UNFPA Leads Efforts to Suppress “Anti-Rights” Social Conservatives

By | June 13, 2024

NEW YORK, June 14 (C-Fam) The UN population agency told governments it is committed to fight the “pushback” to the sexual rights agenda from “anti-rights” groups. Western governments pledged their support for the cause.

Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, told her executive board “There is resistance to sexual and reproductive health and rights, some of that orchestrated, some of it well funded, but also some of it due to our doubts about human sexuality.”

The labels “anti-rights” and “pushback” are often used to refer to pro-life and pro-traditional family groups at the UN and on the ground around the world.  The concepts were first developed at the UN in the context of opposing the pro-life policies of the Trump administration. ADF International, the Heritage Foundation, Family Watch International, and C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, are some of the organizations that have been called anti-rights in Western-funded initiatives.

Canada lamented the “increasing number of setbacks for sexual reproductive health and rights” and reassured UNFPA that it is “determined to provide support to combat and to reverse these rollbacks.” In 2022 alone, Canada contributed 72.8M to UNFPA. In its integrated budget for 2022-2025, UNFPA proposed a total contribution of $5,045.6 million for the agency.

The Permanent Representative of Belgium to the UN raised concerns about “anti-rights movements” and praised UNFPA for continuing its work to “empower millions of girls to make informed choices about their bodies” despite the pushback. Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. joined Belgium’s statement.

Kanem said that they are planning to “enhance UNFPA’s normative role at the country level to deliver the mandate” given the “pushback” they face in nearly every sphere of their work. Finland corroborated by saying “This is why UNFPA’s work is absolutely essential, to counter the pushback movement, clarifying the narrative is needed.”

In the context of sexual and reproductive rights, “clarifying the narrative” refers to UNFPA’s efforts to normalize a positive view toward abortion in communities where people oppose it on religious and moral grounds. “We welcome the strengthening of UNFPA’s normative role while using strong evidence both in policy and advocacy,” Finland commented. The UNFPA Director said, “The only way to overcome [the pushback] is to bring data and to shed light on the problem.”

At a recent Gender Equality Forum held in Paris, Geeta Rao Gupta, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, mentioned the “pushback” movement and the need to pay attention to the “very systematic, well-coordinated, well-funded attacks by state and non-state malignant actors.”

UNFPA is the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health. The agency claims to have a mandate to promote sexual and reproductive health globally. The 2024 UNFPA Report to the executive board shows that the concept of “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” includes not just family planning and maternal health, but also access to abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and LGBTQI+ rights.

This is highly controversial because the General Assembly has repeatedly said that the UN system cannot promote abortion as a method of family planning and countries must decide their abortion laws and policies about human sexuality without UN interference. These official restrictions date back to the Cairo Conference in 1994.