Definitions
The New UN Cybercrime Treaty Opens the Door to Child Pornography and Pedophilia
It has become common in recent years to use the term “child sexual exploitation/abuse material” to refer to child pornography, but the new term was never coextensive nor synonymous with the term “child pornography,” which has a long history and an established legal definition. The discrepancy between the two terms was brought to light in the negotiation of a new United Nations treaty against cyber-crime.
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Anti-Rights: The New Censorship Weapon of the Left
In recent years, the label “anti-rights” has been used by UN officials, progressive countries, and organizations to denigrate individuals and organizations who defend traditional social values, including the protection of life in the womb and the family. This Definitions examines how the term emerged, how progressive governments and their surrogates use it, and how it fits into a larger campaign to label social conservatives as a danger to a progressive concept of human rights and to silence them.
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Can Opposition to Homosexual/Transgender Issues and Abortion be Considered a Crime Against Humanity?
In this month’s Definitions, Stefano Gennarini, J.D. sounds the alarm about how, if this new definition is adopted, advocating for traditional morality, including the definition of marriage, could be construed as a form of “gender-based persecution” and a crime against humanity.
definitions
Why Abortion is Not the Solution to Maternal Mortality
This paper explores the ways in which the medical and scientific fields have been weaponized against unborn human life and how ideology masquerades as “facts” and “evidence” to promote this deadly agenda.
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The Family in International Law and Policy
Since the founding of the United Nations, international law and policy have recognized a preeminent place for marriage and the family as the “natural and fundamental unit of society.” This Definitions paper will evaluate the ongoing campaign by Western countries to redefine the family internationally and to make homosexual relations equivalent to marriage between a man and a woman. The paper will show how the definition of the family in international law is perfectly adequate and does not need modification.
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The Development Deep State: Sexual Progressivism in USAID
Since the Obama Administration began in 2008, the United States has witnessed a sharp increase in left-wing domestic and international social policy and strategy. In recent years, the U.S. government, aligned with United Nations agencies, has pressured developing and conservative nations to liberalize their abortion laws and adopt pro-LGBTQ policies and programming. However, a look at the history of U.S. foreign policy reveals that its promotion of these controversial agendas is not new.
definitions
Why International Institutions Should Reject “Reproductive Justice”
For over a quarter of a century, terms such as “reproductive rights” and “sexual and reproductive health” have appeared in dozens—perhaps hundreds—of UN resolutions, despite remaining controversial due to their inextricable linkage to the issue of abortion.
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The Global Social and Emotional Security State: The Transformation of Education to Embed Sexual Rights and a Progressive Universal Ethic
The politicization of education systems in the United States and abroad has become greatly pronounced in the past decade, with debate over controversial curricula including critical race theory, comprehensive sexuality education, and affirmation of gender ideologies.
definitions
Why Comprehensive Sexuality Education is Not the Answer
For over two decades, international agencies have promoted the concept of “comprehensive sexuality education” and have sought the normative support of United Nations intergovernmental bodies, but the notion has failed to gain support from UN member states as a whole because of the controversial explicit content of these programs, as well as their challenges to parental authority and traditional sexual norms. This Definitions will explain what comprehensive sexuality education is and why it is so controversial.
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Abortion and the Current Politics of Climate Change
This Definitions examines how the abortion issue relates to the current global political discussion around climate change. It examines how the lingering memory of the “population bomb” that proved to be a dud informs the current debate, the role of the UN in historically pivoting away from the “population control” narrative, and how the rising concern of a “climate crisis” risks reanimating these old and dangerous ideas.
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“Self-Care” that Harms and Kills: The WHO’s Push to “Demedicalize” Abortion
This Definitions examines how the rubric of “self-care” is being used to remove or bypass all safety and legal guardrails around abortion, how the COVID-19 pandemic has been utilized to accelerate this agenda, and how the groundwork has been carefully laid to ensure that access to abortion is ubiquitous regardless of the law—all with support from the UN’s global health agency.
