A new report by International
Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Vision 2020: Sexual and reproductive
health and rights – a crucial agenda for the post-2015 framework, details its
attempts to advance universal access to sexual
and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including abortion in the post-2015
development agenda.
IPPF is working closely with other pro-abortion NGOs and activists
at the United Nations, especially the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),
to not only inject the radical agenda in new sustainable development goals but
to have the agenda be the centerpiece of the new goals: “Guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health and rights
for all must be at the heart of the world’s response to the challenge of
generating sustainable development.”
The
report laments that globally, “Some
aspects of the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda are
inadequately resourced and sorely neglected, including access to safe and legal
abortion, access by adolescents, and access for the poorest and most
marginalized groups. Many individuals and groups experience discrimination and
stigma based on their sexuality, their gender identity, and their sexual and
reproductive choices and behaviours.”
IPPF
is promoting what it calls “a sea-change from the current Millennium
Development Goal framework” and to establish by 2015 “a new international development
framework that includes sexual and reproductive health and rights as essential
priorities.” The post-2015 agenda is being shaped through a multi-faceted
process that includes the review of ICPD Beyond 2014, marking twenty
years since the infamous International Conference on Population and Development
Programme of Action in Cairo. This meeting takes place April 7-11 at the UN in
New York and has been preceded by regional meetings.
IPPF
boasts of its success in hijacking these regional meetings:
The
International Conference on Population and Development review process has been an overwhelming success for sexual and
reproductive health and rights. This positions sexual and reproductive health and rights strongly vis a vis the
post-2015 process. All the regional
conferences – four of which were negotiated by Member States – produced progressive commitments to the sexual and
reproductive health and rights agenda.
The phrase ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ was adopted in most of the regional
outcome documents, going beyond the previous terminology
of ‘sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights’.
UNFPA has been at the side of IPPF
in the scheme to co-opt the meetings in order to produce contrived outcome
documents to which Members States in some cases issued reservations which UNFPA
failed to acknowledge in the outcome document as PNCI previously reported about in the ICPD Beyond
2014 meeting in Addis Ababa.
One
of the meetings that IPPF claimed as most successful was the Global Youth Forum which took place
in Bali in December 2012. The ‘Bali Declaration’ includes a reference to IPPF’s
own declaration, Sexual Rights: an IPPF Declaration, and the highly controversial Yogyakarta Principles.
This dangerously
extreme declaration demands action from governments including:
- Governments
and UN agencies should support the sexual and reproductive rights of young
people including ensuring access to legal and safe abortion that is affordable,
accessible and free from coercion, discrimination and stigma, providing support
and protection mechanisms that promote the right to choose.
- Governments
should implement financially sustainable policies and legal frameworks that
protect, promote and fulfill the reproductive and sexual rights of all young
people, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identities.
- Governments
must ensure that international and national laws, regulations, and policies
remove obstacles and barriers – including requirements for parental &
spousal notification and consent; and age of consent for sexual and
reproductive services—that infringe on the sexual and reproductive health and
rights of adolescents and youth.
- Governments
must repeal laws and regulations that permit violence and/or discrimination
against young people, especially those who are marginalized, including laws
that limit same-sex marriage, and criminalize YPLHIV and LGBTQI.
- Cultural
and religious barriers such as parental and spousal consent, and early and
forced marriages, should never prevent access to family planning, safe and
legal abortion, and other reproductive health services – recognizing that young
people have autonomy over their own bodies, pleasures, and desires.
The
emphasis on the regional meetings derives out of necessity for IPPF and UNFPA
due to their lack of success advancing the disruptive and distorted agenda at
UN meetings where knowledgeable country delegations have debated and rejected
the agenda. This attempt to use the manipulated regional outcome documents as a
bogus show of support for the SRHR agenda will figure into the current meeting
of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) as well as CPD in April.
There
is good news for pro-life and pro-family NGOS as IPPF acknowledges, “The political pressures that oppose prioritizing sexual and
reproductive health and rights are strong, and the landscape of issues that
must be considered for inclusion in the framework is crowded.”
IPPF
and UNFPA plan to use the regional statements to “feed into the Secretary General’s
report for discussion at the 2014 Commission on
Population and Development. Following
this, at the UN General Assembly Special Session in September 2014, the
Secretary General’s report on the Programme of Action and next steps will be
presented to Member States, and it is anticipated that it will then be
integrated into the post-2015 process.”
PNCI
joins Priests for Life and other like-minded NGOs working at the United Nations
to stop this hijacking of the critical post-2015 agenda and will work to defeat
IPPF’s plan to force inclusion of any reference to “sexual and reproductive
health and rights (SRHR)”, “access to sexual and reproductive health and rights”
and “inclusion of sexual and reproductive health services under Universal
Health Coverage” in the upcoming UN meetings and in the post-2015 agenda.