C. Gwendolyn Landolt,  J.D.

The United Nations was an inspired and glorious concept when it began in 1945, born out of the rubble of World War II.  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 –while respecting the national sovereignty of member countries and their differing cultural and religious values.

Preservation of the natural family was one of the major concerns of the UN in its early years.  This was reflected in 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now accepted worldwide 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 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, also included protection for the natural family.

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 applicable, 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.

Beginning in 1994, however, at the UN Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, a major change occurred.  It was at this conference that attempts were first made at the UN to undermine the natural family worldwide.  Fortunately to date, these attempts have been generally thwarted, but it is a continuing battle to keep the anti-family forces at the UN at bay.

The reason behind the attempt to undermine the natural family at the UN is due to the fact that global statistics began to reveal a marked demographic decline in the west.  This fact caused great alarm in western countries as it portended difficulties for the west to hold the balance of power worldwide – both politically and economically.  Consequently, the population issue became an obsession with the west.  The west was concerned that the large population of the developing world would precipitate both increased migration to the west and increased civil unrest, which could lead to a loss of access to natural resources in the developing world by the west.

The western nations, therefore, began to use the UN as a tool by which to attempt to curtail Third World population.  This was carried out by way of anti-family policies, such as reproductive rights (abortion), contraceptive and sterilization programs, adolescent access to these services without parental knowledge or consent (WHO defines an adolescent as anyone from 10 to 19 years), and homosexual rights.  These policies, however, were in open defiance of the values of Catholic and Muslim countries in the UN.  Such policies also contradicted the fact that Europe was on the brink of economic and political upheaval because of its precipitous drop in fertility.  In 2003, the UN was forced to revise its population projections downward worldwide.  This reality did not stop the UN, however, from continuing its relentless battle to impose population control on the developing world.

As most of the nations of the developing world have refused to support the anti-life / anti-family policies proposed at the UN, the influential western officials at the UN realized they had to devise a new approach to overcome this resistance.

The tactic used to break the resistance of the developing world to anti-family policies was to export the failed feminist revolution of the west to the developing world.  That is, under the guise of raising the status of women in the developing world by promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women as prescribed by feminist ideology, it was anticipated that women, once educated and economically independent, would voluntarily separate themselves from the “liability” of religion and culture, family and children.  Allegedly, these impediments have enslaved women for centuries.  An emancipation from these responsibilities would make population control programs acceptable to these women.  Thus the promotion of women’s rights became one of the major issues promoted at the UN. 

Ironically, however, such a policy is doomed to failure.  It does not take into account the fact that home and children are central to a woman’s life whether she is illiterate, educated, affluent or poor.

In addition, pushing feminist policies for women in an attempt to undermine the natural family, the UN also began to advocate the following anti-family policies, designed to curb population and also break down the family unit.

1. Homosexual/lesbian Relationship Rights

The anti-family strategists at the UN are attempting to redefine the family away from the traditional model of husband, wife and children.  Instead, they want a fluid definition that does not require heterosexuality as the family’s foundation.  The premise argued at the UN is that the traditional family is only one among many alternate lifestyles; including same-sex marriages, common law unions, transgenerational sexual liaisons, etc. 

Thus the strategists have tried to insert in the UN documents the expression “families in all their forms.”  The expression is, of course deliberately ambiguous as it can also refer to the extended family unit of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, prevalent in many cultures.

Further, arguments are being pushed that homosexuals and lesbians are a disadvantaged minority, and are entitled to the same provisions and privileges under human rights protection as are now enjoyed by legitimate disadvantaged racial, ethnic and religious groups.  This point is at this very moment, being debated at the 60th Session of the 53-member UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva (March 15 – April 23, 2004).  The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLARC) is seeking to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the protection of homosexuality.  This is the first resolution in UN history to link homosexuality with human rights.  Pro-family NGOs, including two from my own organization, REAL Women of Canada, are now in Geneva lobbying against this proposed amendment, which, if passed, will have far-reaching implications for the natural family worldwide.

2.Adolescent Access to Birth Control and Abortion Counselling and Services

UN strategists are attempting to implement in UN documents the controversial provision that adolescents must have access to birth control and abortion counselling and services, without parental knowledge or consent.  This provision has caused long and heated negotiations at the UN during the past decade, pitting the western nations against the developing nations.

