Opposition Growing to Woke Gender Policies at UN

By | November 25, 2022

NEW YORK, November 25 (C-Fam) Sixty-two countries revolted against the European Union, the Biden government, and other powerful Western countries on Wednesday in the UN General Assembly. The countries attempted to remove controversial language on abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism in a resolution on women and development. Their attempt failed but the vote showed there is no consensus at the United Nations on these issues.

Progressive Western powers and the woke UN bureaucracy want the world to think that these issues are settled and non-controversial at the international level. Increasingly, countries from Africa and elsewhere are showing they are not acceptable, as they did in the Second Committee of the General Assembly this week.

Traditional countries accused the West of caring more about controversial social issues instead of funding policies to help women escape poverty and hunger.

“We forgot the very millions of women not able today, November 24, to have a single meal for themselves, a single meal for their kids, a single glass of water for themselves, a single glass of water for their kid,” said a delegate from Cameroon tersely during the adoption of the resolution.

He said UN agencies routinely tell poor countries that Western governments have only made money available for “sexual rights and comprehensive sexuality education” and “women and girls in all their diversity.”

The delegate was visibly frustrated that negotiations on the resolution were too focused on controversial social issues.

Instead of debating “financing for building resilience, infrastructures, vocational schools, STEM, means for women economic empowerment” he said, “we spent more energy debating how many references to have on gender-based violence, comprehensive sexuality education, and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.” These are very controversial terms in UN negotiations that are not internationally agreed by all countries.

Cameroon was one of sixty-two traditional countries that voted against keeping “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination” in the resolution. The term of art for intersectional gender policies, commonly known as “woke”, is pushed by Western countries to add homosexual and transgender issues as cross-cutting concerns in all UN policies.

He accused Western countries of turning the UN into a divisive “elitist academia” and focusing on a Western “individualistic human right agenda” instead of universally agreed development priorities.

While traditional countries were ultimately unsuccessful in removing the controversial language, the strong show of support from one third of UN member states showed that opposition to intersectional gender policies has intensified at the United Nations. This, despite pressure from the Biden administration and the European Union.

Several delegates echoed Cameroon’s statement, including Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, speaking on behalf of Algeria, Ethopia, Malaysia, Iran, Niger, Sudan, Senegal, Syria, and others.

Opposition to gender ideology has been steadily growing at the United Nations as more countries become aware of the implications of adding language about “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination” in UN resolutions.

UN agencies implement the term as requiring the promotion of acceptance for homosexuality and transgender issues. For example, a checklist of the UN human rights office for the UN system’s work to protect minorities systematically adds LGBT concerns to UN programming under the heading “Multiple, Compounded and Intersecting Discrimination.” The agency for women, UN Women, also has an Intersectionality Resource Guide and Toolkit that promotes sexual orientation and gender identity under the same rubric.

Twenty-one countries objected to the term when it was first used in the annual resolution on women and development. Since then, it has been added in many UN resolutions about women’s issues over the objections of traditional countries. This year, for the first time traditional countries have proposed amendments to remove the term from resolutions in the third committee and the second committee of the General Assembly.

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