These days, the mere suggestion of a UN conspiracy brings an immediate hail of scorn. However, by tracing the UN’s movements since the 1950s,  Winifride Prestwich has put together a pretty good case.

Freedom, both religious and political, can never be taken for granted. In 1995, people in Britain, Ireland, the USA, and Canada are learning, to their dismay, that many of their fundamental and traditional rights have been handed over to the supranational, e.g., the European Union (EU) and the United Nations, without their knowledge or consent, and indeed without the knowledge or consent of their elected Members of Parliament or Congress.

There is, at present, a strong movement in Britain led by MPs and members of the House of Lords to “claw back” some of the rights, especially those which are essential to protect the nation. For example, under EU rules the British Customs are virtually powerless to search for and to prevent the importation of drugs and guns, when these come from another member of the EU.

In Canada, our unelected representative—usually not known to the public—have handed over parents’ rights in the UN convention on the Rights of the Child. In 1995 Canadian delegates at Beijing—unaccountable to anyone—will be pressing for abortions as a universal right, and special rights for lesbians, with no mandate from the people. Over the last 50 years the UN has become a supernational power, controlling policies concerning population and life and family issues.

Rome (1954) and Belgrade (1964)

The United Nations was founded in 1945, and since then there have been five UN International Conferences on Population: Rome, 1954; Belgrade, 1964; Bucharest, 1974; Mexico, 1984; Cairo, 1994. The Rome and Belgrade Conferences were organized by the UN in collaboration with the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). These early conferences were intended to provide an international forum for the exchange of technical and scientific information on demography.

It should be noted that in 1954: (a) no one knew the size of the world population, and estimates concerning many countries, especially China and much of Africa, were pure guesswork; (b) only one country in the world, the United Kingdom, had a national land-use survey on which to base estimates of the carrying capacity for population growth.

Although policy was not on the agenda in 1954 and 1964, it soon became clear that there was a split between Malthusian delegates who wanted population control, and others who favoured aid for development. As early as 1961, in a conference in Cairo, the Argentine delegate said that the UN should not presume that it was the final arbiter on birth control, and Sweden’s delegate found it necessary to deny that he had ever claimed that foreign aid would be tied to birth control.

But in the 1960s the population-control group was winning. “In 1954 the right of the individual parent to control the number of his or her children was regarded as a basic human right and leading principle for government policy; but in 1965 that principle was placed in its social and international context…population policy was a matter of foreign decision on the part of each country concerned.”

Americans plot for control

In 1966, the US National Academy of Sciences established a Committee on Resources and Man to study and make recommendations on policies regarding populations and resources. It is worth noting that the Committee was funded by the Population Council, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Department of the Interior. In 1968 the Committee presented “recommendations for implementation as matter of national policy.” Recommendation number 5 reads:

That efforts to limit the population increase in the nation and the world be intensified by whatever means are practicable, working toward a goal of zero rate of growth by the end of the century…Our Departments of State and Health, Education, and Welfare should adopt the goal of real population control both in North America and throughout the world. Ultimately this implies that the community and society as a whole, and not only the parents, must have a say about the number of children a couple may have. This will require profound modification of currents attitudes toward parenthood.

This Committee took it for granted therefore that the US Departments had the authority to make decisions of policy for Canada, Mexico, and the rest of the world. Parental rights and traditional values were dismissed in a cavalier fashion. The use of the word “real” in “The need for real population control” shows how far the Committee was influenced by men like Kingsley Davis, an influential American “expert.”

In their report the Committee made many reference to an article by Davis published in Science (1967) under the title “Population policy: will current programs succeed?” Davis stressed that something much more effective than merely eliminating unwanted births is required for ultimate population control. His radical approach included a complete change in the social structure and ecomony: “Changes basic enough to affect motivation for having children would be changes in the structure of the family, in the position of women and in the sexual mores.” He advocated de-stabilizing the tradition, and the promotion of ‘alternative’ family structures and sex-roles.

Kingsley Davis had a great influence on the international population-control promoters. One of those was Frederick S. Jaffe, who spelled out ways of restructuring the family: postpone or avoid marriage; alter the image of the ideal family; encourage increased homosexuality.

All this took place 25 years before the Cairo Conference.

