Kathryn Balmforth, J.D.

The important Wirthlin Worldwide survey commissioned for this Congress simply confirms what all of us here already knew:  The overwhelming majority of the world’s people view the family as paramount.  Their children are more important to them than anything material.  The majority in all parts of the world clearly understand that stable marriages are essential to healthy family life, and that those marriages occur between man and woman, and no other combination. 

Though the Wirthlin survey did not include questions on abortion, other recent surveys have shown that -- in America, at least -- a large majority does not support the current regime of abortion for reasons of convenience.  In many other parts of the world, the pro-life sentiment is even stronger.

The Wirthlin survey further confirms that the anti-family movement, which has so much momentum in some parts of the United Nations system, represents the view of only a small minority of people, and is favored only by a minority of governments.  Of this minority of governments – and I am including my own government in this group – most do not reflect the views of the majority of their own people, but of certain elites who have maneuvered themselves into positions of power.

The radical feminists, population control ideologues, and homosexual rights activists who make up the anti-family movement know as well as we do that they speak for only a small minority of the world’s people.  And they know that, because they are a small minority, they cannot prevail -- either domestically or internationally -- when the process is fair, open, honest and democratic. 

The anti-family faction cannot prevail at the United Nations when the founding principles of the United Nations are observed.  Those founding principles include respect for  “the sovereign equality of all . . . Members,”^[1] and “respect for . . . equal rights and self determination of peoples.”^[2]

Because these anti-family groups know they cannot win by democratic means, they seek for ways to exploit and manipulate the system, and for ways to impose their will on the majority of nations who support the natural family.  They use various undemocratic tactics, any one of which could be the topic of a lengthy address. 

The list includes unfair negotiating procedures, deliberately designed to place the more socially conservative countries at a disadvantage.  Long documents are negotiated under severe time pressure.  Contentious issues are allowed to accumulate at the end of a session, when they are negotiated in non-stop meetings.  Often, there are several controversial items being negotiated simultaneously in separate groups, usually without translation.  Smaller delegations simply don’t have the manpower to be everywhere at once, and damaging language is sneaked into documents before all delegations have time to review it, digest it and react. 

The list of manipulative practices includes the “stacking of the deck” which occurs when  the Secretariat – which is supposed to be neutral – presents documents for negotiation which are heavily skewed toward the anti-family ideology. 

It also includes the routine use of deception.  Ideologically driven delegations place vague and obscure language into documents and lie about its meaning and their intentions. 

The list includes economic and other pressure on developing countries, forcing them to drop opposition to the anti-family agenda. 

The list should also include the lack of rules governing conflict of interest.  Because there are no rules against it, special interest groups can claim seats on national delegations, from which they negotiate documents calling for more money and power to be given to themselves.  For example, at the recently completed Cairo +5 meetings, over 40 seats on national delegations were occupied by so-called “family planning” groups, who have a vested interest – sometimes a monetary interest – in promoting abortion and radical concepts of “reproductive rights” for children.  These special interest groups do not speak with the voice of the people of the countries they purport to represent.

The list also includes the sponsoring, by the United Nations system, of so-called “civil society” events.  These events are funded with public money, but the participants are hand-selected and the outcomes pre-determined.  The outcomes of these events are then presented to UN delegates as the view of all of “civil society,” in an attempt to make them feel isolated and to pressure them into submission. 

All of these tactics should be addressed and curtailed. 

However, the topic on which I would like to focus today is the ongoing takeover of some of the human rights mechanisms of the United Nations.  This is a potential threat to the rights of people everywhere to enjoy their own cultures and religions and to determine their own political futures.  It is also a threat to longstanding, universally recognized human rights to freedom of religion and conscience, and to guide the upbringing of our children, particularly in the areas of morality, and religion.  If we do not retain the liberty to pass our time-tested values on to our children -- to give them the same chance at a principled, productive life that we have enjoyed, thanks to our own parents -- then we are no longer free people.

The anti-family faction has targeted the human rights system because it is a direct path to power.  The power they seek is the power to curtail the freedom of most of humanity and to do it, ironically, in the name of “human rights.” 

In seeking to co-opt the international human rights system, the anti-family groups are following a strategy developed in the West.  In the United States, for example, when pressure groups have goals contrary to the will of the American people, they seek out judges willing invent new “rights” and impose them on the majority.  That is how the United States became subject to its current regime of abortion “rights,” where between 1 and 1.5 million unborn children are aborted annually, and where 97 percent of those abortions are done solely for convenience.