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The Significance of the Geneva Consensus Declaration
This Definitions considers the importance of the Geneva Consensus Declaration in the context of the ongoing debates about social issues in the international context.
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Arguments from International Human Rights Law in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Abortion Case
This Definitions paper will evaluate the claims that abortion is an international human right asserted in the international law briefs submitted to the court.
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The Gates Foundation: No Controversy or No Complicity?
At the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made family planning one of its signature issues, using the slogan “No Controversy” to insist that contraception should not be politically divisive, and should be seen as separate from the highly controversial issue of abortion.
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The Importance of Consensus at the UN
Since the founding of the United Nations, member states have tried to adopt common policy positions on a wide range of issues by “consensus.” This is a standard term in parliamentary procedure common to legislative bodies and boardrooms. It means that that a decision or resolution is adopted without objection or the need for a vote because everyone agrees with the proposed text.
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Jamaica Under Pressure: A Caribbean nation faces mounting demands by international actors to change its abortion laws
For decades, countries with pro-life laws have faced increasing pressure to liberalize their laws, both by direct pressure by international expert bodies and other governments and through attempts—thus far unsuccessful—to establish an international human right to abortion. In recent months, Jamaica has become the target of a well-organized and well-funded campaign to remove legal protections from the unborn and ensure that abortion is not only broadly legal but also readily accessible.
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Biden’s First 100 Days: Positioning the U.S. to be the World’s Abortion Provider
This Definitions examines the actions taken by the Biden administration in its first hundred days as they pertain to the international abortion debate, and consider how they can help to predict what is yet to come in the remainder of his term.
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Why Not SRHR?
The phrase “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” or SRHR, is ubiquitous in the advocacy and programmatic work of UN agencies and the UN secretariat.
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Who Will Save Multilateralism from Itself? The United Nations at 75
From the moment Donald Trump was elected to the U.S. presidency four years ago, there has been a loud clamor that multilateralism is in crisis. His “America First” doctrine has been excoriated as an invitation to dismantle the UN system. This could not be further from the truth.
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Kenya in the Crosshairs: How the abortion lobby is pressuring an African country from within and without
Sub-Saharan Africa has become a key battleground for the abortion debate that continues within international institutions. Many countries in the region, with the notable exception of South Africa, have pro-life laws that prohibit or strongly restrict abortion, and the practice continues to be viewed negatively within the broader culture of many African countries, which celebrate large families.
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The Gender Agenda: How the LGBT Movement is Hijacking Women’s Rights
In the early 1990s, UN policy began to use the terms “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender balance,” “gender policies,” “gender-sensitive,” etc. to refer to the social, legal, and economic disparities between women and men and policies to address them. UN member states accepted the term “gender” with the understanding that it referred to the two biological sexes and the promotion of the equality of women and men, and nothing more. They thought that by using this term they were focusing on the advancement of women and girls.
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UN-safe Abortion: How the Abortion Industry has Used UN Agencies to Legitimize Abortion
The often-repeated adage that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” popularized by U.S. President Bill Clinton, generally captures how the term “safe abortion” was once understood. Abortion is not a good thing. It should be avoided as much as possible. Since the Clinton era, though, abortion advocates have distanced themselves from the phrase, arguing that the word “rare” imparts stigma. Instead, they have increasingly worked to frame abortion as a good thing, and used the word “safe” as part of the push to establish abortion as an international right.
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What is feminist foreign policy?
This issue of Definitions explores the way feminist foreign policy has been conducted thus far, examines how it has been framed by its creators and proponents, and considers the impact it has already had thus far.
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The UN Human Rights System’s Stillbirth Scandal
Every day around the world, 800 women and 7,000 children die in childbirth. This is tragic, and rightfully their deaths have garnered attention at the highest levels. Yet 7,100 more children are stillborn every day to devastated parents, but they have been erased from the international agenda. This brief paper examines one of the United Nations entities responsible.
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The Link between Gender-Based Violence Response and Abortion
Violence against women and girls, whether perpetrated in the home, the workplace, at school, in public spaces, or during times of war or crisis, leaves devastating effects on survivors and their families.
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