UN Expert Group Attacks Former President Trump’s Pro-Life Foreign Policy

By | June 17, 2021

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 18 (C-Fam) A working group of UN human rights experts called on member states to “actively push back on conservative religious and racialized political ideologies that undermine gender equality,” calling out U.S.-led efforts to promote life and the family in international fora.

The annual thematic report of the UN working group on ending discrimination against women directly pits the United Nations against “religious ideologies opposing the sexual and reproductive health rights of women and girls,” which it explicitly interprets as including the right to “safely terminate an unwanted pregnancy.” And it calls on governments to support efforts to “counter” these faith-based actors.

The topic of the report is “sexual and reproductive health rights” in crisis situations. It not only calls on countries to decriminalize abortion but to “regulate refusals of care based on conscience or religion,” which may be interpreted as an attack on conscience rights of health-care providers.

The report specifically denounced the “so-called ‘Geneva consensus declaration on promoting women’s health and strengthening the family’” as a conservative effort to “undermine the well-established and globally recognized human rights of women and girls.”  The declaration, signed by 34 countries in 2020, reiterates the fact that there is no international human right to abortion.  It also quotes the foundational UN document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

The working group’s report also criticized the Mexico City Policy, which it disparagingly refers to as the “global gag rule” and “a harmful policy instituted by a major donor country.”  This policy, reinstated and expanded by former U.S. president Donald Trump, blocked U.S. foreign health assistance funds from going to pro-abortion organizations based outside the U.S., before being rescinded by President Biden. Biden also dissociated the U.S. from the Geneva Consensus Declaration and has moved quickly to reverse Trump’s pro-life foreign policy efforts.

The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls is one of the special procedures operating under the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Its members work in an independent capacity.  Their reports are not legally binding, but are frequently cited by other entities within the UN system.

Much of the most extreme pro-abortion language emanating from the UN and its agencies originates with the independent experts and groups working under the OHCHR.  The independence of the experts makes them essentially unaccountable, and the agencies that quote their work in turn receive cover by simply citing the expert reports in footnotes.

For example, this new report draws heavily on the work of human rights treaty monitoring bodies, which for years have exceeded their mandates and departed from the text of their associated treaties by inferring a right to abortion.  It also cites the report published last year by the UN special rapporteur on the freedom of religion or belief, which elevated the nonbinding opinions of UN human rights experts above religious leaders with regard to gender issues, including homosexuality.

This new report of the working group on discrimination against women and girls is scheduled to be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 25, which will give member states an opportunity to respond to its contents.

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