organizations aligned with the Future of Sex Ed coalition, continue to shape society by employing digital platforms, educational programs, and a variety of resources to promote abortion, birth control, and transgender ideology. These radical groups seek to counteract parental rights and re-engineer the attitudes of future generations.

Many Planned Parenthood donors are beginning to question why the organization’s mission appears to have shifted — but has it, really? As this series will show, pro-abortion and transgender ideologies have been linked for a very long time.

Parents and lawmakers must first understand where these ideas came from in order to combat them.

(Read Parts Two and Three of this series at the links.)

Key Takeaways:

A look at the history of collaboration between abortion advocates and advocates of transgender ideology reveals shared, disturbing philosophies.
These advocates all believed in the idea that minors can give “consent” to any number of things related to sex — sexual activity, abortion, and ‘gender transition.’
Over the past two centuries, efforts were made to distinguish between homosexuality and those who committed child sexual abuse (leading to the classification of ‘pedophiles’). Then, those who held to the idea that children are ‘sexual from birth’ and can ‘consent’ led efforts to sympathetically portray pedophilia as ‘innate’ and acceptable with ‘consent’.
Efforts were also made to distinguish ‘sexual expression’ as separate from procreation, drawing in the cooperation of pro-birth control and pro-abortion eugenicists.
Disturbing philosophical ideas led to early “sex reassignment” experimentation; one of the doctors performing the earliest surgeries had participated in torturous experiments on human victims within the Nazi regime.

The False Idea of Minor ‘Consent’:

Neuroscientific and psychological communities have long understood that a minor’s brain development, particularly the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, is not complete until 22-25 years of age. The prefrontal cortex regulates behavior, assesses risk, and enables comprehension and proper planning. Consequently, children, minors, and young adults are particularly prone to engaging in risky or dangerous behavior. They cannot developmentally comprehend potentially life-long detrimental consequences.

Yet, despite this scientific reality, the idea that youth can provide ‘consent’ for sex, life-ending abortions, and life-altering ‘gender-affirming care’ is promoted by purveyors of comprehensive sex education.

This idea is foundationally based on concepts propagated by early proponents of the transgender movement.

Context

After World War I, severe economic hardship in Germany contributed to widespread prostitution in Berlin, involving minors and children. As awareness of child development and the harms of sexual abuse grew in the late 1800s and early 1900s, documented abuse cases prompted efforts to distinguish homosexuality from child sexual abuse (p. 271). Consequently, at the turn of the 20th century, “sexual scientists” began using the term “paedophile” to describe child sexual abusers (p. 271).

Read the entire article here at Live Action News

By Sheena Rodriguez. This article was originally published at Live Action News and is reprinted here in part with permission.

Live Action exists to shift culture and law on abortion. Through compelling educational media, human interest storytelling, investigative reporting, and community activism, Live Action reveals the humanity of preborn children and exposes the abortion industry’s exploitation of women and families for profit.

US Human Rights Report leaves out LGBTs

Published on September 3, 2025September 6, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Although it may be hard to argue that Trump’s foreign policy really is “America first”, it is encouraging to see that his administration is sensibly ignoring the woke causes that fracture society along the lines of victimhood status.

By Iulia-Elena Cazan, C-FAM

The just released U.S. Annual Human Rights Report has omitted references to homosexual/trans. Leading homosexual/trans advocacy group calls the pending report “a travesty and subversion of Congressional intent.”

Every year, the U.S. State Department releases a report assessing the human rights situation in every country. While the report is Congressionally mandated, its scope and focus can change from one U.S. administration to another, depending on the administration’s priorities and interpretation of human rights.

The Washington Post wrote that this year’s “draft reports examined by the Post contain no reference to gender-based violence or violence against LGBTQ+ (sic) people.”

Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International criticized the document for “downplaying” certain human rights violations faced by “marginalized populations, including refugees and asylum seekers, women and girls, Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQI+ (sic) people throughout the world.”

Klasing criticized U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for attempting to “limit the scope” of the report. She says Rubio instructed the drafters of the report “to cut everything not legislatively mandated” and that the “Trump administration has turned this report into yet another tool to obscure facts to push forward anti-rights policy choices.”

Last year’s U.S. Human Rights report, released under the Biden Administration, lists Amnesty International, OutRight International, the International Lesbian and Gay Association – Europe (ILGA-EUROPE), among other groups, as resources on the topic of “Acts of violence, criminalization, and other abuses based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics.” The Biden report maintained a special section for human rights violations based on one’s gender identity and criticized several countries for not allowing homosexual/trans couples to adopt children.

Narrowing the scope of the report and deleting controversial references to rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity is consistent with Trump’s foreign policy, which is opposed to gender ideology and states that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.”

