Conservative NGOs Warn US Congressional Staffers About Beijing+5

By Austin Ruse | 2000

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM)  At a US Congressional briefing in Washington DC last Wednesday, four conservative NGOs warned that the Beijing Platform for Action denigrates the role of mothers, attacks the family and promotes population control. The briefing was held to educate policy-makers and the press on issues related to the Platform, which was produced at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) and that will be undergoing a five-year review in the coming months.

     Congressman Christopher Smith, R-NJ, co-sponsored the event with the Independent Women's Forum, the World Family Policy Center, and C-Fam. Congressman Smith said that the Beijing Platform is "driven by a warped mindset that people are the problem – people are pollution." He called for supporters of the family to "go on the offensive" at Beijing+5, and proposed that the UN establish a "World Day for Unborn Children," as a worthy addition to the dozens of other "world days" recognized every year.

     Anita Blair, president of the Independent Women's Forum, said that while the Beijing Platform purports to give women equal opportunities, in the language of its drafters, "equal means proportional." She pointed out that while women in the United States earn 74 cents for every dollar men earn, this is almost entirely because of "rational choices by women." Blair pointed out that the Beijing Platform decries this discrepancy as discrimination because these rational decisions are almost always influenced by women's family responsibilities. Motherhood is therefore seen as an obstacle to equality because a mother's work cannot be measured in dollars. "But putting a price on what is priceless devalues it," she said.

     Kathryn Balmforth, director of the World Family Policy Center, said that the western world has used the Beijing Platform to promote a radical worldview. "It is a view which insists that all women need liberation from their families, and that all women should be fully employed outside the home, because the only things worth doing are those which can be qualified and measured in economic terms." Balmforth said that "while the Beijing Platform for Action contains much that is good in terms of aspirations for basic equality for the world's women, it is unfortunately being used as a potent tool" in radical social engineering.

     Cecilia Royals, president of the National Institute for Womanhood said the Beijing Platform's denigration of motherhood was meant to further the goals of population control. She said that at the Beijing conference, there was strong opposition to the inclusion of mothers as female role models in the media. According to Royals, a delegate from the European Union, declared that "the purpose of this document is to move beyond motherhood." Royals said this is a roundabout promotion of population control because "if population control is the goal, then motherhood is the enemy."

     This briefing is part of a international effort of conservative, pro-family NGOs to influence the Beijing+5 process which will write a new, and some fear, more radical document than the first.

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