Dr. Nafis Sadik, former Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) explained the need for this provision at a conference on women’s health in Ottawa, Canada, in August 1996:

Adolescent education programs and access to reproductive services are critical and central to achieving reproductive health.  This concept of adolescent right was first introduced in Cairo where the objective was not achieved because many countries regarded it as an issue relating to parental authority.  It is one of the most controversial and difficult issues to deal with on the international level as even in industrialized countries like the US it is the subject of intense ideological and emotional debate.

The reason why the west is so determined to include the provision that adolescents should have access to birth control and abortion without parental consent, is that this would lead to a separation of adolescents from parental authority on the crucial issue of their sexuality.  If the adolescent can be released from parental authority in the area of sexuality, then it follows that the adolescent can also be released and reject parental authority in other matters, including culture and religion. 

Regrettably, this advocacy for birth control and abortion services for adolescents at the UN is the exploitation of adolescents to be used as pawns in the larger struggle to undermine and destroy the family unit.  Again, whenever it has arisen, this provision has been beaten back by the pro-family NGOs at the UN.

3.Reproductive Rights Key to Population Stabilization

Although there appears to be a reluctance to define “reproductive rights” on the international level, in practice at the UN, the expression means providing unrestricted access to abortion, birth control and sterilization procedures.  These procedures are being represented at the UN as human rights.  In order to advance the acceptance of these procedures since the Cairo conference, the UN has tried to link them to the empowerment and human rights of women, allegedly the key to women’s economic and social security.

Unfortunately, the linking of reproductive health to the social, technological and economic advancement of women has made it difficult for nations to separate this package into its component parts, and therefore reject abortion, homosexuality, birth control and sterilization procedures for what they are - measures to instigate population control in developing nations.

Again regrettably, the acceptance of abortion and family planning policies are frequently used by the UN as bargaining tools and pre-conditions of obtaining assistance from UN agencies, such as the World Bank.

4.Gender Differences in Males and Females

A struggle erupted over the inclusion of the word “gender” in the platform of action for the UN Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in September 1995.  The UN strategists wanted to substitute the words “women” or “female” in the document with the word “gender” in order to express the proposition that the division of labour, common to all societies between men and women, is not based on their biological differences, but rather is due to socially and culturally constructed considerations.  The only point that is being made is that women are supposedly interchangeable with men in their life roles; and that women are bound to the home and motherhood only by societal and cultural dictates, not by their natural instincts or personal wishes.

Further, the word “gender” in UN documents to supplement the words “men” and “women” leaves the word open to a broader interpretation so as to include not merely males and females, but also transsexuals, transvestites, bisexuals, etc. 

Implementing Anti-family Policies at the UN

In order to incorporate the concepts that undermine the natural family accepted at the UN, several strategies have been used to overcome the reluctance of member states to accept them.  These strategies include the following:

(a) Feminist NGOs at work at the UN

The UN has greatly encouraged the number of anti-family, mostly feminist NGOs accredited to it, to serve as enthusiastic partners to promote 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.  These NGOs, who refer to themselves as “civil society,” are, in fact, non-elected representatives of no one but their own ideological supporters.  Unfortunately, however, these non-elected, unaccountable NGOs have acquired enormous influence at the UN.

At the first UN conference I attended in 1994, the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, I was shocked to hear New York-based American feminist, Bella Abzug, proclaim to her “women’s caucus” that they represented the “women of the world” (some presumption), and that the Cairo Plan of Action was a document that they had written.  Clearly, something seriously was wrong at the UN that a handful of feminists had the power to change the wording of an international document which would affect the lives of billions of people around the world!

Feminist NGOs, such as Ms. Abzug’s organization, 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, who supposedly represented “the public” or “civil society” at UN conferences, are often actually members of their country’s own delegation or frequently as is done by my own Canadian government, the NGO’s expenses are paid by a government to attend these conferences to enable them to lobby delegates from the developing world.  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 over 2000 such organizations, of which only a small fraction have a pro-life/pro-family perspective.