Bucharest (1974)

The Bucharest Conference differed in essentials from earlier ones:

  • It was the first Conference composed only of Government representatives.
  • The goals were political, not scientific.
  • There were two parallel conferences: one was for the formal government representatives; the second—the Population Tribune—was sponsored, and run, by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) for non-government organizations (NGOs). Most of the 1500 delegates at the Tribune were from groups promoting contraception (including early abortion and extraction), sterilization and abortion. They included the IPPF, the Population Council, the Pathfinder Fund, the Draper Fund and Oxfam.
  • The Science and Technology topics had already been prepared and discussed by the Population Commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNECSOC), and at regional conferences.
  • A draft policy for the World Population Plan of Action was ready for debate and approval by the UN delegates. This was a UN move to involve itself in policy-making at a supra-national level.
  • The Secretary-General of the Conference, Antonio Camillo-Flores, stressed one major difference at Bucharest: “Because at neither of the two earlier conferences, nor at the much earlier world meeting in 1927, did the delegates have the authority to commit their governments,” this one did.

Limit population growth secretly

The World Population Plan of Action was intended to limit population growth, with a goal of reaching replacement level by the year 2000. Another goal, universal access to all methods of birth control—including abortion—was set for 1985. Sex education in schools and the need to get women out of the home and into the workforce were stressed. The Plan, largely the work of the US (with some collaborators, especially Scandinavia, Britain and Germany), was supported by Canada. Even up to the Conference, the US plans for Bucharest were “top secret.” Senator Richard Schweiker (Rep., PA) tried hard to get a copy and was told the information was “not for the public,” this despite the fact that the US delegation—all anti-life—could “commit” the US people to policies without their will or even knowledge. Canadians were (and are) in the same boat.

The Plan, however, met strong opposition, and the Conference was polarized. Latin America, most African countries, some European countries (e.g., Belgium, France, Ireland), and the USSR combined to force changes on moral or nationalistic grounds. The USA withdrew to develop its new strategies for population control in the “undeveloped” world as outlined in the ultra-secret Kissinger Report. (That report called for the systematic reduction of population in thirteen different countries.)

As a footnote, and in the hindsight of Cairo, it is of interest to note that J.P. Pronk, a minister in the Netherlands Government, raised the question whether perhaps the UN should redefine the family because of emerging “life styles and unions.” Twenty years later the UN agreed.

Mexico City (1984)

The Mexico City Conference, with its goals for further implementation of the Plan of Action, was not the success that the UN had expected. This time the US delegation was packed with pro-lifers, who were concerned with stopping abortions by refusing to pay for them. Moreover, R. Salas, the UN Secretary-General for the Congress, found no response to his speech in which he claimed that the UN had two important aims: stabilizing the world population by a Global Population Programme; and ensuring that the national population policies were consistent with the UN’s Global Population Programme.

The UN Population Bulletin, 1986, admitted: “The call for a universal population policy at the Mexico City Conference has not been met with much response. It seems that efforts to formulate a universal policy—as urgent as it is—may be premature.” What was not achieved in Mexico could, so the UN reasoned, be won next time—in Cairo.

Cairo (1994)

With President Bill Clinton in the White House, and Canada, Australia, and the European Union all fervently supporting UN anti-life anti-family policies, the Cairo Conference was expected to be a walkover. The Preparatory Committee Meeting in New York stressed abortion as a woman’s right; downgraded marriage and the traditional family; promoted other types of family e.g. the homosexual, lesbian, and cohabitation forms; attacked parental rights; and tied Third World Aid to acceptance of population planning.

In the face of a moral disaster, the Vatican managed to summon aid from Christian and Moslem peoples to block the anti-life, anti-family forces. The small contingent of people in pro-life NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations), shut out from the main assembly, worked tirelessly in one-on-one meetings with delegates, especially from Africa, explaining all the code euphemisms in the UN Draft (many of these are not clear in the texts of other languages, such as French, a dominant language in Africa). But with the UN there is always still tomorrow. Next stop is Beijing, a special Conference on women, September 1995.

Canadian law now monitored by U.N.

International law takes precedence over national law. Binding international law on human rights in general is contained in two Covenants of the UN: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICSCR). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is also a binding instrument. Countries such as Canada, which are signatories to these UN treaties, are bound by international law to comply.

The UN has established mechanisms for monitoring the compliance of the national states. A UN Human Rights committee “can confront States that it deems as having violated rights contained in the Covenant.” In effect, therefore, and behind the backs of its citizens, Canada has delivered its right to make laws on some essential issues to the United Nations, and agreed to a monitoring force of UN officials to ensure that the international laws are being kept. It is only too clear that the “rights” in the Covenants, if the UN gets it way, will include rights to abortion and same-sex unions.

Now is the time for Canadians to wake up and start to “claw back” their rights to a Canada with moral and traditional values in its laws. Parliament, accountable to Canadians (not to the Prime Minister or the Cabinet), is the authority for law-making not the United Nations.