The once-noble United Nations children’s agency UNICEF is no longer what it was. It has undergone a facelift.
In July l998, in Geneva, the UN officially established a new alliance of three UN social agencies: UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. In a press release, the UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization were said to have “invited” the UNFPA to join them in becoming “full partners together” in a venture euphemistically titled the Co-ordinating Committee on Health. This committee has little to do with health issues, if the past behaviour of the three parties involved is any indication.
The boldness of the move is breathtaking, considering that UNICEF has been denying collaboration in population control and abortion for about 30 years. It now is linked publicly with the two major UN population control agencies, and proves once again that UNICEF is no friend of children.
Significantly, the UNFPA got to choose two of the three topics under discussion at Geneva, and repeated references were made to “reproductive health” in the context of both “safe motherhood” and “adolescent health.”
The new alliance should settle some serious matters in the public’s mind, once and for all. People can now rightly assume that the UN’s population-related activities are “legal” for all three bodies. Otherwise, there would have been no need for an “official” announcement. In the area of funding, it would have been logical to assume, since the three agencies are full partners, that each can use the others’ money with impunity, while claiming publicly that its hands are clean.
This is convenient for UNICEF, in its endless denials of charges that its projects provide sex ed, contraception, and even promotion of abortion for children as young as 10 years old, as reported by CAFHRI. In spite of the solid evidence that UNICEF is being deceitful in its denials, and is indeed deeply involved in nefarious activities (activities which the secretary-general himself admits), the public is having a hard time believing that UNICEF has become corrupt relative to its original mandate: to help children, not destroy them.
Huge body of evidence
To the chagrin of pro-lifers, laity and clergy across the spectrum seem disregard the body of evidence. But the UN’s anti-life activities resonate profoundly with one member of the Catholic hierarchy. It was reported in the June 8, l998 edition of The Wanderer newspaper that Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, severely criticized the UN in a prologue to a book by Professor Michael Schooyans entitled,The Gospel in the Face of World Disorder. The cardinal exposed the intent of various UN conferences as the promotion of a “new world order,” a “new man” and a “new anthropology.”
In the task of de-populating the earth, the UNICEF-WHO-UNFPA trio has collaborated with about a dozen other UN agencies, according to the UN’s own documentation. The CCH alliance had the approval of the secretary-general, who had called for such a move in l997. “This unholy pro-abortion alliance,” said the CAFHRI on Sept. 25, l998, “is renewed evidence of the systematic effort by senior UN officials to mobilize the entire UN system in support of the population-control agenda as advanced by the UNFPA.” The agenda includes easy access to various contraceptive pills and devices, abortion and sterilization equipment. The agenda can be imposed by coercion if need be, according to numerous published reports. An example of such UN coercion was identified recently by the widely respected think tank the Population Research Institute, on May 28.
The PRI sent an investigator into Albanian refugee camps associated with the current Balkan conflict. These investigators reported that “reproductive health kits” were being aggressively distributed by the UNFPA. “Contraceptive and abortifacient supplies have ‘bumped’ desperately needed medical supplies, and even food, from supply convoys,” the PRI said. The UNFPA, the week before, had stated publicly that it intended to distribute enough “reproductive health kits” to supply 350,000 people for six months. The kits contained condoms, birth control pills, intra-uterine devices and manual vacuum aspirators, used for abortions.
Women were being escorted from other refugee camps to the Kukes hospital. Amid horrendous conditions and the smell of urine, with stray cats and other animals wandering about, the hospital was performing sterilizations and abortions. Dr. Gezim Bashka, head of maternity services in Kukes hospital, told the Italian news agency ANSA that she was “short of antibiotics and serum, but, much superfluous material, like a shipment of birth control, arrived today.”
The CAFHRI said this was reminiscent of Rwanda prior to the mass genocide there. Canadian General Romeo D’Allaire stated afterwards that peacekeepers were referring to the “rubberizing of Africa” by the West. Medical stores were filled with condoms and such provided by the UN, but were empty of desperately needed drugs and medical supplies. One doctor, in Kenya, complained he had no penicillin to work with, but had a warehouse full of condoms.
In 1996, a UNICEF press release described a six-month pilot project by calling it “reproductive health services,” and said it would make available a “package of services to a million starving refugees in flight along the border between Rwanda and Zaire.” The packages included “contraceptives and drugs to terminate pregnancies,” the statement said.
UNICEF has moved far from its mandate of protecting babies. Consider the 1959 UN Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child: “Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including legal protection, before and well as after birth …” Then consider the UN creation from l991, a revised Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This offers state protection of a child only after birth.
These activities have little to do with the true spirit of UNICEF, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in l965. After l966, evidence began to emerge that UNICEF and WHO were collaborating in population control activities. Of course, UNICEF always denied this.
In the late l960s, there was an aggressive push begun in the UN by Planned Parenthood and others interested in controlling the number of people on the planet. The old Malthusian theory got brushed off and resurrected – that overpopulation could lead to world doom, and that there was not enough food to go around.
The ideology of population control caused much tension among member states. Thus, in l967, then-secretary-general Thant created the Fund for Population Activities. It wasn’t long until all three agencies were entangled in the philosophy of Planned Parenthood.
In l972, a WHO-UNICEF joint committee on health policy met in Geneva, to discuss “ways of accelerating the expansion of family planning services to reach more people.” By l974, the executive director of UNICEF, American Henry Labouisse, stressed that more co-operation should take place between UNICEF and the UNFPA. Large grants began to pour in to UNICEF from the UNFPA. UNICEF’s “expanded mandate” now included “family planning.”
By l987, UNICEF “officially” endorsed abortion at the International Conference on Better Health for Women and Children in Nairobi, Kenya. UNICEF and six other agencies – all sponsored by UNICEF (the UNFPA, the World Bank, the WHO, UNDP, the Population Council, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation) – went on record as being openly pro-abortion. In a joint statement, they recommended that “legal, good quality abortion services should be made easily accessible to all women.”
There is plenty more proof available of UNICEF’s sordid involvement. In l992, UNICEF increased support for China’s one-child family program, complete with involuntary sterilizations and forced, late-term abortions, from over $2 million to almost $5 million.
In l993, the 7th International Women and Health Conference had to declare that research on “contraceptive vaccines” should stop. “UNICEF and the WHO, in the guise of bringing medical benefits to the Philippines and Mexico, brought exploitation, abuse, and victimization,” reported Pro-Life News magazine.
A “women’s health compendium,” was prepared in February l995 for the UN women’s conference in Beijing, China. It urged that “ready access to safe abortion services is one of the human rights of women.” It stated: “We especially want to acknowledge the support of UNICEF in making the printing and distributing of this document possible.”
Also in that year, Carol Bellamy became executive director of UNICEF. She has a long history of support for abortion, and is a former senator for New York state. Canada’s Stephen Lewis, a pro-abortion advocate and former NDP Ontario leader, is deputy executive director of UNICEF.
Last year, in UNICEF’s annual assessment of national child-related policies called The Progress of Nations, l998, an article entitled The Family Planning Gap alleged that “at least l0 per cent of girls aged l5 to l9 have an unmet need for family planning services.” But, the WHO went one better than UNICEF. The WHO said children as young as 10 need “family planning services.”
When UNICEF was established, it had noble aspirations, which the world admired. Life was considered precious then. Children had intrinsic worth and respect, and were tenderly protected by society. UNICEF has now betrayed its original mandate and reason for being. Though still helping some children in some ways, its is simultaneously killing or preventing the births of millions of others every day.
With the new alliance of UNICEF, the WHO and the UNFPA, things can only get worse. UNICEF is a long way from being a friend to helpless children.
