Tag: United Nations

women

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

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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.

pro-life speech

UN agencies call to censor pro-life speech

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Digital platforms should be held accountable for allowing misinformation on abortion. These agencies working in tandem say pro-life speech is tantamount to “misinformation” and should be stopped.

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. at C-Fam

The UN’s human reproduction program (HRP), housed in the World Health Organization (WHO), recently published the first of a series of papers examining the impact of abortion “misinformation” as it relates to human rights.  Their analysis requires their own idiosyncratic understanding of both misinformation and human rights.

For instance, they accept without caveat that abortion access is a right as part of “sexual and reproductive health and rights”, a term never defined or adopted in any international negotiated outcome.

The paper also cites independent experts and committees as sources of human rights standards. Such experts and committees offer recommendations and opinions on human rights treaties, though they have no authority to create new human rights apart from the plain language of the various human rights treaties.

At the same time, the article makes no mention of the consensus position of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) that the legal status of abortion is solely for individual governments to determine.

The authors define misinformation as “false, inaccurate, or misleading information shared without intent to deceive,” while disinformation is spread with knowledge and intent to deceive, and “a particularly harmful form of misinformation, with the potential to deliberately erode human rights protections and restrict access to evidence-based care.”

As an example, the authors cite an article claiming that “inaccurate beliefs about fetal pain were linked with antiabortion views, shaping attitudes toward access and policy.” However, the article they cite bases its view of when unborn children can first feel pain on a “current medical consensus” that simply does not exist, while labeling survey participants who support abortion restrictions based on fetal pain as “anti-choice,” a clearly partisan—and derogatory—label.

The article also expressly calls out the U.S.-based Project 2025 project for containing “strategies to embed misinformation into federal governance by altering agency mandates and rewording policies to stigmatize and delegitimize [sexual and reproductive health.]”  Here, the citation is to an article in the feminist and pro-abortion Ms. Magazine.

Another example of misinformation offered by the HRP article is the fact that a Canadian Catholic hospital blocked access to the websites of abortion clinics.  The article is broadly critical of traditional cultural and religious views; it expresses alarm that a “a rising anti-rights movement in Ethiopia, aligned with the US Christian Right, is working to dismantle the right to safe and legal abortion.”  It takes for granted that the nonbinding opinions of UN human rights experts take precedence over religious beliefs. “Human rights standards related to equality and nondiscrimination are routinely impacted” by misinformation, they write, “particularly when gender stereotypes, religious ideologies, or cultural beliefs are used to delegitimize SRHR.”  In other words, anything that casts abortion in a negative light is misinformation.

The article does offer some examples of what would commonly be understood as misinformation and disinformation, such as scammers purveying “miracle drugs” and clearly unqualified people offering spurious medical advice on TikTok.  However, the HRP authors’ credibility is undermined by their own ideological biases and overreliance on citing others who share them.  Ultimately, whatever policy and legal solutions they recommend will have the effect of stifling pro-life voices and censoring conservative viewpoints if they are implemented.

By Rebecca Oas. 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.

contraceptives

Lack of demand for contraceptives?

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A recent report from the Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for contraceptives admitted that most women don’t actually want them.

By Rebecca Oas.

A recent report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for “sexual and reproductive health,” including family planning, admitted that, in fact, the majority of so-called “need” for contraceptives is made up of women who have expressed no openness to using them or have rejected them explicitly.

The latest edition of Guttmacher’s Adding It Up continues to promote the concept of an “unmet need” for family planning, which is often misconstrued by family planning proponents like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as a lack of access.  In reality, as a 2016 report by Guttmacher reveals, only five percent of women described as having a “need” say the reason is lack of access.

The new report introduces the concept of “unmet demand,” described as the “narrowest” subset of “unmet need,” which is made up of women “who want to avoid pregnancy and say they are interested in or open to using contraception in the future.”  This category includes an estimated 78 million women—less than half of the total 214 million with “unmet need.”

