The United Nations Exposed: A View From Within

The United Nations Exposed: A View From Within

By Alexandra Colen
Created 2010-03-22 08:18

At the recent conference on the Status of Women at the United Nations I represented Belgium. I observed that with the Obama administration the United States has joined the hardcore Marxist social engineers.

As chair of the Belgian Parliament’s Committee for Equal Opportunities and Social Emancipation I was sent to New York to be part of the national delegation to the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. If I had not been chair I would probably not even have known about the mission to New York, as I do not belong to the in-crowd of progressive Marxist society-shapers that frequent the conferences of this influential institute of world governance. It was a unique opportunity to observe the UN at work.

My observation started at home, where I attended some of the preparatory meetings to define my government’s position on the main theme of the conference. These meetings were attended by civil servants from the ministries and representatives from a plethora of equal opportunities institutes and NGOs, all lavishly subsidized and accountable to no-one. In the name of “women’s empowerment” they were chiefly concerned with the continuation of attention (and funding), on the part of the government and the UN, for their own activities. Through this system of “consultation” at the preparatory level the NGOs themselves provide the input for the “agreed conclusions”, concrete recommendations of the UN for measures to be implemented by governments and various institutions at all levels, from international to local.

In New York I attended some of the plenaries and panels of the conference (and gave a brief two-minute speech during the panel on “the evolving status and role of national mechanisms for gender equality”). To see how the UN’s texts are developed, however, I attended the “informal consultations” where the representatives of the member states attempted to write consensus texts for resolutions to be adopted by the conference.

Imagine entering a factory hall where a large, complicated machine is in operation. Raw materials are poured in at one end and at various intervals along the belt. There is a regular rhythm, some hissing, clanging, churning from indeterminate sources, a panel with lights that appears to accompany the whole process. Whatever is produced at the other end is immediately packaged and whisked away. Sitting in the room where the “informal consultations” are held, observing the process by which UN resolutions are written, is a similar experience. There is a draft text. At first observation it is unclear where it came from and how it got there. The same applies to the people round the table. Who are they and what are they doing? One thing is clear: the resolution is inevitable, and most of the content of the resolution is inevitable, too. Whoever gets to write the first draft determines the content and thrust of the text.

I asked our diplomats about the draft text and the people. Apparently any country can submit a draft resolution. Once it is submitted, the other countries are doomed to participate in the informal consultations during which the text is adapted until it can be accepted in a general consensus. This year Palestine caused some embarrassment among the diplomats by submitting a resolution (together with Yemen) which laid the blame for the situation of Palestinian women within their own society entirely on Israel. So all 45 missions of the member states of the UN sent out diplomats to try to modify paragraphs such as (from the draft [pdf]):

Expressing deep concern about the grave situation of Palestinian women in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, resulting from the severe impact of the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation and all of its manifestations,”

And

“2. Reaffirms that the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society, and stresses the importance of efforts to increase their role in decision-making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution and to ensure their equal participation and involvement in all efforts for the achievement, maintenance and promotion of peace and security;

3. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, comply…”

until they had a resolution which they could all accept.

I followed the informal consultations on a draft resolution entitled “Eliminating Maternal Mortality and Morbidity through the Empowerment of Women”. Clearly the problem of maternal mortality was only being used as a peg to (re)iterate positions relating to the “empowerment of women”. The resolution was submitted by the new administration of the United States which wanted to make its mark on the UN conference with a very liberal text that included contraception and abortion as means to be promoted and funded by the UN (and by governments at all levels) in efforts to reduce maternal mortality around the world. The Obama administration wanted to enter the world of “women’s rights” apparatchiks and lobbyists with a flourish and immediately take the lead in the feminist cause. Hillary Clinton was returning to the US specially to be present when the resolution, a top priority for the new administration, was officially tabled and accepted on the last day of the conference. Clearly the mood was to be one of triumph. But before that moment the US had to chair endless “informal consultations” to achieve a text which could be accepted by all the UN members.

The chair was a hard, impatient woman who led the meetings aggressively and would have rammed her text down the negotiators’ throats if she could. The US strategy was consummate. They had found a cross-regional alliance of co-sponsors to submit the draft resolution along with them. A number of these were countries from sub-Saharan Africa: a clever move, as this way the African countries could not form a bloc to obstruct the resolution. Other co-sponsors were Belarus, Colombia, Thailand and Indonesia, and Israel.