This same strategy is currently being employed by United States homosexual rights activists.  In two recent elections in the states of Hawaii and Alaska, the notion of so-called “gay marriage” was overwhelmingly rejected by a margin of 3 to 1.  The notion of “gay marriage” is overwhelmingly unpopular in the United States.  Therefore, homosexual rights activists are again bypassing the democratic process and going from court to court, hoping to find a judge who will take it upon himself to create a “right” to “gay marriage,” which can then be forced on the citizens of the United States.  

These activists have brought their strategy to the United Nations.  At the United Nations,  instead of using courts and judges to create new “rights,” activists are appealing – successfully – to human rights committees composed of people loosely designated as “experts.”  Some of these “experts” are redefining and reinterpreting human rights treaties to advance the anti–family agenda.  

As a general rule, the international community must respect the sovereignty of member states –  meaning the right of nations to govern their own domestic affairs without international interference.  This is a founding principle of the United Nations.

However, under international legal theory, “human rights” supersede national sovereignty.  Thus, if a national law or action infringes upon “human rights,” the international community, theoretically, has the right to intervene in domestic affairs, to force compliance with human rights norms. 

Of course, the scope of “human rights,” as set out in various international treaties, is so vast that this “exception” to national sovereignty has the potential to completely swallow the rule.  There are human rights set forth in various treaties which are varied and broad enough that they have the potential to preempt virtually every aspect of domestic government. 

It has been the mission of the anti-family movement to broaden the meaning of international “human rights” even further, into private areas traditionally reserved first to families and religious institutions, who influence lawmaking from the bottom up.  This invention of new “rights” which intrude upon family and religion is taking place without any international consensus.  Treaty bodies are simply declaring that such rights exist.

Not surprisingly, the most radical activity is taking place in the committee which administers the Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, know by its acronym, “CEDAW.”  While many assume that “human rights” are meant to protect us from oppressive, intrusive government, CEDAW does the opposite.  It contains language calling for the most intrusive government imaginable – government which intrudes into the most private and sacred areas.  It contains sweeping language requiring governments to “take all appropriate measures . . . [t]o modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on . . . stereotyped roles for men and women.”^[3]

The “stereotype” most often targeted for elimination by the CEDAW Committee is “motherhood.”  On this, the CEDAW Committee is in direct conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that “motherhood . . . [is] entitled to special care and assistance.”^[4]  When national governments pass laws protecting motherhood, they are whipsawed by the CEDAW Committee, which accuses them of paternalism, or of perpetuating damaging stereotypes.   The CEDAW Committee has ridiculed governments for portraying motherhood as a “noble” calling.  The CEDAW Commmittee criticized one government because only 30 percent of its tiniest children – those under three years of age – were in daycare, while the rest were being cared for by their families.  The only document I have seen in which the CEDAW Committee gave unqualified encouragement to motherhood is one in which a European government was admonished to make certain that lesbians were not denied access to artificial insemination.

Both the CEDAW Committee and the Committee on Human Rights, which administers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, have seized upon the concepts of “reproductive rights” and “reproductive health” – two vague and ambiguously defined terms which appeared in the Cairo and Beijing conference documents.  These conference documents were supposed to be non-binding, but the terms “reproductive rights” and “reproductive health” have been imported into binding human rights treaties by these committees of “experts,” and distorted into meanings which were rejected at both Cairo and Beijing, and which would never achieve consensus.

For example, though abortion is not mentioned as a right in any consensus document, the CEDAW Committee and Human Rights Committee are now routinely instructing governments to review and liberalize their abortion laws.   Governments have been instructed by these committees to legalize lesbianism and homosexuality. 

Just this year, the CEDAW Committee, instructed a government to legalize prostitution.  The radical interpretation of “reproductive rights” includes the right to sell one’s body.  In fact, if you look carefully, you will seldom see prostitutes called by that name in United Nations documents.  They are now called “sex workers,” connoting that prostitution is just another job.

 Though the anti-family movement sometimes masks its agenda as a call for greater “tolerance,” it becomes ever more clear that the intent is to eliminate all opposition and force all countries and cultures to conform to their radical vision.  They are attempting to do so by, among other things, violating and diminishing the universally recognized human rights which stand in their way, rights to cultural self-determination, rights to religious practice and conscience, and rights of parents to guide the moral and religious upbringing of their children. 

These are rights upon which there has been universal agreement for 50 years, yet, in every relevant negotiating session which I have attended for the last two years, anti-family delegations have attempted to weaken these rights and subordinate them to their newly created “reproductive rights.”  In the Cairo +5 negotiations this year, feminist-dominated delegations called for increased access to abortion, to put pressure on more health care providers to do abortions.  At the same time, they refused even to mention or affirm the fundamental rights of conscience of health care providers.

