Addressing the sexual and reproductive health of youth at the United Nations “just can’t wait”

At yesterday’s briefing for the Commission on Population and Development’s upcoming conference (CPD), the chair presented its proposed agenda and outlined the rules and procedures governing negotiations.

The theme of the conference this year is “Adolescents and Youth”, and given the UN bureaucracy’s fixation with sexual health and rights, the agenda included discussion about the sexual and reproductive health of youth.

The key note speaker that will address the issue is Shireen Jejeebhoy. Mrs. Jejeebhoy is a Senior associate and the Population Council. Her background is in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. The Population Council is an organization that was founded by J.D. Rockefeller for the purpose of advocating for population control. Lately it has begun to focus more on reproductive health and the promotion of abortion. [1]  Mrs. Jejeebhoy has also done her own research supporting the decriminalization of abortion internationally.[2]She has also written extensively on the sexual and reproductive health of minors.

UN officials and agencies often claim that they have no interest in promoting an international right to abortion, and often deny that “sexual and reproductive health” includes abortion. With only a small amount of research however, it is easy to expose where their ideological loyalties lie.

Perhaps asking Mrs. Jejeebhoy to speak has nothing to do with her background, but how many organizations invite their keynote speakers without a recommendation from someone familiar with their work? Highly unlikely.

In addition, this year’s session will have a record number of side events sponsored by NGOs and UN agencies addressing adolescents and youth. Last year, International Planned Parenthood Federation sponsored events during 4 out of the 5 days of the conference.

During the briefing, both the chairman and the representative from the UNFPA stated the youth of the world “just can’t wait” for the United Nations to address their concerns at the upcoming CPD. But one must wonder, are youth really all that concerned with access to abortion? Are they the ones obsessing over whether or not they will receive “adequate” sexual education? If the world’s youth are as preoccupied about condoms and birth control as the United Nations claims, I would like to hear it from them.

Tellingly, the agenda did not feature speeches by youth when it was first assembled. Only at the briefing was it emphasized that two different youth speakers would be addressing the conference, even though they were “still trying to identify them”. Shireen Jejeebhoy was asked to speak at the conference months ago.

So what does it really mean when UN bureaucrats claim that the “youth can’t wait”? It means that it’s UN officials that can’t wait to use the world’s youth to promote their own internal agenda. In the political science world we call it “instrumentalization”, or the practice of using a marginalized group like “women”, the “disabled”, or “youth” as mere instruments in a larger political game in which they aren’t even aware they are participants. Politics as usual.

For those interested in policy and following the Commission on Population and Development closely, this year the governing bureau has decided to impose an interesting set of rules and procedures to guide the compilation of the outcome document for the conference that allows for little transparency.

On the 28^th of March the zero draft will be presented to everyone for the first time, along with the decisions of the chair. The secretariat will distribute copies of the chairs draft at the meeting on the draft and it will then be sent to all missions immediately after or perhaps even before the meeting begins. The room where the meeting will be held is not large enough to fit all countries. The meeting and all informals up to CPD will be closed to the NGO community. There will also be an orientation on the organization of the negotiation process on the 28th.

There will be no formal negotiation of the text on the 28th, but written inputs will be accepted from the 28^th of March until the 14^th of April. Country inputs will not be shared and will be placed within the draft without open discussion. The first and only sessions scheduled to negotiate the draft will be on Thursday the 19^th of April and Friday the 20^th of April. This means that countries and all interested parties will have very limited exposure with the draft and very small amount of time to negotiate it as well. Given that all submissions will be given as written inputs before the draft is ever released it will be very difficult for countries and NGOs to respond or prepare to respond within the two days alloted for negotiations.

My personal worry is that this will give way to what is known as a “chairman’s text” being created and forced on countries by the secretariat as it was last year.

The UN is a huge political machine. My hope is that posts like this make it a little easier to understand.

View online at: https://c-fam.org/turtle_bay/addressing-the-sexual-and-reproductive-health-of-youth-at-the-united-nations-just-cant-wait/

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