General Assembly Adds Abortion Language to Resolutions on Clean Water and Rare Diseases

By | November 18, 2021

NEW YORK, November 19 (C-Fam) Delegates from Russia and Gulf nations complained about the addition of abortion-related terms in two General Assembly resolutions on rare diseases and access to clean water and sanitation.

The General Assembly added the abortion-related term “sexual and reproductive health” in resolutions where the terms had never appeared before. The controversial term is widely understood as a code word for policies to promote abortion and LGBT+ rights.

Rather than vote against the resolutions, delegations opposed to the new additions joined consensus but expressed their disagreement on the floor of the General Assembly meetings.

“Access to sexual and reproductive health services is something we believe should be left to national legislation and religious policy in our country,” said a delegate of Bahrain on behalf of the other Gulf countries of Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.

“This issue is not a priority in the field of children’s health and access to it should only be provided with the consent of parents and legal guardians,” the Russian delegate said in response to a paragraph on women and girls where the term was added in the resolution on rare diseases.

The addition of the controversial terms can divert critical political and financial resources away from neglected areas of international cooperation such as access to clean water and sanitation to already lavishly funded priorities of western donors like family planning, abortion, and LGBT+ policies.

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a critical need in the poorest countries and a leading cause of death. According to UNICEF, upwards of five-hundred thousand children die every year because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. The bi-annual resolution of the General Assembly on the right to water is one of few international policy spaces where countries commit to addressing this critical need.

Sexual and reproductive health policy is the most well-funded item on the global health agenda, with over $12 billion in aid annually. It is an issue addressed annually by the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. Access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and programming to help people living with rare diseases, on the other hand, are neglected and underfunded.

In debates over several other resolution on youth, women, and the family, delegates clashed along similar lines as in past years.

Delegates from the Russian Federation, Gulf countries, Egypt, as well as Libya and Malaysia objected to the inclusion of the ambiguous phrase “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination”—a phrase used by the UN system to promote LGBT+ policies that are not agreed upon by the General Assembly.

The European Union and U.S. delegations complained that UN resolutions did not go far enough in promoting abortion and LGBT+.

The resolution on rare diseases did “not capture full range of protections” for persons suffering from rare diseases according to a U.S. delegate because it omitted a second reference to sexual and reproductive health as well as a reference to “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.”

U.S. delegates and delegates from the European Union and Mexico also complained that the bi-annual resolution on the family sponsored by developing countries did not include “various forms of the family” a term they said includes LGBT+ families.

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