UN Commission Fails Again over Abortion and Anti-Sovereignty Language; Kenya Splinters African Group

By Lisa Correnti | July 8, 2020

For the third time in four years under President Trump’s leadership the United States has blocked the UN Commission on Population and Development from agreement due to the inclusion of abortion promoting language and the failure to include sovereignty in a draft declaration.

The UN population commission tried twice to negotiate an agreement this year, once before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, and another time this month. In both cases the chair of the commission withdrew the draft agreements rather than accommodate U.S. pro-life concerns or add language safeguarding sovereign prerogatives over population policies requested by both the U.S. and African delegations.

The annual meeting of the UN Commission on Population and Development meets in April with a draft proposal submitted by the controversial UN Population Fund. This year due to the COVID-19 pandemic UN negotiations in New York were cancelled and negotiations began virtually in June.

Last week the Permanent Representative of Luxembourg, this year’s presiding chair, offered Member States a chair’s text when consensus could not be reached on a COVID-19 focused resolution on population, food security and nutrition. The U.S. delegation rejected language that would have weakened caveats against abortion rights in UN policy.

Likewise, a coalition of mostly African countries lead by Nigeria sent a letter to the chair expressing that due to the omission of a sovereignty paragraph the nine countries must reject the chair’s proposal.

The language requested by the African delegations affirmed “the sovereign right of each country to implement the recommendations of the Programme of Action or other proposals in the present resolution, consistent with national laws and development priorities, with full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of its people, and in conformity with universally recognized international human rights.”

An African delegate expressed frustration at the division within the African Group preventing a Group position from blocking the draft resolution over the omission of sovereignty language – an issue that has traditionally been supported by the Group. However, Kenya joined Tunisia and South Africa in breaking consensus.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has been diligently laboring to break the African Group position on sovereignty for several years alongside the UN agency for women’s issues. This year they were able to gain a significant defection in the Kenyan delegation, which is historically both pro-life and pro-sovereignty, and whose position carries significant weight in the 54-strong group of nations.

It is not clear if this new divisive approach in Kenyan diplomacy represents an institutional shift away from a pro-life and pro-sovereignty position.

Last November Kenya worked with UNFPA to co-host a conference in Nairobi to promote a humanitarian right to abortion and expand the definition of “sexual and reproductive health” to include LGBT issues. And at the 2019 Women’s conference in New York, a Kenyan diplomat controversially helped ram an agreement through the UN Commission on the Status of Women despite pro-life objections from several delegations.

During the Nairobi Summit, Kenyan parliamentarians blocked UN conference personnel access to the parliament due to the controversial issues being promoted at the conference and the prohibition of pro-life organizations and Kenyan parliamentarians to attend. Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta had to distance himself publicly from the conference because of the public uproar.

There appears to be a disconnect between the political reality in Kenya, where political leaders profess pro-life, pro-family, and pro-sovereignty positions, and what Kenyan diplomats do at UN headquarters.

Other African nations and developing countries from all regions find themselves in a similar predicament, as their countries’ political realities clash with the priorities of UN agencies and the wealthy governments who fund them.

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