The “anti-rights” campaign at the UN Heats Up

By and Iulia-Elena Cazan | March 27, 2025

NEW YORK, March 28 (C-Fam) As the successes of conservative movements at the UN have become impossible for progressives to ignore, gatekeepers throughout the UN system have increasingly closed ranks against what they derisively refer to as the “backlash” and “pushback” from so-called “anti-rights” groups.

For two years, conservative groups have been rejected by feminist UN bureaucrats to hold official events alongside the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). They have started hosting their own parallel conference across the street from UN headquarters.

Pro-life groups have also been rejected for giving interventions during plenary sessions of the CSW. Speaking slots instead went to pro-abortion groups like Catholics for Choice and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

The “anti-rights” label has been used to describe those who argue that abortion is not a human right, and has never been accepted as a right by the General Assembly or any other organ of the UN that actually negotiates documents.  In practice, the “anti-rights” label has become a way for high-ranking UN officials to censor mainstream conservative positions.   The label is now routinely used by pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ+ groups interchangeably with “fascist” to justify the exclusion of their opponents in the debate.

An Austrian parliamentarian actually likened the “pushback” to male supremacy and slavery, declaring that “anybody who’d try to push back, that is my personal enemy.”

At an event on “addressing backlash,” one speaker said that “sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) faces fierce resistance by the so-called anti-gender movement,” and connected the “backlash” to conservatism more broadly.

Another panelist said that there is no point in engaging with “extremists.” When a C-Fam volunteer asked how productive it has been so far to label pro-life voices as “anti-rights” or “fascists” simply for sharing a different view that seeks to protect human life from conception, the panelists replied by stating that they cannot compromise on “human rights.”

Another C-Fam volunteer was kicked out of an event sponsored by Sweden titled “Religion, Rights and Resistance: How to Reclaim Gender Equality in Times of Backlash.”

Meanwhile, the issues of family and religion have emerged as themes in events sponsored by progressive countries and organizations, if only to subvert them.  One event proposed to redefine “families” to encompass any sort of household or relationship configuration.  When an attendee pointed out that social science shows that children fare best when raised by their own parents, a panelist responded by saying that what children need is not a mother and a father but “two types of energy” — masculine and feminine — but “it doesn’t matter from where that energy comes….maybe they can get lucky, they can get three parents or four parents.”  Another attendee later denounced that question as “racist.”

Sweden emerged as a proponent of faith-based events, including events sponsored with the Church of Sweden.  Sweden is a notably secular country, where belief in God is among the lowest in Europe and where only 5 percent of members of the Church of Sweden attend church services.  At the CSW, Swedish events pointed to faith-based organizations as important entry points for abortion, and changing social norms.

Meanwhile, the groups that have historically championed the family and faith in UN settings are targeted for exclusion about having their funding sources cut off.  At one parallel event, a panelist discussed “anti-rights research” into groups that are “hubs for anti-gender anti-abortion rhetoric.”  She called on her allies to “get these groups to be finally defunded let’s see what happens.”

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