Where Do UN Delegations Really Stand on Life and Family?

By | April 1, 2021

NEW YORK, April 2 (C-Fam) It isn’t always easy to tell where countries stand on hot button issues like abortion and homosexual marriage at the United Nations. Here is what transpired at the just concluded Commission on the Status of Women, the main actors, and their positions.

The EU delegation focused most of its attention on undermining and weakening language on the family, promoting LGBTQI+ families, “safe abortion”, and eliminating references to sovereign prerogatives and national policy space.

The EU position was supported by the United Kingdom, the United States, the Mountains Group which includes Australia, Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland, and the Santiago Group, which speaks for most countries in Latin America.

The United States largely aligned with the European Union when any contentious social policy issue came up in negotiations in recent weeks.

In recent weeks, the Mountains Group tried to get more references to “sexual and reproductive health”, “comprehensive sexuality education”, and the notion of “women in all their diversity” into the agreement of the commission. The phrase “women in all their diversity” is defined by the World Health Organizations as including “transgender women.” They failed in all respects and complained accordingly during the final meeting of the commission.

Against these powerful countries, that jointly fund close to 70% of the UN budget, there stood a group of smaller and less powerful countries that blocked the most extreme elements of EU social policy. While they could not block the entire EU agenda, because of the obvious power imbalance, they spoke up in negotiations when it mattered most.

“Everyone has the right to life,” said a Nicaraguan delegate. The right to life, she added is “fundamental, inalienable, and begins from the moment of conception.” No country has been more consistently pro-life when it matters most than Nicaragua.

Brazil blocked any new references to “sexual and reproductive health” in the agreement of the commission. But Brazil’s positions on LGBT issues in UN negotiations, including on the family, don’t reflect the strong rhetoric of Brazil’s president Jair Bolsnaro.

Reliable voices for life and family within the African Group included Egypt and Nigeria. From the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Iran were vocal. Many of these countries can agree on very little else and several made statements at the Commission on the Status of Women last week.

A delegate from Saudi Arabia did not mince words in their disappointment with the final agreement of the commission. “We are upset because many terms and references were kept even though from the beginning of the negotiations we were against them,” she said.

“We reaffirm that gender within the text means women and men and that the family only refers to marriage between women and men,” she added, insisting on Saudi Arabia’s “full sovereign right” to disregard any part of the agreements “against our sharia.”

In recent weeks, these socially conservative governments blocked new elements of the LGBT agenda from entering UN policy. Several made declaratory statements opposing “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and saying that the term “gender” only refers to biological men and women and insisted on respect for their sovereignty and national laws.

The Russian Federation has also been a formidable and outspoke opponent to gender ideology and the LGBT agenda. Last week they lamented the absence of language on “enabling environment for mothers” as well as “support for the family” in the agreements adopted by the commission.

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