Gwendolyn C. Landolt, J.D.

The UN was an inspired and glorious concept when it began in 1945. It was established as a forum for the nations of the world to meet in a spirit of dignity and goodwill, to discuss problems and reach consensus all the while, respecting the national sovereignty of member countries and their differing cultural and religious values.

Preservation of family was one of the major concerns of the UN in its early days. This was reflected in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now accepted world-wide as the international standard for human rights. This Declaration included an endorsement of the traditional family in Article 16, which provides as follows:

Article 16

1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which came into effect in 1976, provides as follows:

Article 17

1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home

Article 18

1. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when appilcable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.

Article 23

1. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.

3. No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

However, something terrible has happened to the UN in recent years. It has turned its back on its original principle of respecting the cultural and religious differences of each member state, many of which retain the original principle of according the traditional family a central role in their society. The UN has, instead, turned its guns on the family unit in order to break its strength and power - that of passing on cultural and religious values from generation to generation -values which the UN now deems subversive to its activist agenda, and, therefore dangerous for the future of the world.

This recent and hard-edged intolerance by the UN to traditional values is due to the alarm of the western nations and Japan regarding to the population growth of the developing world. The west regards this as a threat to its global domination. The west is also concerned that such population growth will precipitate both increased migration to the west and increased civil unrest, which could lead to a loss of access by the west to natural resources in the developing world.

Ironically, the United Nations population agency, the UN Population Fund (UNPF), admitted in its 1999 annual State of World Population report, that global population is on the decrease and is declining far more rapidly than expected. Interestingly, the significant drop in

At present, the implementation of this women's rights agenda in the developing world is being carried out by the UN by the following three strategies.

The World Bank as a Policy Tool

The World Bank is the largest single source of external funding for third world countries. Debt forgiveness, for development funds now provided by the Bank, are at a reduced interest rate if the borrowing countries agree to implement population control policies, disguised as women's empowerment policies.

In implementing these policies, the World Bank policy is influenced by powerful NGOs. In fact, the World Bank has established an NGO/Civil Society Secretariat and nearly half of all new projects approved by the bank in the past 5 years have included NGOs - who, of course, have a feminist, anti-family agenda.

As a result, in the past three decades, the World Bank's population control division, called the Health, Nutrition and Population Division, has become the fastest-growing area for bank lending, accounting for 20% of lending between 1996 and 1998, as compared with 3% a decade ago. Current estimates indicate that "reproductive health" (i.e., abortion, contraception and sterility) now constitute just under one third of the World Bank's population, health and nutrition lending. Over the past 3 decades, the World Bank has loaned over US$4 billion to support "reproductive health" alone, through 212 projects in over 80 countries.1

Significantly, the World Bank now also works in close cooperation with anti-family UN agencies, such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the UN's Human Rights Commission, located in Geneva. All of these agencies are now headed by dedicated, hard-line feminist activists who are enthusiastically implementing the feminist agenda.

The time is long overdue to examine the impact of these questionable World Bank loans. Unfortunately, the general assumption that World Bank loans are being used to feed starving children is not true. The loans go to governments, that is, rulers, whose policies are frequently responsible for the pitiable conditions of their people in the first place. These loans also frequently go towards fanciful show projects disconnected from the needs of the local people. They do not produce economic wealth and the poverty remains. Moreover, there is always the matter of corruption. Foreign funds, when converted into local currencies, translate into huge outlays for such things as liberal provisions for the construction of new buildings, and the purchase of equipment and travel. Considering the rampant corruption prevailing in most countries, much of the money goes into the pockets of administrators and bureaucrats. But the debt on the borrowing country remains.

According to an analysis of World Bank statistics of 37 countries having population of more than 5 million, it is alarming to learn that these countries that have borrowed heavily from the World Bank have lower rates of growth. In every developing region in the world, World Bank lending has, at best, had no impact, or, at worst, has been outright harmful. It is clear that something is wrong. If the World Bank was discontinued, this might be the best assistance it could lend to developing countries.

Feminist NGOs at Work

The second strategy devised by the UN to implement feminist policies is to allow the many feminist NGOs accredited to it, to serve as enthusiastic partners of the western government's anti-family policies. Western governments heavily subsidize these NGOs and give them easy access to the corridors of power within the UN. NGOs who refer to themselves as "civil society," are, in fact, representatives of no one but their own ideological supporters, and are not democratically elected. Such unelected, unaccountable NGOs have acquired enormous influence at the UN.

