By John-Henry Westen
The Interim

The United Nations Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of world leaders in history, concluded in New York Sept. 8. The Summit Declaration, a statement agreed to by a vote of the vast majority of world leaders, is regarded by the United Nations as having “sketched out clear directions for adapting the organization to its role in the new century.” The plan for a new world order, or one world government was long thought far-fetched, but the recent UN conventions, treaties and statutes point the way to the realization of this plan. Are we ready for a one-world government with mandated rights for abortion and for enforced tolerance for homosexual marriage?

These seemingly radical proposals would become stark reality if the proposals approved by the world leaders were actually acted upon. For instance, the ratification of the statute to implement the International Criminal Court (ICC), as promoted in the summit declaration, would – once ratified by 60 countries – establish an ICC with universal jurisdiction, even over those countries that have refused to participate. Having studied extensively the ICC and the intended use of the ICC to enforce access to abortion, Gwen Landolt of REAL Women said, “The ICC is the instrument to promote a one world government and to implement one world government with an emphasis on abortion and feminism.”

UN experts agree that the summit sets the UN on an agenda for global governance (newspeak for one-world government). UN expert Henry Lamb of Sovereignty International noted that although some suggest that the conference did nothing significant, “the declaration has given the UN a mandate from the highest political authority on earth, to go forward with its vision of global governance as laid out in the declaration.” Lamb pointed out that “prior to this meeting that agenda was illicit on the part of the UN but now is approved.”

Dr. Richard Wilkins, international law professor at Brigham Young University, concurred, saying that the summit “was a very significant event since world leaders came together to state their commitment to the ongoing process of creating international government. Those who want it and those who don’t must stand up and take notice. This is the beginning of a new era. The stakes are very high since the stated commitment of the leaders of the world has been made. This is an important paradigm shift from national sovereignty and control to international sovereignty and control. When we look back on this event in history it will be a major marker.”

The summit promises to implement UN treaties on “arms control and disarmament” and “international humanitarian law and human rights law” including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which has been a major tool for pushing abortion around the world.

Calls for a UN standing army, independent financing for the UN and removing the veto power from the five permanent members of the Security Council were heard over and over again at the summit, although such clear demands are not reflected explicitly in the Summit Declaration. Explicit demands such as these were, however, submitted at various concurrent and preparatory conferences and events including the Millennium Forum, and the State of the World Forum.

“Civil society organizations” (non-governmental organizations, or NGOs – unaccountable, non-elected, independent organizations, such as International Planned Parenthood, that promote special-interest objectives), in response to the Secretary General’s recommendation, organized a Summit companion event May 22 to 26, 2000 at the United Nations called a “Millennium Forum.” The forum adopted the Millennium Forum Declaration and Agenda for Action, which demands that UN human rights treaties must have “Universal ratification, without reservations.” It also demands the “repeal of all discriminatory laws” under which is included discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” With regard to the Security Council, the declaration calls for “complete veto abolition … as a step towards the elimination of permanency.” The group also called for a UN “standing Peace Force” and “UN discussion of global taxes and fees … (to) vigorously explore the possibilities of alternate funding from such sources.”

While some suggest that these demands of NGOs are nothing more than hot air, the power of NGOs is not to be underestimated. UN expert Peter Smith of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children told LifeSite News that the presence and power of NGOs is evident at UN conventions, and even in the official delegations of various countries. He noted that at one time there were 40 known International Planned Parenthood Federation members who had been appointed official government delegates. Smith explained that for poor nations, IPPF and other wealthy NGOs can offer to fund a country’s delegates and thus appoint its own selections as official delegates.

The 2000 edition of the infamous State of the World Forum (SWF) was held in New York Sept. 4 to 10, timed to coincide with the Millennium Summit. The SWF, a highly controversial gathering of world political, business and New Age religious leaders, which proposed in 1996 a 90 per cent reduction in the world’s population and in 1998 slammed the Pope for his pro-life views, is convened by Mikhail Gorbachev. However, despite the sometimes blatant attempts to promote extremely controversial one-world government (global governance) and one-world religion (the so-called United Religions Initiative), the SWF attracts numerous major personalities. This year’s forum boasted speakers Colin Powell, Jordan’s Queen Noor, and major UN leaders such as UNFPA’s Nafis Sadik, UNICEF’s Carol Bellamy and UNIFEM’s Noeleen Heyzer.