The broader definition of “unmet need” includes women who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a family planning method, regardless of the reason.  This aligns with the metrics used in previous Adding It Up reports, as well as indicators in use at the United Nations for decades.  However, as Guttmacher admits, “it is not the most appropriate estimate of actual need for contraception.”

This is because, when asked, most women with a “need” cite concerns about health risks and side effects of contraceptive methods, personal or religious opposition, or infrequent sex as their reasons for non-use.  Based on the 2016 estimate that five percent of “unmet need” was due to lack of access, even most of the women in the narrower category of “unmet demand” are making a personal choice not to use contraceptives.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “[f]ocusing on this [narrower] group helps prioritize limited resources.” However, they insist that “broader investments will ultimately be needed to reach the many other women who also face barriers to contraceptive care.”  Based on Guttmacher’s own data, these “barriers” are likely to be women’s own priorities and decisions.

The Adding It Up report estimates that it would cost $104 billion a year to address the “unmet demand” for contraception, all maternal and newborn care, abortion services, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections for women in low and middle-income countries.

However, it emphasizes that “[e]very dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would save $2.48 in the cost of maternal, newborn and abortion care.”  While this may sound like a way to reduce abortion, there are two important problems.  First, it presumes that funding more contraceptives will result in increased use, despite the evidence coming from the same organization demonstrating that the market for family planning is approaching saturation.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Guttmacher Institute is calling for investment in “sexual and reproductive health” organizations that provide abortions and lobby for abortion in pro-life countries and are explicitly trying to siphon funding away from maternal and child health services in favor of contraception.  This does nothing to build the basic health infrastructure required by the women who will want to become mothers, and their children, in the poorest regions of the world.

By Rebecca Oas. 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.

nordic

Nordic governments most radical at UN

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When it comes to the sexual revolution, the Nordic governments continue to show they are among the most radical in the world. This was borne out again at the most recent session of the Universal Periodic Review, where governments review each other’s human rights records.

The Nordics continued to pressure other governments on abortion, gender ideology, and extreme sex-ed. In the most recent session of the UPR, where thirteen countries were reviewed, there were 35 instances where governments were pressured to liberalize their abortion laws.  Twelve of them came from Nordic governments, which include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—but predominantly Iceland. Iceland generates by far the most abortion pressure out of all 193 UN member states at the UPR—around 20 percent of the total in the last completed review cycle.

The Nordic countries called for abortion to be legalized, decriminalized, and made more accessible, including by limiting the right of conscientious objection by health care providers.

On the issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, the governments under review were pressured 160 times, 33 of which were from Iceland (close to 20 percent).  These recommendations included urging the Marshall Islands to legalize same-sex marriage and “introduce a transparent administrative self-identification process for legal gender recognition free from intrusive requirements.”  Iceland and Norway urged several countries to decriminalize same-sex sexual behavior and enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that included sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories.

Iceland also recommended that Liberia, Malawi, Mongolia, and Panama guarantee that comprehensive sexuality education be provided, both in and out of school settings.

Nordic countries are among the top funders of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, which in turn promote SRHR in developing countries where they work.  This is despite the fact that the UN General Assembly has never accepted the SRHR terminology—despite decades of repeated efforts by the Nordics and their allies.

Unlike the U.S., which is a bigger donor but undergoes significant shifts in its foreign policy depending on which party controls Congress and the White House, the Nordic countries have maintained consistent political and financial support for SRHR over time.  This has included Sweden’s launch of the first explicitly feminist foreign policy in 2014, a 2020 statement from Nordic prime ministers opposing any restrictions on abortion, and a 2024 joint statement from Nordic gender ministers in support of LGBTI rights.

In addition to their funding for UN agencies earmarked for promoting SRHR, Nordic countries also strategically fund activist groups within developing countries, particularly where social norms remain largely pro-life and pro-family.  In 2014, the Queen of Denmark announced a new funding  mechanism called Amplify Change, which supports “grassroots movements for SRHR.”  It has provided grants for groups promoting abortion, “sex work,” comprehensive sexuality education, and reducing stigma around LGBT issues.