In a statement delivered at an event co-hosted by C-Fam (publisher of Friday Fax) earlier this year, the U.S. representative said that the U.S. mission has engaged in “tough negotiations in a wide variety of U.N. resolutions, fighting against gender ideology, and calling votes if necessary, to advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy.” Since Trump took office, the U.S. Mission to the U.N. has consistently rejected any references to gender ideology in U.N. documents and programs.

References to sexual orientation and gender identity remain highly controversial at the U.N. and are rejected by many UN Member States whose moral, cultural, and religious values stand in opposition to a progressive interpretation of human rights. These countries often adopt an originalist interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and criticize Western countries and some U.N. bodies for extending the UDHR beyond its scope.

According to the Washington Post, a senior State Department official said [this year’s] “Human Rights report focuses on core issues” and that “the Trump administration will bring a new focus to some issues, including freedom of expression.”

By Iulia-Elena Cazan

C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

EU turbocharges censorship of conservatives with AI regulation

Published on July 23, 2025July 24, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Under the latest AI regulation from the EU, tech companies will be forced to censor content from conservative outlets under the guise of stopping ‘hate-speech.’

The EU Commission General-Purpose AI Code of Practice requires AI developers and tech companies to ensure that general-purpose AI models are “safe,” including through censorship of content that is “hateful, radicalizing, or false.”

The new regulation has the potential to turbocharge censorship and social control on all major tech platforms. Along with the notorious EU Digital Services Act, the regulation is expected to lead to new self-imposed automated AI censorship tools across all major technology platforms.

A section of the newly published standards highlights “harmful manipulation” as a specific major risk and appears to define it by reference to populist political narratives against EU transgender policies and mass immigration programs.

“Harmful manipulation” is defined in the regulation as “the strategic distortion of human behavior or beliefs by targeting large populations or high-stakes decision-makers through persuasion, deception, or personalized targeting.” This, the regulation explains, “could undermine democratic processes and fundamental rights, including exploitation based on protected characteristics.” Protected characteristics in the EU context is understood widely to refer to issues such as migration status or sexual orientation and gender identity.

The regulation requires tech companies to first identify a broad set of potential “systemic risks” under the categories of public health, safety, public security, fundamental rights, and society as a whole. Other specific dangers identified in the regulation include “misalignment with human values (e.g. disregard for fundamental rights)” and “discriminatory bias.” Once such risks are identified, AI developers and tech companies must then analyze and mitigate any potential systemic risks by “monitoring and filtering the model’s inputs and/or outputs.”

The standards are a “voluntary tool” designed to show that tech companies comply with the EU’s legislation on artificial intelligence, known as the AI Act. Even though they are only voluntary, companies that adopt the standards will be deemed to comply with the AI Act. “This will reduce their administrative burden and give them more legal certainty than if they proved compliance through other methods,” The EU Commission says.

The standards are predominantly prospective. They are not so much geared toward addressing existing problems in AI models as much as ensuring that future models comply with the standards by design so that the output of AI models conforms to the standards.

The new regulation is in addition to already exhausting censorship measures tech companies are required to adopt under the EU Digital Services Act. The EU Commission already required large tech companies to censor through the Code of Conduct on Disinformation. When it as first adopted in 2018 it was only a voluntary regulation, but it is now binding under the 2025 EU Digital Services Act adopted earlier this year.

The EU Digital Services Act requires large online platforms to censor content in line with the priorities of the EU Commission. The disinformation regulation expressly requires tech companies to censor and promote official EU propaganda through content moderation, demonetization, fact-checking, and counter-information.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance criticized the censorship rules of the EU Digital Services Act at an AI Summit in Paris in February this year.

“We feel strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias,” he said, “and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.” He also warned against the EU AI Act and its possible effect on innovation.

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D

UN human rights official rejects gender ideology

Published on June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

A top UN human rights official is making waves and helping to protect women by rejecting gender ideology and defending biological sex.

A war of words has broken out at the UN as the top UN human rights official for women told governments to define gender based on biological sex. She also told governments to stop using gender-neutral language when referring to women. “You cannot protect what you cannot define,” said Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls.

“I never imagined the day would come where the mandate would deem it necessary to prepare a report affirming that the words ‘women’ and ‘girls’ refer to distinct biological and legal categories,” said Alsalem as she presented her explosive new report at the 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Alsalem said the topic of her report provoked “visceral reactions” and that powerful governments and UN agencies tried to discredit her.

The report on “sex-based” protections for women in international law is the biggest blow to gender ideology since the concept of “gender” was first added to UN policy. The report says gender ideology violates international law and harms women and girls. It also calls out governments for attempting to erase references to “mothers”, “women,” and “girls” in policies and programs.

Alsalem called on governments to preserve sex-based categories in language, policies, and data. She said a failure to do so has “devastating” consequences for women because it leads governments to overlook their unique vulnerabilities and exposes them to increased violence and discrimination.

