The Hidden Cost of a UN Interpretation of New UN Treaty
Will ratifying the newest UN human rights treaty place additional financial burdens on the U.S., international institutions and others? Advocates are heavily lobbying the U.S. to ratify the newest UN human rights treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. Some promise U.S. decision-makers that ratification will not change anything domestically, but will [...]
WHO: Free Guidance for Melinda
Melinda Gates has just received a free lesson on how to spend the four billion dollars collected by her foundation and the UNFPA to promote and provide contraception in Sub-Saharan Africa. The most recent WHO Bulletin contains an interesting study detailing how marketing campaigns had a positive impact on condom use in Sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine, with [...]
Either Dishonest or Uninformed
This report from the Seattle Times says the “UN” has announced that the Philippines should pass a controversial reproductive health bill. I have no doubt whoever said something wants the Filipinos to believe the “UN” said it. The thing is that the UN speaks to the world through the General Assembly and sometimes the Security [...]
Eliminating People to Help People?
Can a “human-centered approach” to issues include policies with the express purpose of eliminating people? This argument is cropping up, particularly in debates over climate change and now health care. Hard-core believers of climate change have argued that a key way to reduce greenhouse gases is to reduce people. This was rejected most recently at Rio+20 when UNFPA and [...]
Human Rights Roulette: What it Means to Ratify a New UN Treaty
The United Nations Convention on the Protection of Persons with Disabilities is certainly a nobly inspired document, but it creates more problems than it solves. The Senate thankfully has not been able to vote on the ratification of the new treaty, this week, in time for the summer recess. But sooner, rather than later, and possibly as soon [...]
Melinda’s Message to Dying Mothers: “Sorry, You Should Have Used a Condom”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health is telling mothers that die because they choose to have children that using condoms could have prevented their complications in pregnancy. In an article published in Lancet, “Maternal deaths averted by contraceptive use: an analysis of 172 countries”, the Gates funded institute concludes that contraception is a [...]
CEDAW Expert Supervillains Keep Hurting Women
Staff from every major, and not so major, UN entity, human rights agency, program and organization showed up yesterday morning in Conference Room 3 of the temporary North Lawn Building at UN Headquarters in New York at a commemorative event for the 30th anniversary of the CEDAW Committee. Later during the evening, the same crowd [...]
Kicking Off 30 Years of Women’s Rights
The 30th Anniversary session of the CEDAW Committee kicked off yesterday in New York at UN Headquarters. After listening to Ms. Silvia Pimentel (Chair of the CEDAW Committee) and Mr. Jan Eliasson (Deputy Secretary-General of the UN) praise the work of CEDAW, the speeches discussing the necessity of advancing women’s political participation around the [...]
European Parliament Condemns China’s One Child Policy and Sex Selective Abortion
A Resolution at the EU Parliament last week raised alarm bells regarding the recent controversy in China surrounding the forced abortion that Feng Jianmei was forced to undergo. The resolution calls into question the one child policy and condemns forced abortions and sex selective abortion. It also instructs EU diplomats to engage their Chinese counterparts on these [...]
Rio + 20 in Pics
You can check google for more pics of the conference. Here is a selection of pics to give a different perspective. The Earth is Sick and Humans are the Problem. A poster hangs in the main entrance of the Rio +20 pavillion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, showing that human beings are the disease that plagues the earth. Some [...]
Rio + 20: Green Economy Loses, Sovereign States Win, Civil Society Disappointed
Rio + 20 was touted as the most important United Nations Conference ever by the UN bureaucracy led by the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. It was also touted to be a UN Conference where we would witness unprecedented collaboration between Governments and civil society. To that end, for the past two years civil society had [...]
Rio + 20: Holy See Shines Light in the Midst of Darkness
If you are reading this, you are probably afraid that what is going on in Rio de Janeiro right now during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development is nothing other than the proverbial “blind leading the blind”. As countries hurry to make politically expedient and alarmist statements about climate change, the green economy and reproductive [...]
Rio + 20: Brazil Takes Control of Document
It was almost expected, and everyone here in Rio is taking it on the chin. Late Friday night it became inevitable. The outcome document of the Rio + 20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development will not be the result of multilateral negotiations carried out under the rules of the United Nations, but will be controlled by Brazil, the host [...]
Rio + 20: No Guarantees of a Sustainable Future
The UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, is now in its third day. It has been touted as the most significant UN Conference ever. That’s what we’ve been hearing from the Secretary General and his UN political sales fleet made up of high and low ranking UN staff and delegations for [...]
Rio + 20: The Future We Want and Population Control
“The Future We Want” is the title chosen for the document that will be the outcome of the Rio + 20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. For the moment, it looks as though Population Control will not feature in that document as a result of developing countries’ refusal to bow to demands from western countries [...]
U.S. State Department Announces Rio +20 Delegation, Hillary Clinton Included
Here is the official wire: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Head U.S. Delegation to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will head the U.S. delegation to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, which will take place June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The [...]
UK Government Funds Forced Sterilizations in India
The British government gave $268 million to the government of India for a program that forcibly sterilizes poor women and men, according to the Guardian newspaper. This news comes as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation prepares to co-host a family planning summit with the British government in London this July. Melinda Gates recently dismissed [...]
U.S. House Foreign Ops Bill Would Reinstate Mexico City Policy and Defund UNFPA
The House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee released its FY 2013 appropriations bill making serious cuts to international organizations that perform or promote abortion. President Obama rescinded the Mexico City policy shortly after taking office which allowed funds allocated for reproductive health to flow to groups like International Planned Parenthood and others. The Obama [...]
Pro-Abortion and Pro-Homosexual Youth Lobby Sent Home Empty-Handed from UN
By Timothy Herrmann NEW YORK, May 4 (C-FAM) Youth activists arrived at the UN in droves last week in an attempt to hijack the 45th session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) by promoting homosexual rights and abortion. However, countries rejected their demands and produced a fairly balanced outcome document that focuses on [...]
Family Breakdown at the Heart of Global Aging Crisis
By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. NEW YORK, May 4 (C-FAM) Is family breakdown the cause or the cure for the global crisis of population decline? Two new articles in top foreign policy journals raise the question. “As the flight from marriage and the normalization of divorce has recast living arrangements in Japan, the cohort of married [...]