Not surprisingly, in view of their growing influence, NGOs have been participating at the UN in ever increasing numbers. NGOs were first used as a democratic varnish to dignify any group (even those consisting of 3 people meeting in a basement) at the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment held in Rio de Janeiro. Such phantom NGOs which supposedly represented "the public" at the Conference, are often actually members of their country's own delegation and are paid to attend this conference at either government or corporate expense. Grants to these NGOs were an inspired way to extend western government influence into the private domain, both domestically and abroad, without attracting attention. There were only 635 NGOs accredited to the UN in 1992. Today, there are approximately 1800 such organizations, of which only a small fraction hold a pro-life/pro-family perspective.

Reinterpretation of UN Treaties

The third and final strategy used at the UN to ensure an anti-family, pro-feminist agenda was to establish a procedure whereby UN conventions and treaties would be "re-interpreted" to fit the new agenda.

Many of the UN treaties were drafted in previous years and clearly did not include the desired feminist, anti-life/family provisions. It was determined, therefore, to do an end-run around these existing treaties by "re-interpreting" them to fit the new agenda.

Major human rights treaties have specific reporting obligations and require the periodic production of detailed reports concerning the methods by which ratifying countries have adhered to their provisions. Once these reports are produced, they are sent to international committees of 10 so-called "experts" set up under each of the treaties. The committees are selected by secret ballot from a list of nominees submitted by governments that have signed the treaty. When a committee considers the report of a state party, representatives of the Government are invited to appear, in order to present the report and to answer committee members' questions. Records of these meetings are made, and, together with the reports, they form the primary source of information about a nation's implementation of its obligations under the treaty.

Even though earlier UN treaties did not include provisions for abortion, contraception, sterilization, homosexual and adolescent rights, the Treaty Committees now "re-interpret" them so as to include such provisions.

Using the new treaty obligations, the Treaty Monitoring Committees are now releasing "criticisms" of government failures to implement this new agenda. Such committees contact each country's media and sympathetic NGOs in that country in order that the latter may lobby their governments to "correct" the problems identified by the Committee. Many of these NGOs, in fact, are funded by their own governments, who, by this process, are able to promote unpopular issues at home. These governments argue that they have "no choice" but to implement certain unpopular initiatives -such as anti-family no-spanking laws -because of their international obligations.

These strategies, intended to undermine traditional values, have already had serious ramifications for UN member states and will continue to do so unless we put a stop to them -and this is the question we must address: Where do we go from here?

Notwithstanding the UN's present anti-family, anti-life direction, we should bear in mind that the UN still serves a noble purpose in its famine and disaster relief, and health care and peace-keeping capacities. This essential work makes the world a better, safer place in which to live. Thus, rather than completely abandoning the UN, we should be attempting to restore it to its original purpose, which includes respecting the religion and cultures of each of its individual member states, most of which value and support the traditional family.

Our efforts should include the following:

• Governments should ignore the phony provisions that Treaty Monitoring Committees are now reading into UN Treaties. Governments should publicly denounce this practice, both at the UN and in their own countries. Exposure of this travesty and the subsequent embarrassment to the UN should serve as a powerful weapon against this practice. The World Bank be discontinued.

• Future policies of the UN depend on the proposals put forward, openly and democratically, by its member states. (Government delegations such as my own Canadian government at the UN, consistently promote anti-family positions, which are not a reflection of the views of the majority of Canadians. However, most Canadians are not even aware of the positions taken by their government at the UN.)

• We must question our individual governments on their family policies and pressure them to support pro-family policies at the UN. We must insist that pro-family NGOs not only be subsidized by our governments to attend UN conferences, but that certain of their numbers also be appointed as member(s) of their country's national delegation. At the present time, western nations have appointed so-called "gender experts" to their delegations. It's time that "family" experts are also appointed to government delegations.

• Pro-family NGOs must seek permanent consultative status with the UN, with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN, to enable them to automatically attend UN conferences and other UN meetings. It's a tedious, but not difficult task, to become accredited.

• The Call from the Families of the World must be widely distributed. Signed copies are to be deposited with the Social Development Commission at the UN in New York to indicate the world's concern about and support for the natural family. The initiative of the Call from the Families of the World will serve to offset the anti-life, anti-family agenda now dominant at the UN, which is, unfortunately, significantly influencing the laws of our nations.

If we have the will, we can turn back the vicious tide of family destruction that is sweeping over the UN. Our efforts will be a determining factor in the futures of our children and grandchildren.

Endnotes

1 The World Bank, Population and the World Bank Adapting to Change