Despite continued Nordic investment in international SRHR, Sweden decided in 2022 to abandon the explicitly “feminist” framing of its foreign policy after a right-wing bloc won in a general election.  This year, Norway’s left-wing government narrowly held on to power despite gains on the right.  However, while populist parties make gains in the Nordic region, often motivated by mass immigration, it remains to be seen whether this will translate into a rightward movement on social issues in their foreign policy.

By Rebecca Oas. 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.

pushing back

Pro-Life states pushing back at UN

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An increasing number of pro-life governments are pushing back against radical abortion and gender ideology at the UN General Assembly.

Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

More governments than ever voted for eliminating controversial language related to abortion and LGBT issues in the ongoing UN General Assembly.

In the Third Committee of the General Assembly, forty-eight governments voted in favour of removing “sexual and reproductive health” language from a resolution on children. Seventy governments voted to remove “sexual orientation and gender identity” from a resolution on persons with disabilities.

A close call

In both cases the amendments to remove the controversial terms failed, but the votes were closer than it was imagined possible. While seventy-four governments voted to retain the language on sexual orientation, they won by a mere four votes. Many of the governments that voted in favor of the homosexual and transgender agenda did so only because of pressure from the European Union. Over fifty states abstained or failed to cast a vote.

The close vote is a wakeup call for the European Union and progressive governments that promote abortion and gender ideology in UN policy. The vote demonstrated a realistic path to rollback abortion and gender ideology from UN policy altogether, something few thought possible during the first Trump administration.

Pushing back from Africa to Europe

Dozens of delegations made statements complaining of the attempt to corrupt children through explicit UN-style sex education and the promotion of abortion and contraception for children without parental consent.

Speaking on behalf of a group of African governments, Nigeria complained that proposals related to the importance of the family were not included in the final draft, despite being based on the obligations of all members states under binding international treaties.

A delegate from Burkina Faso —speaking for Burundi, Cameroon, and Mali — said the use of the term sexual and reproductive health “cannot be interpreted as giving children access to drugs and medical treatment without parental consent.” She said the term must only refer to health services that are “legal and approved by competent authorities” in each nation. She emphasized the “inalienable and central role” of parents in the education of children.

Argentina’s delegate said parents had the “primary responsibility” to protect children and that the State could “support, but never replace” the family. He emphasized that protecting the family is a “structural principle of human rights law, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and that it is part of respect for the principle of subsidiarity.

The delegate of Denmark speaking on behalf of all the nations that are part of the European Union attacked the amendment to protect children from sexualization as “harmful to the substance of the resolution” and urged nations to keep “sexual orientation and gender identity” in the resolution on persons with disabilities. Earlier in the day, he had also attacked developing nations in Africa and Asia for refusing to recognize homosexual unions as families in a resolution about the family. “Families are living dynamic entities” and “various forms of the family exist” he said.

The amendments that led to the debate were proposed by Burundi and Egypt, respectively. The Egyptian amendment to delete the homosexual and gender identity language was on behalf of the 54 member states of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.

The sexual left among UN member states and UN bureaucrats are increasingly furious about traditional governments pushing back on abortion and LGBT issues. They have invented a new term — anti-rights — for those governments and NGOs that oppose their agenda.

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.

Abortion UN security council

Euros bring abortion to Security Council

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By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

Left-wing Western governments pledged to make abortion and feminism a central component of global security policy at the UN Security Council on Monday.

A representative of the European Union said the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is “central” to the EU Gender Action Plan, which includes the promotion of “sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

Nordic Countries praised the UN system for promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights in humanitarian programming.

Denmark emphasized that sexual and reproductive health and rights were “non-negotiable.” Ireland called for transgender-specific programming in peace operations through “intersectional” approaches and recognition of women “in all their diversity.”

The U.S. delegation gave its support to the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in broad terms, without addressing its controversial aspects, despite parts of the Trump administration being known to oppose it.