(b) UN Treaty Monitoring Committees

Many of the UN treaties were drafted in previous years and did not include the currently desirable, by Western standards, feminist, anti-life/anti-family provisions.  It was determined, therefore, to do an end-run around these treaties.  The strategy for this was developed at a secret meeting held at Deep Cove, NY, in December 1996.  This meeting was attended by the heads of the UN agencies, as well as the representatives from the most influential feminist NGOs at the UN.  It was decided at that meeting, that the UN human rights treaties would be “re-interpreted” to fit the feminist agenda.  This was to be done by way of the UN’s Treaty Monitory Committees. 

That is, each ratifying country is required to report at 5-year intervals to a UN Committee to provide information on its compliance with the Treaty provisions.  These Committees are made up of so-called “experts” 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 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.

Based on the strategy developed at the 1996 Deep Cove meeting, these committees began to “re-interpret” or “read in” the treaties, anti-family concepts that were not there when the treaties were ratified, and clearly are not included in the actual wording of the treaties.  Some of the “read in” provisions of the Monitoring Committee, for example, of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) include the following:

• Although the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) document does not mention abortion, mainly Catholic countries, such as Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, have been criticized by the Treaty Monitoring Committee for their restrictive abortion laws.

• The CEDAW document condemns prostitution, but the Treaty Monitoring Committee has directed China and Kyrystan to liberalize their prostitution laws.  (Feminists object to only the trafficking in women and regard the sex trade as an acceptable occupation for a woman – either by choice or from necessity.)

• The CEDAW committee criticized Belarus for instituting Mother’s Day (an undue emphasis and sexual stereotyping of women, according to the Committee).

• Libya was directed by the Committee to reinterpret the Koran to abide by the Committee’s new feminist “guidelines.”

Another example is the UN committee monitoring the UN Convention of the Child “re-interpreting” a treaty, is in regard to the committee’s prohibiting the disciplining of children by spanking.  Both Canada and England have been criticized for continuing to allow parents to discipline their children in this manner, even though no such provision was included in the actual treaty.

The decisions of the Monitoring Committees, fortunately, are not binding.  However, the criticism of a government’s failure to implement this new agenda “read in” to the various treaties does create unfavourable publicity for government – the publicity being magnified by sympathetic NGOs in that country who inform the media of the problems and who lobby government to “correct” the problems identified by the committee. 

In order to protect the natural family at the UN, our efforts should including the following strategies:

1. We must remain ever vigilant.  It is crucial that we closely monitor all UN conferences, and ensure that pro-family NGOs are always present to lobby on behalf of the natural family.

2. Governments should ignore the phony provisions that UN Treaty Monitoring Committees are 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.
   (Australia has led the way in this regard in that in September 2000, its Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that Australia would no longer report to the UN’s Treaty Monitoring Committees.  As stated by Mr. Howard, the Australian government is perfectly capable of monitoring its own UN treaty record.)

3. 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 its citizens.  Most citizens in a country are not even aware of the positions taken by their government at the UN.  We must question our individual governments on their family policies at the UN and pressure them to support pro-family policies only.

4. Pro-family NGOs should not only be subsidized by our governments at UN conferences, but they should also be appointed as member(s) of their country’s own national delegations.  At the UN 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.

5. More 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 worldwide.  It’s a tedious, but not difficult task, to become accredited, and we desperately need the pro-family presence at UN conferences to off‑set the influence of numerous anti-family NGOs.

6. Pro-family policies, such as those set out in the Declaration of the World Congress of Families III here in Mexico City, as well as the previous Declarations from the World Congress I in Prague and the World Congress II in Geneva, should 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, and to serve as a basis for future negotiations at the UN.  These Declarations will help to offset the anti-life, anti-family agenda now dominant at the UN.  The Congress Declarations are far more representative of the beliefs of the majority of the 190‑member states of the UN.

7. The Declarations should be forwarded to every world government with the request that the provisions of the Declarations be implemented, so that the natural family initiative will be promoted and protected, not only within the UN but also in each country, to provide the safety and security for its families in order to preserve the culture and religions of each country and to strengthen the country, both internally and externally.

If we have the will, we can turn back the vicious tide of family destruction that is sweeping through the UN.  Our efforts will be a determining factor in what the future looks like for our children and grandchildren.  Let’s not let them down.