Not surprisingly, Gorbachev proposed a radical expansion of UN, powers calling for “a new role for the UN, a new body …. In addition to the Security Council, we must have an Economic Council and an Environmental Council with authority equal to that of the Security Council.” The SWF did, however, try to downplay their one world government promotion. The forum’s president, Jim Garrison, told the Financial Post’s Diane Francis, that “the message is that we don’t need global government but effective global governance.” However, the Postwas quick to point out that in a 1995 interview, Mr. Garrison told a San Francisco newspaper: “Over the next 20 to 30 years, we are going to end up with world government. It’s inevitable … [W]e have to empower the United Nations … to govern and regulate human interaction.”

In an exclusive report from the SWF for LifeSite News, Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Journalwrote that “this crowd was unlike those at most UN wing-dings” since it failed to demand “that births be limited and that abortions be made freer and safer … so common at UN meetings.” But Gunter concluded, “I suspect the subject didn’t come up because delegates didn’t have to raise it. They are probably in fundamental agreement on the principle, and thus didn’t have to talk it to death. ‘You for mandatory sterilization and imposed limits on family size?’ ‘Yep. You?’ ‘Yep. Me, too. Next!'”

Lamb suggests the UN’s blueprint for global governance was laid out in a 1995 report called “Our Global Neighborhood.” The 1995 report carries all the same suggestions as the NGO Forum and was a product of the Commission on Global Governance (CGG). The CGG was co-chaired by Canadian Maurice Strong, a top advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the architect of UN “reform” which led to this scheme of UN governance to replace national sovereignty. Revealingly, Strong has said: “It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful.”

In the final analysis, the UN has now had its power-seeking agenda approved. With its power-posturing already active even while it was illicit, UN watchers expect an invigorated power agenda concentrating first and foremost on the bringing into force the ICC.

Comments from the Vatican

Writing in the Italian newspaper Avvenire, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, slammed the UN’s proposals for a “New World Order” targeting for special criticism the UN’s goal of depopulation. He noted that the philosophy coming from recent UN conferences and the Millennium Summit “proposes strategies to reduce the number of guests at the table of humanity, so that the presumed happiness [we] have attained will not be affected.” He criticized this philosophy for “not being concerned with the care of those who are no longer productive or who can no longer hope for a determined quality of life.”

Cardinal Ratzinger noted that “at the base of this New World Order” is the ideology of “women’s empowerment,” which erroneously sees “the principal obstacles to [a woman’s] fulfillment [as] the family and maternity.” The cardinal advised that “at this stage of the development of the new image of the new world, Christians – and not just them but in any case they even more than others – have the duty to protest.”

On Sept. 8, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano addressed the world leaders attending the Millennium Summit. The speech carefully outlined the conditions under which the charge given to the United Nations could be exercised legitimately. He encouraged the UN in its promotion of peace and fighting poverty and especially encouraged debt reduction for the Third World, but laid out indispensable conditions for the treatment of human rights and national sovereignty.

Cardinal Sodano said a “duty of the United Nations” is the “promotion of human rights” adding that “the first of these [is] the right to life, which is so endangered today.” Knowing the UN’s tendency to define “human rights” to include abortion and items against natural family life, the Cardinal warned that “human rights must be affirmed by giving them a solid ethical basis, for otherwise they will remain fragile and without foundations.” He encouraged the interpretation of such rights to be based on “natural law.”

The Vatican has long been aware of – and fought – the UN’s effort to use its international conferences to promote attacks on life under the guise of human rights. In the pope’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), the pope wrote that “we are in fact faced by an objective ‘conspiracy against life,’ involving even international institutions, engaged in encouraging and carrying out actual campaigns to make contraception, sterilization and abortion widely available …. The idea of ‘human rights’ – rights inherent in every person and prior to any constitution and state legislation – is today marked by a surprising contradiction. Precisely in an age when the inviolable rights of the person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled upon.”

Cardinal Sodano also addressed the contentious issue of national sovereignty, especially in regards to issues of “moral and cultural values.” The Vatican has long fought the attempts of powerful UN members such as Canada and the European Union to impose their pro-abortion and pro-homosexual morality on other nations. Again in Evangelium vitae, John Paul II writes, “how can we fail to think that the very affirmation of the rights of individuals and peoples made in distinguished international assemblies is a merely futile exercise of rhetoric, if we fail to unmask the selfishness of the rich countries which exclude poorer countries from access to development or make such access dependent on arbitrary prohibitions against procreation.”

In a clear reference to attempts to impose acceptance of homosexuality, Cardinal Sodano said “it is not licit to try to impose certain minority modes of living in the name of a subjective understanding of progress.”