New database exposes UN’s pressure on countries to legalize abortion

(WASHINGTON, DC, C-Fam) Countries around the world are under pressure to liberalize their abortion laws and enshrine special protections and recognition on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in their laws and policies, all in the name of human rights.

None of the nine core UN human rights treaties mentions SOGI, nor establishes a right to abortion.  These topics remain highly controversial in General Assembly and other negotiations, and would not have been agreed to by the diplomats who negotiated the treaty texts.

However, beginning in the 1990s, the expert committees that monitor compliance with the treaties by the states that ratified them began to exceed their mandates. They started including pressure on abortion and SOGI in their communications with member states. While these communications are not legally binding, unlike the actual texts of the treaties, they can still be influential, particularly when they are cited by activist courts within countries looking to change their laws.

More recently, a new mechanism was established by the Human Rights Council, called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Unlike the treaty bodies and other special procedures associated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the UPR, countries are reviewed on their human rights records, not by independent experts, but by their fellow nations. Countries being reviewed receive brief recommendations from other UN member states, and mark them as either “supported” or “noted.”

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Up to now, there has been a dearth of information about this kind of pressure. Two years ago, C-Fam created a database that tracks all of this pressure. This online database tracks the pressure directed at countries on abortion and SOGI in both the UPR and the observations of the treaty bodies….

Read the entire article at C-Fam. 

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. writes for C-Fam. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. This article appears with permission.