The CEDAW Committee’s hostility to religion is open and explicit.  Religion and culture are routinely identified as the primary obstacles to women’s rights.  The CEDAW Committee is not just referring to extreme situations.  Rather, it has taken the position that “in all countries, [one of] the most significant factors inhibiting women’s ability to participate in public life have been the cultural framework of values and religious beliefs.”^[5]  The Committee has repeatedly expressed the view that when its view of women’s rights collides with religion and culture,  religion and culture must give way.  The Committee even explicitly instructed one Islamic country that it should reinterpret the Koran in ways that were considered “permissible” by the Committee.  According to the CEDAW Committee, “true gender equality [does] not allow for varying interpretations of obligations under international legal norms depending on internal religious rules, traditions and customs.”^[6]  In other words, every nation must conform to the CEDAW Committee’s view of women’s rights, regardless of the culture, religion, or rights to self-determination.

One of the most disturbing efforts is the effort to extend the new, autonomous “reproductive rights” to children as young as 10 years old, including rights to sexual behavior, rights to access to sexual materials, contraception and abortion.  In this year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the European Union went even further, proposing to teach small children – as young as possible, they said – about their “sexuality.”  In the same session, the European Union delegates openly jeered and  ridiculed the Holy See delegation for proposing to teach young people that abstinence outside marriage was one method of avoiding AIDS. 

In the Cairo +5 negotiations, I watched my own government lead the effort to remove every mention of the rights of parents from the document, at the same time it was attempting to strengthen the notion that sexuality is a “right” of adolescents.  The U.S. continued on this course until the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute obtained a letter signed by 35 congressmen stating the obvious truth – that the American people do not believe in, and would not support, what their government was doing.   This letter embarrassed the U.S. delegation into silence.

The U.S. also made repeated, surreptitious efforts to remove the words “responsible sexual behavior” from a list of topics adolescents should be taught.  They wanted to replace “responsible sexual behavior” with “sexuality.”  The term “sexuality,” as it is currently being used, includes the teaching of homosexuality and lesbianism as alternative, acceptable lifestyles.  The U.S. persisted in this effort until the delegation of the Holy See called attention to what the U.S. was doing, and asked, “What does the delegation of the United States have against responsible sexual behavior?”  What, indeed? 

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is another treaty which contains troublesome provisions.  The Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for additional autonomous rights for children.  According to the Convention, minor children have rights to privacy –  even against their parents – and autonomous rights to free expression and association, and to decide what they will read and learn.  The Committee on the Rights of the Child, which administers the Convention, recently found that Great Britain violated the Convention because Great Britain allowed parents to decide whether their adolescent children would be enrolled in controversial sex education courses. 

Over the years, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has become noticeably less respectful of the rights of parents.  It has begun calling for the creation of “ombudsmen,” so that children can turn in their parents when the children feel their rights have been violated.  The Committee has even called for national laws to make sure that parents pay adequate attention to the views of their children. 

The Convention on the Rights of the Child has the potential to completely undermine parents’ ability to raise their children responsibly.  Moreover, it has the potential – and this is why it appeals to some in the anti-family movement – to allow ideologues to insert themselves between parents and children, to indoctrinate the children in philosophies which the parents find abhorrent. 

Recent history provides a stark example of the potential effect of the Convention.  After the Columbine High School massacre, President Clinton and others made numerous statements calling for greater parental supervision of their teenage children.  There was widespread agreement, across the political spectrum, that parents should supervise what their children were reading and accessing on the internet and who they were associating with.  There was even talk of holding parents legally responsible for the violent acts of their children if parents failed to do these things.  Clinton is also urging the U.S. Congress to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Yet, under the Convention on the Rights of Children, the parental supervision Clinton was advocating would violate a teenage child’s rights, and parents could be prevented by government from imposing such restraints on their children.    

Some might say, “All of this is outrageous, but the human rights treaty bodies can’t enforce their opinions, so we don’t need to worry.”  That is technically true, for now.  There is no formal enforcement power given to the human rights treaty bodies.  Compliance with the treaty bodies is more or less at the discretion of the member states.

However, there are informal ways in which countries – particularly developing countries – are pressured to comply by, for example, tying economic assistance to compliance, or attempting to shame or embarrass countries into complying.

Moreover, there are constant and varied efforts to give more “teeth” to international human rights.  The effort at the International Criminal Court is particularly disturbing.  There is language in the statute establishing the Court which defines crimes of “persecution” and “enforced pregnancy” as “crimes against humanity.”  This language was created by anti-family groups.  It is broad and vague enough that, in the hands of radical prosecutors and judges, it could be used to imprison, for example, a priest who refused to perform a marriage ceremony for two men, or an imam who simply taught that abortion is wrong.

