Massive New Database Exposes Extent of Abortion/SOGI Pressure from UN Bodies

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WASHINGTON, DC, June 13 (C-Fam) Countries around the world are under pressure to liberalize 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.

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