UN Agencies and Experts Ignore Decisions of the General Assembly
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30 (C-Fam) The UN women’s agency recently released a report denouncing legal restrictions on abortion as an obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This week, a group of UN human rights experts released a statement declaring “safe abortion” to be a right.
In both instances, UN bureaucrats and experts have ignored and even contradicted the agreed outcomes of negotiations between UN member countries, which have never agreed to a right to abortion.
The SDGs, the guiding document of the UN system, were the product of months of painstaking negotiations, including direct involvement by heads of state. In the final text, references to “sexual and reproductive health” and “reproductive rights” were accepted defined explicitly as not including a right to abortion. What’s more, laws regarding abortion were left to be determined at the national level.
One of the co-chairs of the working group overseeing the SDG negotiations was Csaba Kőrösi, a Hungarian diplomat who is currently serving as the president of the UN General Assembly. It is left to be seen whether he raises what is now a glaring contradiction between the statements of UN Women and the Member States of the United Nations.
The “reproductive health” language was among the last to be agreed during the final marathon session of negotiations, which extended through the night and into the afternoon of the next day.
Since 2019, UN Women has published a “gender snapshot” tracking progress on achieving SDG targets related to women and girls. The new publication refers to “striking shortfalls” in women’s access to sexual and reproductive health, including “legal restrictions, including the criminalization of abortion.”
Previous “gender snapshots” have focused on other aspects of health, including maternal mortality rates, the presence of skilled attendants during birth, and access to family planning, which are consistent with the agreed targets and official indicators of the SDGs. Abortion, and specifically its legal status, falls outside the scope of the SDGs, as negotiated by UN member states.
It also falls outside the mandate of UN human rights experts and committees, and the human rights treaties whose texts were also the result of lengthy and detailed negotiations by national governments. Nevertheless, a group of UN human rights mandate holders issued a statement this week commemorating World Contraception Day and International Safe Abortion Day, observed on the 26th and 28th of September, respectively.
The statement begins by referring to “setbacks to the right to sexual and reproductive health, including on the right to a safe abortion.” It also cites the World Health Organization in referring to deaths due to “unsafe” abortion as “caused by the failure to provide safe abortion.”
This assumption that abortion is inevitable and can only be “safe” or “unsafe” contradicts the agreement at ICPD, which affirms that women must be provided with alternatives to abortion.
The experts’ statement ventures further into issues that have repeatedly failed to be agreed by consensus by insisting that “sexual and reproductive health strategies” be tailored to the needs of “lesbian and bisexual women, trans men, and all gender diverse persons for whom they are relevant.”
It remains to be seen whether the General Assembly—and its president—will take action to clarify the state of international consensus on these controversial issues and attempt to create some accountability for experts and bureaucrats that exceed their mandates.
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