Earlier this year, Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of War, pared down all U.S. Women, Peace and Security programming in the U.S. War Department to a minimum, calling it a “woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops.” When he announced the decision, he said it was a UN program “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops hate it.”

Hegseth’s concerns seem to be validated by how UN officials define the UN programs. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Sima Bahous, the head of UN Women, called for “gender parity” in all UN peace and security processes, including through “binding targets and quotas” and funding for feminist groups worldwide.

The Trump administration is expected to oppose this kind of UN programming backed by the Europeans and Nordics. This would be consistent with how the first Trump administration took a strong position against abortion in UN peace initiatives in 2019.

In Trump 1.0, U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft threatened to veto any Security Council resolution with language on “sexual and reproductive health.” She told the UN Security Council that “The U.N. should not put itself in a position of promoting or suggesting a right to abortion, whether it is humanitarian or development work.”

Susan Yoshihara, president of the American Council on Women Peace and Security (ACWPS), told the Friday Fax, “We can only hope that the second Trump administration will take a firm stand as it did in its first administration. We must not let the WPS agenda get hijacked by special interests.”

Yoshihara edited a recently published book on Women, Peace, and Security to outline how the U.S. should uphold a positive vision for women in security policy while opposing ideological capture by feminists.

Yoshihara said, “The WPS agenda has always been a tug of war between contending worldviews. One is the national security approach wanting to bring peace and stability to their countries by including everyone, including women and girls. The other is informed by an ideology of sweeping gender equality broadly defined. Only if we return to a laser focus on peace and security will WPS succeed and be a uniting force, and not a divisive one.”

This tug of war is expected to continue in the coming months and years as opposition to gender ideology grows within the UN. During the debate this week, the Russian Ambassador to the UN complained of the direction Western countries were giving the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. He said it had become a political vehicle for the “imposition of neo-liberal notions” and that it was “no longer about sex but gender.”

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.

abortion lobby strategy

UN’s abortion strategy is to radicalise pro-life countries

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Through the UN, the abortion lobby enacts a strategy of maintaining pressure on pro-life countries to become increasingly anti-life and eventually radical advocates for abortion.

C-Fam’s new human rights database shows how pressure on pro-life countries does not diminish once they allow abortion. It increases until they allow abortion on demand and become radicalized abortion advocates themselves.

This week, the committee monitoring the UN treaty on discrimination against women published its reports on ten countries that had ratified it.  Among them were two countries that used to have strong pro-life laws but have repealed them in recent years: Ireland and Mexico.

The CEDAW Committee has a long history of pressuring both countries to liberalize their abortion laws. In 1999 and 2005, it called on Ireland to facilitate a national dialogue about changing their restrictions, and in 2017, it demanded that the Eighth Amendment to Ireland’s constitution be amended to allow abortion, as well as legalizing abortion on broad grounds and decriminalizing it in all cases.

Ireland did repeal its constitutional protections for the unborn in 2018.  However, the CEDAW Committee continues to push Ireland to go further.  It welcomes the passage of Ireland’s law legalizing abortion, but expresses concern about the lack of available abortion services, the practice of conscientious objection to abortion by health care workers, and the stigma that still remains toward abortion.  It asks Ireland to “consider the possibility of fully decriminalizing abortion and abolishing the mandatory three-day waiting period.”

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion at the federal level in 2021.  The CEDAW Committee had been calling for this since 1998. Now it is telling Mexico to harmonize abortion laws across the different Mexican states in order to ensure access to legal abortion.

In its recent review, the committee expressed satisfaction about the Supreme Court ruling, but noted that nine states still criminalize abortion.  They reiterated their call to “harmonize criminal law provisions with legislative advances on abortion access,” to dismiss cases brought against women accused of having illegal abortions, and to “address stigma and resistance by healthcare providers through mandatory training.”

Before changing their laws, both Ireland and Mexico had withstood pressure from UN human rights experts, citing their national sovereignty and pointing to the agreement from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development that held that the abortion was not an international human right, but something for national governments to address.

