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More on the partnerships between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood
3/12/2010 10:50 PM
US Releases Human Rights Country Reports
3/11/2010 02:11 PM
3/11/2010 00:25 PM
UN Fertility Report Shows Dangerous "Birth Dearth" for Developed Countries
3/10/2010 06:34 PM
Spain: One Million March for Life
3/10/2010 04:31 PM
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Friday Fax
The Friday Fax is a weekly publication that reports closely on activities at the UN and European institutions that are harmful to the dignity of human life and the family. It is read by more than 100,000 people a week, including activists, scholars, policy makers, and government officials from around the world. The Friday Fax is an originally-researched and -written news story that regularly breaks stories about UN and EU social shenanigans.
International Organizations Research Group (IORG)
The International Organizations Research Group (IORG) is dedicated to advancing a deeper understanding of social policies advanced at the international level in order to protect and promote better national policies regarding human life, the family, religious freedom, and human rights. IORG conducts, promotes and publishes research, commissioning scholars from disciplines such as international relations, law, medicine, political philosophy, and security studies. IORG's flagship publication is its series of white papers examining the activities of United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations, foundations, and other international institutions.
Girl Scouts Distribute Planned Parenthood Sex Guide at UN Meeting
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations this week where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” The event was part of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which concludes this week.
The brochure, aimed at young people living with HIV, contains explicit and graphic details on sex, as well as the promotion of casual sex in many forms. The brochure claims, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” The brochure goes on to encourage young people to “Improve your sex life by getting to know your own body. Play with yourself! Masturbation is a great way to find out more about your body and what you find sexually stimulating. Mix things up by using different kinds of touch from very soft to hard. Talk about or act out your fantasies. Talk dirty to them.”
Competing Views on Maternal Mortality Reduction Clash at Beijing + 15
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Almost more than any topic, maternal morality has been the focus of this year’s meeting of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which commemorates the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing women's conference. While all agree on the need to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality, two main competing views on how best to do so have emerged – with one camp emphasizing abortion.
Stressing the importance for governments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, government delegations and UN officials have lamented the lack of progress on MDG 5, to improve maternal health. At the opening of the conference, Deputy Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja stated that there has been “limited progress on reproductive health” and that “maternal mortality remains unacceptably high.” Mayanja emphasized that “almost all these deaths could be prevented.”
Women at Beijing +15 Agitate for More Funding of New UN Gender Super-Agency
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The annual United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) began this week in New York and marks the 15-year review of the Beijing Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995).
While governments are supposed to be meeting to examine national commitments to implementing the UN Millennium Development Goals, the fight so far has been over the structure and funding for a new women’s super-agency that would essentially subsume the four major existing UN institutions dealing with women’s and gender issues: the Division for the Advancement of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, and the Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues. The wish is that women’s issues get the same institutional weight that children’s issues get from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) even though much of UNICEF now focuses on women rather than children.
UN Aging Report Warns of Dire Effects of Fertility Decline
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A recently-released United Nations (UN) report finds that the global trend of fertility decline and population aging will have devastating economic and societal effects on the developing world, particularly on women who are now targeted by UN agencies to further reduce fertility.
“World Population Ageing 2009” was published in December 2009 by the UN Population Division, a statistics research branch within the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
6,000 Expected at Annual UN Feminist Conference Starting Next Week
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Next week, thousands of participants are expected to descend upon the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York for the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). In anticipation of the meeting, radical feminist groups have been preparing statements and refining messages to push on government delegations at the meeting.
This year’s CSW is particularly significant because it marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Conference on Women. At the original 1995 conference, advocates attempted to establish a “right” to abortion on demand but failed when governments specifically outlined that no new rights – particularly, no new “right” to abortion – were established at Beijing. Since then, however, abortion proponents have not given up their attempts to push abortion rights at CSW and during periodic reviews of the Beijing conference.
New Report Shows American Law Firm Pushing Abortion on Africans
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), a New York-based public interest law firm that seeks to expand abortion access globally, has issued a primer on "reproductive and sexual rights" jurisprudence in Africa, including abortion. Its launch comes at a time when largely western groups are increasing pressure on African nations to liberalize abortion laws.
"Legal Grounds: Reproductive and Sexual Rights in African Commonwealth Courts, Volume II" surveys a number of "reproductive rights" issues in countries that inherited a common-law legal system, and includes a chapter on "Abortion and Fetal Interests." It is intended as a tool for "women's rights advocates who seek to develop and strengthen litigation strategies at the national level."
IPPF Africa Conference Pushes Abortion and Youth Sex
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) hosted the 4th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights. Plenary speakers included a United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary General, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, the Chief of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Africa Section, and the director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Liaison Office, as well as Dr. Jacqueline Sharpe, IPPF's President.
Major conference themes included promoting sexual education and sexual rights for young people, establishing closer links between “sexual rights” and “reproductive health rights,” transforming traditional cultural and religious norms about human sexuality, and advocating for legal abortion on demand throughout Africa.
US Congressman Calls Upon UN Delegates to Respect Life
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) In a speech at the United Nations (UN) last week, veteran pro-life United States (US) Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) addressed delegates from over 30 countries and urged them to respect the universal right to life as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reminding them that the right to life should extend to unborn children.
Congressman Smith, the keynote speaker at a briefing organized by Focus on the Family, urged delegates to resist the push by UN agencies and non-governmental organizations to "legalize, facilitate and expand access to abortion" in their home countries.
Chilean Maternal Mortality Study Undercuts Pro-Abortion Claims
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Preliminary findings by a prominent biomedical researcher examining the dramatic decrease in maternal mortality, over the past fifty years in the Latin American nation of Chile, appear to undercut claims by global abortion lobbyists that liberal abortion laws are necessary to reduce maternal mortality rates.
According Dr. Elard Koch, an epidemiologist on the faculty of medicine at the University of Chile, Chile's promotion of "safe pregnancy" measures such as "prenatal detection" and accessibility to professional birth attendants in a hospital setting are primarily responsible for the decrease in maternal mortality. The maternal mortality rate declined from 275 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1960 to 18.7 deaths in 2000, the largest reduction in any Latin country.
New UN Human Rights Treaty on Aging Promoted, Questioned
Co-authored by Emanuele Rizzardi
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, a federation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) proposed a new "International Convention on the Rights of Older Persons" and a new special rapporteur for aging. The group included the powerful American lobby, American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
The launch of the campaign for a new aging treaty took place at a panel discussion during the 48th Session of the Commission on Social Development, whose theme this year was social integration. In addition to AARP, the consortium included Age UK, Global Action on Aging, and International Association on Gerontology and Geriatrics.
