The World Summit on Social Development, held in Copenhagen in March, was supposed to offer solutions to poverty, unemployment and social disintegration. Instead, the conference was hijacked by the population controllers who use every UN form to perpetuate their over-population myth. Leading the assault on people on this occasion was the official Canadian delegation, which attempted to force underdeveloped countries to implement sweeping “health education” programs and services as a condition for receiving development aid.
At press time, the summit had just ended. Early reports from Canadian pro-lifers now traveling home give us a story that has not received any attention from the mainstream press.
Pro-life efforts at the preparatory meeting in New York in February had succeeded in persuading the U.S. government to withdraw a resolution that tied development funds into abortion, sterilization and contraception campaigns. In Copenhagen, however, the idea surfaced in a proposal from the Canadian delegation, headed by Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Human Resources Development. The proposal stated that developing countries would:
“Strive to establish or strengthen both school-based and community-based health education programs for children, adolescents and adults on a range of health issues including nutrition, common disease and injuries, and reproductive health as a prerequisite for social development.”
The term “reproductive health” is defined by the World Health Organization as including abortion.
Following discussion on the proposal, and after much lobbying of governmental delegations by pro-lifers, the phrase “reproductive health” was removed and a further sentence added which acknowledges the rights of parents and guardians to protect their adolescent children, and also refers to the right out-lined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The lobbying encouraged a handful of countries to enter reservations against the potentially dangerous order to developing countries. In a fragmented telephone call from Copenhagen, Louis Di Rocco of Campaign Life Coalition told The Interim, “It could have been worse, but there are still some very bad paragraphs which include the term ‘reproductive health’ in the summit document.”
The Copenhagen summit will likely be remembered as a global squabble over money. The UN bureaucracy is looking for new ways to fund its development activity as the richer nations cut back on their foreign aid budgets.
One proposal is for the introduction of international taxes to be levied on international travel, telecommunications, and all international financial transactions. An official estimate pegs the likely revenue at U.S.$1.5 trillion annually. Such a proposal would give the UN unprecedented powers.
At present, voluntary funding of the UN gives individual nations some control over the organization. International tax funding of the UN would, in effect, make it financially independent of the nations that comprise it.
Background documents prepared by UN bureaucrats for the conference show that this funding would be directed into expanding administration, creating new monitoring bodies and increasing the amounts given to favoured NGOs, such as International Planned Parenthood Federation.
This proposal was not passed in Copenhagen but is bound to return. A second proposal to increase the UN’s treasure chest was also watered down by the end of the meeting.
This proposal committed the wealthier nations into earmarking 20 per cent of their foreign aid for “social improvement” projects. Countries receiving such aid would have to commit 20 per cent of their national budgets to the same goal. Delegates, however, would only approve wording which allows both donor and recipient countries to work our percentages on a case-by-case basis.
While one group of delegates and lobbyists bickered about money, a second group attempted to further the radical feminist agenda to strengthen its position leading up to the Beijing conference on women in September.
The Women’s Caucus (a New-York based umbrella organization led by Bella Abzug) worked tirelessly during the preparatory meetings to ensure that the concepts of “gender equality” and “the empowerment of women” which were enshrined in the final document of the 1994 Cairo population conference were furthered in the draft document for Copenhagen.
Paragraph 7 states, “gender equality and equity and the full participation of women in all economic, social and political activities is essential… It is necessary to change the prevailing social paradigm of gender to usher in a new generation of women and men working together to create a more humane world order.”
The absurdity of a group of affluent, educated Western radical feminists influencing the agenda of a meeting called to find ways to alleviate world poverty, illiteracy and unemployment seems to have escaped the news media.
Radical feminists have used Copenhagen to further institutionalize their agenda. The ultimate goal is Beijing this fall. The Women’s Caucus will be in action during the last two weeks of March in New York City, where delegates are meeting to prepare the draft document for Beijing.
But the international pro-life movement is also mobilizing. Much experience has been gained from attending both Cairo and Copenhagen conferences. Pro-lifers will be active in New York, helping the under-developed countries to resist the pressure to reshape their values and priorities.
Next month’s Interim will contain a full report of the Copenhagen summit.
