Young Scholars Offer Fresh Perspectives on UN Issues

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | 2013

NEW YORK, December 20 (C-FAM) Men and women engaged in UN social policy often have less at stake than the youth who are the subject of those debates. C-FAM just launched their Young Scholar Series to give voice to budding experts on international social and legal policy.

“What sets these young people apart from the youth activist groups typically cited by UN officials promoting abortion is that they are each serious about research,” said Susan Yoshihara Ph.D., who is editor of the Young Scholars Series and director of the International Organizations Research Group, which launched the first three papers this week in New York.  

In “Sex-Selection in China and Its Demographic Causes,” Anne Morse, a recent graduate from the University of California Berkeley, explains the troubling demographic trends in China. Despite increases in access to education and jobs for women, falling fertility rates are exacerbating the deeply entrenched preference for sons. The gender equality policies – often touted at the UN – have not solved the problem of parents choosing to abort girls, resulting in an alarmingly skewed sex ratio within the Chinese population.

Some of the staunchest opponents at the UN of abortion as a human right are majority-Muslim countries so it’s not surprising their religious leaders have been targeted by pro-abortion organizations including UN agencies. Graduate student Nicholas Dunn writes about the effort to co-opt the teachings of Islam to make abortion seem acceptable. He discusses in “Abortion, Ijtihad, and the Rise of Progressive Islam” the Muslim concept of ijtihad, or “independent reasoning,” and explains how pro-abortion groups attempt to reinterpret it to justify abortion.

The third paper in the series, “The Problems with Linking Specific Foreign Policy to Abortion in Developing Countries,” comes from Lucia Muchova, who has engaged in research and development consultancy work in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Uganda, and currently does policy analysis and evaluation in the United Kingdom. She critiques a paper published by the World Health Organization claiming the United States policy of withholding funding for abortions overseas has had the perverse effect of increasing abortions in affected countries. She points out critical gaps in the data being analyzed and demonstrates the weaknesses of the authors’ method of classifying African countries in terms of their exposure to the US funding policy.

Morse, who now works for the Population Research Institute, encourages young people to study demography. “The pro-life movement has a plethora of well-educated lawyers, medical doctors, and philosophers,” she said. “We need more demographers.”

“I believe that public policy ought to be informed by good quality evidence,” said Muchova, who also interned at C-FAM two years ago. “C-FAM provides a voice to advocate for policies that enhance the common good by advocating the interests of the family as a foundation for a healthy society.”

The UN’s focus on youth often takes the form of expensive, tokenistic conferences producing empty declarations, noted Yoshihara. “There is an urgent need for new perspectives to inform sound policy.”

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