“Erasing women and women-specific language and needs based on their sex is not only wrong. It is demeaning. It is regressive and constitutes one of the worst forms of violence against women and girls that they can experience,” Alsalem said. Gender-neutral terms promoted by Western governments and UN agencies in recent years include referring to mothers as “pregnant or birthing persons” and referring to women as “bleeders” and “persons who menstruate.”

Alsalem explained that international law protects women based on their biological sex, not their subjective self-identification and that “gender identity” is not a protected legal category. She said that women are entitled to specific protections from violence, including women-only spaces, and that individuals who subjectively self-identify as transgender do not have a right to these same protections based on their subjective self-identification.

The largest area of UN policy and programming where gender ideology has made an impact is “violence against women and girls”. Discarding decades of sex-based laws and policies to protect women, over the last two decades Western governments have promoted the new category of “gender-based violence,” which is not contained in any UN treaty. These policies conflate gender with LGBT issues, thus diluting the focus on women.

The European Union told Alsalem that the gender approach was required under international law. Switzerland and the Netherlands called Alsalem’s approach regressive. Colombia, speaking on behalf of 37 countries, mostly from Europe and Latin America, told Alsalem that her approach was a “step back” for human rights.

Canada said that “gender is a social construct, not confined to anatomy, and vital for understanding how discrimination and violence operate in diverse contexts.” Germany said that “binary classifications and exclusionary terminology can marginalize groups such as LGBTQI+ persons, sex workers, people with disabilities, and those experiencing homelessness.”

Leading UN agencies, including UN Women, UNFPA, WHO, and UNICEF, also rejected Alsalem’s recommendations. They claimed that polices and gender-neutral “gender-based violence” programs are required by international law.

Alsalem pushed back against her critics. She said that biological sex was not “taboo or an outdated concept, but an “innate, immutable, and fundamental aspect of human existence for women and for men alike.”

The Holy See, Kuwait, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Sudan expressed support for Alsalem.

Alsalem has also received pushback at the UN and beyond for her stance against prostitution, and conversion therapies, and for defending women-only sports.

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D and Iulia-Elena Cazan

C-Fam is documenting abortion pressure from UN

Published on June 13, 2025June 13, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

C-Fam has created a database which tracks the pressure from the United Nations directed at countries on abortion as well as sexual identity and gender identity.

Countries around the world are under pressure to liberalise their abortion laws and enshrine special protections and recognition on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in their laws and policies, all in the name of human rights.

None of the nine core UN human rights treaties mentions SOGI, nor establishes a right to abortion. These topics remain highly controversial in General Assembly and other negotiations, and would not have been agreed to by the diplomats who negotiated the treaty texts. However, beginning in the 1990s, the expert committees that monitor compliance with the treaties by the states that ratified them began to exceed their mandates. They started including pressure on abortion and SOGI in their communications with member states. While these communications are not legally binding, unlike the actual texts of the treaties, they can still be influential, particularly when they are citied by activist courts within countries looking to change their laws.

More recently, a new mechanism was established by the Human Rights Council, called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Unlike the treaty bodies and other special procedures associated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the UPR, countries are reviewed on their human rights records, not by independent experts, but by their fellow nations. Countries being reviewed receive brief recommendations from other UN member states, and mark them as either “supported” or “noted.”

Up to now, there has been a dearth of information about this kind of pressure. Two years ago, C-Fam created a database that tracks all of this pressure. This online database tracks the pressure directed at countries on abortion and SOGI in both the UPR and the observations of the treaty bodies. Using this tool, anyone can look up, for example, what the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is saying to El Salvador on the subject of abortion, with the relevant paragraphs excerpted from each sequential review the committee performed of the country. Links to the full reports are also included for reference.

In the UPR, every country is reviewed in a four-to-five-year cycle, and the process is currently in its fourth cycle since it began in 2008. Using the C-Fam database, visitors can look up what recommendations on SOGI and abortion were received by a country during its review, and see how it responded to each recommendation. Also included is a list of all the relevant recommendations that country made to other countries throughout the same UPR cycle. For example, one can see that in the third UPR cycle, New Zealand both issued and received recommendations on SOGI. New Zealand expressed support for ending discrimination on the basis of SOGI in a general way, but stopped short of supporting calls to formally enshrine SOGI explicitly in its nondiscrimination law.

The database is intended to be a tool for research and advocacy, enabling users to quickly access information that can be difficult to locate without knowledge of the UN’s human rights websites. It also provides a one-stop resource for people in any country to see how their government is responding to pressure within the UPR system and hold their elected officials to account. Similarly, it allows users to see firsthand the extent of treaty body overreach on issues that fall outside their mandates and do not enjoy consensus at any level within the UN system. Forthcoming articles will showcase some developing trends and observations drawn from this important data.

Using the new database, in the coming weeks, the Friday Fax will report on recent instances of pressure or lack thereof on and from governments.

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.