The discussions constituted a veritable battle; a battle of words, psychology and endurance. The aim of the US and its allies was to gain ground on the ideological battlefield by including references to “sexual and reproductive rights” in the text, i.e. to include the right to unlimited access to contraception and abortion in the recommendations of the UN (on maternal mortality!) to the governments of the world. Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and Australia were extremely diligent in this respect. Their relationship with the chair was of an amicable nature and the chair smiled upon them each time she gave them the floor. The Turkish representative could have been a hardcore feminist in the Europe of the seventies; the chair welcomed her as a shining star in the firmament of the women’s rights universe. At one point she advised the group to accept an amendment suggested by Turkey with the words “Turkey has been extremely helpful, so don’t oppose them here.” Turkey was also helpful in opposing the alliance of Iran, Qatar and Syria, who wished to adapt some of the wording relating to girls and to marriage. They were given the floor with an air of impatience. The liberals resented the fact that the “pro-lifers”, whom they spoke of with anger and hatred, had enlisted their help. Among the assembled national delegates the pro-lifers were few. The representatives of the Holy See, Costa Rica and Chile opposed the repeated attempts of the chair and her allies to introduce terminology which referred implicitly or explicitly to abortion.

The spokesperson for the European Union would have loved to introduce such terminology. However, she had to abide by the consensus which the 27 European Union members negotiated in separate informal consultations, held every morning at the headquarters of the EU Representation to the UN and chaired by a delegate from Spain, which currently chairs the EU. Here a similar battle raged, with the Spanish chair pressing for what she called “strong language.” She had prepared a “package on sexual health and sexual rights” for the EU members to agree on, a text which slyly attempted to introduce references to abortion and to “sexual and reproductive rights.” Malta, especially, was in the defense. Ireland, too, stipulated that it could not accept references to sexual and reproductive “rights” but only “health”. In general, though, the Irish representative seemed quite meek. In one informal moment it was mentioned that Ireland and Poland were “coming round”. The sweetness which the chair bestowed upon them was telling compared with the undisguised mockery that greeted the representative from Malta whenever he asked to speak. On more than one occasion he was subjected to scathing comments on the part of the chair. Informally Malta was referred to as a “hardliner.” Obviously the pro-abortion majority in the room did not regard themselves as hardliners, and could not imagine that others might not share their “enlightened” views.

I was witnessing a chapter of the Marxist push to reshape the world which triumphed in the West with the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The Marxist agenda, however, is one of global scope and its proponents will not rest until they have eradicated every last remnant of pre-sexual-revolution morality. Since the 1960s they have acquired powerful instruments to achieve this aim. They manipulate the complicated and non-transparent bureaucracy of the UN (they fondly refer to it as “the system”), which exerts powerful pressure on the governments of the world. Through this bureaucracy they aggressively advance their cause, initiating attacks on the core-values of family-based societies, especially the judaeo-christian values that have shaped Western civilization, at every opportunity.

These people also feel at home in the massive bureaucratic construction of the European Union, through which considerable moral and legal pressure is exerted on the member states. Within governments, too, they have organized an entire bureaucracy which is paid by the taxpayers and where the activists occupy key positions at every level: in political parties, parliaments and governments, in a wide range of councils and organizations which advise governments, in the administration and diplomatic services, and in a multitude of subsidized NGOs which have considerable influence on decision makers through a network of friends-in-arms. (My country’s delegation to this year’s conference on the Status of Women included government ministers, members of parliament, members of equal opportunities organizations that advise the government, employees of various NGOs, including one who said she was there because of her experience as a social worker at an abortion centre).

The activists consistently behave with responsibility not to the taxpayers who fund the systems within which they operate, but to their own agenda. This March in New York, the issue was not the plight of ill and dying mothers, but the promotion of a general acceptance of abortion as a form of healthcare, through UN texts which are binding for the member states. The more texts there are that include references to this, the more frequently the terminology (referred to by UN negotiators as the “language”) occurs in each text, the stronger the position of the activists. Any concept that has been defined and employed in the body of existing UN literature has been acquired. It can only be weakened by an awkward process in which states pronounce reservations at the moment the text is accepted. But such reservations do not stop the process. The bureaucracies grind on, the activists launch new attacks. They constitute so massive an army, they are so relentless and dedicated that one wonders how long the few brave defenders will hold out?

Dr. Alexandra Colen MP is a member of the Belgian House of Representatives and chairperson of the House Equal Opportunities Committee

See also:

Shelters in the Emirates, Women’s Lib in Geneva, 19 December 2008

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Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4363