Rome Makes Urgent Call For Life and Family Voices at UN Conferences/The UN Prepares For “Beijing+5”

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) Repeated urgent calls have gone out from high levels in Rome for Catholic groups to register as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within the UN system. Recent UN conferences at Beijing, Cairo, Istanbul, Copenhagen and Rio all have set back the cause of life and family.  

     As preparation begins for a round of conference follow-ups, it is urgent that pro-life and pro-family groups get involved in the process as early as possible. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the UN's main deliberative bodies, has invited NGOs who were accredited to the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women to join in the deliberations this March for the Commission on the Status of Women in March 1998. Most of the key NGOs accredited at Beijing were anti-life and anti-family.  
           
     Another important meeting slated for January 19 is the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). And right now, UN agencies are sponsoring the 7th Regional Conference on Integration of Women in Social and Economic Development of Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. 
           
     To attend such meetings NGOs must obtain official status from the UN. Registering as an NGO with either Department of Public Information (DPI) status or with consultative status with ECOSOC will allow an interested group nearly complete access to UN meetings everywhere around the world. But it is not an easy or quick process. 
           
     To get either official status, DPI mandates that prospective NGOs must share the ideals of the UN Charter, operate solely on a non-profit basis, have a demonstrated interest in UN issues, and have a commitment to educating others about UN issues. The UN scope of issues is so broad that nearly any pro-life or pro-family group fits this description.      
           
     CFHRI has applications and brochures to help any interested group to register and enter into the international debate. 

The UN Prepares For "Beijing+5"

    (NEW YORK – C-FAM) On Monday, a draft resolution on "Implementation of the Outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women" (Beijing) was introduced at the General Assembly's Third Committee, which is responsible for social and humanitarian affairs. 
           
     The resolution outlines how UN agencies are "main-streaming the gender perspective" into all UN policies and programs. As defined by Beijing's Platform of Action, the UN's  "gender perspective" encompasses a variety of anti-life and anti-family components. 
           
     The resolution also proposes an NGO accreditation process similar to that which culminated in last June's "Rio+5" special session of the General Assembly, wherein the UN Commission for Sustainable Development restricted participation in the preparatory process to 500 handpicked NGOs drawn from nine "major groups" none of which represented life and family issues. 
          
     This current UN resolution proposes a similar process for the preparatory sessions leading to a review in the year 2000 of the implementation of Beijing's Platform of Action. This time, it is the UN Commission on the Status of Women that will review NGO participation and that could clamp down on pro-life and pro-family NGO accreditation. 
          
     Pro-life/pro-family activists stress the importance of early participation in the process in order to stop a similar freeze-out of pro-lifers at Beijing+5.

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