UNICEF, which supports pro-abortion and other anti-life projects, has once again tried to shoehorn its way into the Toronto Catholic District school board, Canada’s largest Catholic school board.
In UNICEF’S corner is Catholics for a Free Choice, a minuscule but well-financed organization funded by the Packard Foundation and others to the tune of $600,000.
On a vote of five to three at the September board meeting, UNICEF was given permission to make a Halloween boxes presentation in May 2003 to determine whether they should be allowed in the schools next October. UNICEF and its pro-abortion supporters were hoping that the trustees would approve the distribution of their fundraising boxes in time for Halloween 2002.
After being kicked out five years ago for its pro-abortion stance and questionable reputation, UNICEF still seeks to have its Halloween boxes replace those from Aid to Women. Aid to Women has been in Catholic schools for the past five years, raising thousands of dollars for women in crisis pregnancies and their babies.
It operates a crisis pregnancy centre and counselling service, providing layettes, children’s clothing, money for rent and other help where needed. For the past 10 years, it has been located next to a downtown Toronto abortuary. Aid to Women is solidly pro-life, pro-family and acts in accordance with Christian principles and teaching on family issues.
UNICEF lost its way 25 years ago when it began to allow itself to be used by UN-affiliated organizations for promoting abortion and sterilization in Third World countries. So while UNICEF claims that it sets aside $800,000 for clean water in Mali, it only serves to free up $800,000 to promote abortion, promiscuous sex education and contraception. Pro-life activists were at the school board meeting five years ago when UNICEF officials admitted they were funding projects promoting abortion. Indeed, UNICEF has donated nearly $5 million to China’s brutal one-child policy and in 1995, urged the inclusion of “reproductive health” rights in the document of the United Nations’s Women’s Conference in Beijing.
Furthermore, UNICEF has been questioned over its handling of donations. The organization has never explained the theft in 1994-95 of $1-million (US) in aid supplies for Somalia and another loss of $8-9 million (US) that forced UNICEF to bring in Booze Allen, a reputable investigation agency, as well as a team of independent auditors, to pursue investigations. Its own recent annual financial report admits that half of UNICEF’s budget is spent on bureaucracy and that more than 30 per cent of the money raised in Canada never leaves the country.
Toronto’s Catholic school board should follow the example of the Vatican. In 1996, the Vatican balked at giving $2,000 to UNICEF, charging that the agency had become involved in donating abortifacients to poor women in Third World countries and that it was also engaging in abortion advocacy.
The secular media pander to UNICEF because of the agency’s generous advertising budget. They rarely publish or broadcast anything unfavourable about UNICEF’s actions.