Volume 1, Number 48

September 11, 1998

New Session of the UN General Assembly Begins Work in New York City

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) The 185 Member States of the United Nations convened the 53rd annual session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Wednesday morning. The General Assembly meets each fall and winter for a three-month session during which the Member States make known their positions on a whole host of issues ranging from disarmament and trade, to human rights and reproductive health. 

     The General Assembly moves like a glacier, rarely retreating, sweeping much before it. Rarely taking up entirely new issues, the General Assembly moves old issues slowly forward - sometimes imperceptibly -  from one year to the next. And few things stand in its way. More than any other body, the General Assembly is the mind of the UN. 

     Most initiatives of the General Assembly begin in one of six committees;  First Committee, disarmament and international security; Second Committee, economic and financial; Third Committee, social, cultural, and humanitarian; Fourth Committee, special political; Fifth Committee, financial and budgetary; Sixth Committee, legal. Most UN world conferences are essentially meetings of one of these UN committees. Each Member State of the UN sits on each committee. 

     The principle language of the General Assembly and its committees are resolutions which are for the most part non-binding on UN Member States. Indeed, the library at UN headquarters is piled high with forgotten UN resolutions. Still, UN resolutions must be taken seriously as many of them call for the repeal of national laws. Moreover, in recent years national courts around the world have taken to referring to these non-binding resolutions in very binding ways.  

     Pro-life and pro-family UN lobbyists will focus their attention almost exclusively on the Third Committee, sometimes on the Second. These are the committees that advance resolutions on population, children, housing, aging, the disabled, women, human rights, refugees, and the family. UN feminists, years ahead of pro-family forces, have found ways to include their agenda in all of these areas. 

     First and foremost, UN feminists push for "reproductive freedom" which in official UN definitions includes access to abortion. Whatever notion that stands in the way of advancing this agenda must be struck down. This is why, for instance, UN bodies refuse to define the family along traditional lines. Feminists believe the traditional notion of the family -  father, mother, and children - must be permanently altered because it hinders the advance of complete sexual and reproductive freedom. 

     Since this is the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with the UN Charter considered one of the founding UN documents, veteran observers expect a major push from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and other powerful UN agencies to place "reproductive rights on the very top of the hierarchy of rights as recognized in the 1948 Declaration.  

     The first two weeks of the General Assembly will be taken up with speeches from presidents and prime-ministers. Committee work should begin within three weeks.

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