Speaking of radical prosecutors – the ICC statute allows the prosecutor’s office to be staffed by “volunteers.”  That means that the anti-family forces – with millions and millions of dollars from American foundations to hire lawyers – could control the prosecutor’s office.  This is similar to the practice of “gratis employees” in the Secretariat, which the G77 successfully opposed.  The G77 opposed the practice because it gave undue influence to the rich countries who can afford to “donate” these gratis employees.   The potential harm that could be inflicted by “gratis prosecutors” is immeasurably worse.

The hijacking of the human rights system by the anti-family movement must be rejected by nations and people who value their families and their sovereignty.  It is undemocratic when judges – who are part of a sovereign government with jurisdiction over its people – invent new rights and impose them on the majority.  However, it is far, far worse and, I believe, completely illegitimate when committees of “experts” – whatever that word means – invent new rights, and attempt to force them on sovereign nations who have not and would not consent to them.  When a sovereign government has ratified a treaty, understanding it according to its apparent meeting, it is wrong for treaty bodies to radically alter the meaning of the treaty and expect to bind the government to a meaning the government would never have ratified.

If members states are unable to restrain a human rights treaty bodies from inventing new rights, they may feel compelled to consider withdrawing from the relevant treaty to preserve their sovereignty, cultures, and religions.  

Further, as the fine, pro-family UN delegates who are here at this Congress can affirm, it is important to be vigilant about language even in non-binding conference and commission documents.  Vague, non-binding language like “reproductive rights” is now being used to justify the very things that were rejected when the term “reproductive rights” was negotiated.  Vague and ambiguous language may be a useful tool of diplomacy, because it allows parties with varying positions to sign onto the same document.  However, the ideologues are using this tool of accommodation as a tool of manipulation. 

Vague, “catchall” phrases are particularly dangerous.  For example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights forbids discrimination based on “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”^[7]  The Human Rights Committee has held that the term “other status” includes homosexuality. 

A “catchall” phrase is always used when the subject of female genital mutilation is addressed.  Nobody defends female genital mutilation, but the feminists don’t stop there.  They always insist on condemning “female genital mutilation and other harmful, traditional practices.”  This phrase has always seemed to me to be a potential source of mischief.  Sure enough.  I recently obtained a report of an NGO meeting held in Nigeria, but funded by an American foundation which routinely funds feminists.  The report lists “virginity” among the “other harmful, traditional practices.”

What can the rest of us do, who do not have a place on the floor of the United Nations?  First of all, we can look well to our own families.  There is no stronger argument for the pro-family point of view than the wonderful young people coming from strong families – young people not suffering from the pathologies which are spreading as a result of family breakdown.

Political involvement can take place on many levels.  You can affiliate with an NGO and help send people to work directly at the United Nations.  If there is no pro-family NGO in your area, you can start one, and become accredited.  In the NGO community, there is strength in numbers.  There are certain procedural privileges granted to large coalitions of NGOs.  But there is more than a procedural advantage.  At the recent Cairo +5 meetings, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute did a marvelous job of rallying pro-life, pro-family NGOs to the meetings.  When there was strong, visible support for the pro-life, pro-family position, it entirely changed the sense of the room.              

You can also be involved at the national level.  Understand the issues.  Put pressure on your own national delegation to reflect the pro-family views of the people of your country.  Because NGOs are allowed on national delegations, it may even be possible to secure a seat on a delegation, where you can participate in negotiations, or at least be a watchdog.  At Cairo +5, Rita Joseph earned a spot on the Australian delegation, and the difference in the behavior of that delegation was noticeable.  And the experience with the American delegation at Cairo +5 illustrates that when someone shines a light on their devious activities, they run for cover.

Closer to home, you can keep a close eye on what is being taught in the public schools.  You can review textbooks and keep your ears and eyes open for teachers who attempt to impose this agenda on the children.  I served two terms on a public school board in Arizona, and I know that it only takes a small handful of persistent, committed parents to make a school district respond, particularly when there is a possibility of controversy.

I believe that the pro-family movement has made, and will continue to make a difference at the United Nations.  We are presently outnumbered in the NGO community.  And we are certainly out funded.  But we – not the anti-family groups – speak for the vast majority of the world’s people.  

There are wonderful, pro-family people who are delegates to the UN.  They are working under tremendous pressure.  The more we, as NGOs, can demonstrate that they – not the anti-family West – speak for the majority of the world, the more power these delegates will have within the United Nations. 

And we must never forget the power of love.  Each of us is here in Geneva because we are so strongly motivated by love for our family and our faith.  I believe we can reach out in that spirit and do tremendous good.  We must certainly make the effort.  The price of failing to do so is far too high.           

Endnotes