Volume 1, Number 49

September 17, 1998

UNFPA's Sadik Calls for "Reproductive Freedom" at Annual UN NGO Forum

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), addressed the opening session of the UN's annual conference of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Monday morning at UN headquarters in New York. More than 2,000 representatives from 600 international NGOs crowded into the meeting hall of the UN General Assembly to hear the welcoming speeches for this UN event.  

     It is a mainstay of many UN meetings, whatever the topic, that organizers ensure the introduction of  "reproductive health." Even though the three-day conference was called "The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: From Words to Deeds," and was to be a celebration of one of the two founding documents of the UN, Sadik's speech dealt almost exclusively with "reproductive freedom," a concept that is conspicuously absent from the Universal Declaration. 

     It is a frequent point of controversy whether UN agencies promote abortion as a means of family planning, or in the context of "reproductive health." According to Sadik and other UNFPA officials, the UN is formally constrained from doing so by the Program of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). However, the ICPD definition of "reproductive health" specifically includes methods "for regulation of fertility which are not against the law." In turn, "fertility regulation" has been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as including "interrupting unwanted pregnancies," a term that is clearly synonymous with abortion. Furthermore, less than six sentences into her address on Monday, Sadik made a thinly veiled reference to abortion rights. "Women must be free to make choices of their own, in all areas of their lives." 

     Sadik added that "fundamental to freedom of choice are decisions concerning reproductive and sexual health...A number of issues still limit women's freedom to exercise their right to reproductive health." One of the "limits" cited by UN feminists as restricting this "reproductive freedom" is organized religion, like Catholicism and Islam. 

     Another major theme of the UNFPA and the WHO in recent months has been that adolescents must also be free from "sexual and reproductive health" constraints. Sadik said UNFPA was "proud to have supported" the recent Third World Youth Forum and the subsequent First World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth which, she noted, "confirmed that the right to reproductive health extends to adolescents." In reality, according to pro-family groups who lobbied the World Youth Forum, UN agencies not only "supported" that gathering, but heavily stage-managed its outcome by suppressing the voices of more conservative youth representatives in attendance. Women's Caucus on Gender Justice Split on Support for International Criminal Court (ICC).

     Donna Axel, a founding member of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice, announced at a UN briefing yesterday that the Women's Caucus has not yet taken a position on the draft statutes of the International Criminal Court. Certain members of the Women's Caucus had hoped for a more radical document than the one produced last July in Rome. 

     Axel went on the explain that in October the UN General Assembly will set up a commission that will fine-tune certain aspects of the ICC document.

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