Pro-life Africa slams UNFPA's focus on 'sexual rights' over nations' true needs

(UNITED NATIONS, C-Fam) A war of words broke out during a UN meeting to approve the three-year strategic plan for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). It pitted Africans against Europeans and Nordics.

Africans complained that UNFPA[] uses “sexual and reproductive health” concepts to promote issues not agreed upon like abortion, sexual rights for children, and gender ideology. Europeans and Nordic countries insisted these issues are essential to the work of the agency.

A delegate from Cameroon criticized UNFPA for neglecting poverty, education, and development in order “to transform UNFPA into the sexual and reproductive health agency” and “promoting its most controversial aspects.”

She said that abortion was illegal in Cameroon and objected to the agency’s focus on “adolescents.” She said children are still under the protection of their parents and their family.

A delegate from Nigeria complained that “certain elements of the plan relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights are not fully consistent with our national laws, policies, and cultural values.”

Nordic countries, Europeans, and other progressive countries like Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand insisted that UNFPA’s work on “sexual and reproductive health and rights” was essential and had important normative value.

The exchange took place as UNFPA’s executive board adopted a new strategic plan for the next three years. At issue is whether UN agencies should promote these controversial issues. Western countries who fund the agencies say, yes. Traditional countries say no.

The General Assembly has repeatedly denied UN agencies a mandate to promote abortion or gender ideology. But rich and powerful UN agencies and the countries that back them get around this objection through UN agency strategic plans... [which] contain language about sexual orientation and gender identity, sexual rights, including for children, as well as comprehensive sexuality education, that the UN General Assembly has consistently rejected....

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Editor's Note: Stefano Gennarini, J.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 (https://c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.