Once the laws of Mexico and Ireland allowed abortion their governments began to promote abortion as a human rights issue internationally. Both countries abandoned not only their legal protections for the unborn, but also their position that abortion was a matter of national sovereignty.  They lost no time before starting to apply pressure to their fellow nations, just as they themselves had been pressured.

C-Fam’s human rights database also shows how in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), where countries evaluate each other’s human right records, Ireland called on Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic to decriminalize abortion, and also pressured El Salvador and Malta.

Mexico has similarly used the UPR to promote abortion as a right, pressuring seventeen countries so far in the ongoing fourth UPR cycle, including the Bahamas, Ecuador, El Salvador,, Nigeria, and Tuvalu.  Mexico urged Romania to ensure access to “safe” abortion and comprehensive sexuality education.  It told Japan to remove the requirement for spousal consent and to ensure that women are able to access abortion regardless of their migration status in Uruguay.

The new reports from the CEDAW Committee will be added to C-Fam’s database when the final versions are published; they are currently available in draft form.

By 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.

UN human rights official

UN human rights official rejects gender ideology

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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: 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.

Injectable contraception

WHO is pushing injectable contraception for adolescents

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The World Health Organisation wants to increase access to contraception and sex education among adolescents, and frames religious opposition to early sexual activity as ‘disinformation.’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a new guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies in low and middle-income countries. The proposed framework advances a vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for young people that promotes controversial ideas, and norm changes inconsistent with what governments have agreed to.

Revised for the first time in over a decade, the guideline focuses almost exclusively on preventing adolescent pregnancies through increased and prolonged contraception use, including “self-administered injectable contraception,” and access to sexuality education.

In its recommendations, the WHO frames adolescents’ choice to discontinue “contraceptive use due to side-effects, and due to changing life circumstances and reproductive intentions” in a negative light and as an obstacle to overcome.

The framework calls on mobilizing “[p]olitical, governmental, religious, traditional and other influential leaders” to “support the access to, uptake of, and continued use of contraceptives.”

The guideline also asks policymakers to ensure that laws on age and consent related to sexual activities are designed in such a way as to promote adolescents’ access to contraception. Such a move could mean lowering the age of legal consent or making regulations more flexible to enable young people’s access to contraception without stigma.

Critics note that an exclusive focus on mass contraceptive use among adolescents monopolizes the discourse on how to best prevent adolescent pregnancies and undermines efforts to tackle the problem holistically.

The 112-page guideline does not mention the merits of raising awareness about the negative consequences of nonmarital sexual behavior through programs centered around abstinence and delay of sexual debut.

Critics also disagree with the WHO framing adolescents’ opposition to contraceptives due to side effects or religious beliefs as based on myths and misinformation.

Beyond its recommendations on contraceptives, the guideline promotes adolescents’ access to sex education, saying that “[m]any adolescents are unaware…[on how] to have sex safely and pleasurably.”

The document references the latest UN inter-agency technical guidance on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), which has helped shape sexuality education curricula and materials in many countries around the world.

The technical guidance dedicates an entire section to the “Social Construction of Gender and Gender Norms,” teaching children aged 5-8 the difference between biological sex and gender and encouraging them to “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender.” The same section says children aged 9-12 should be able to “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” and “acknowledge that masturbation does not cause physical or emotional harm.”

Another goal laid out in the CSE guidance is that children aged 12- 15 are able to state that sexual “fantasies and desires are natural and not shameful and occur throughout life.”

The WHO guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies is prefaced with the notion that “the global community has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).”

UN member states have not affirmed such a commitment. SRHR is a controversial term at the UN and has never been agreed to by consensus. Its imprecise and controversial interpretation by the UN system does not enjoy support from socially conservative countries who routinely dissociate from any SRHR references.

By Iulia-Elena Cazan andRebecca 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.

C-Fam is documenting abortion pressure from UN

C-Fam is documenting abortion pressure from UN

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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.

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.