PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNITED STATES

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNITED STATES

A new kind of colonialism -- sexual colonialism -- was being forced upon the governments at the Beijing +5 negotiations, the President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, Austin Ruse, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, sponsored by the United States Mission and intended to address the negotiations on the proposed outcome document for the General Assembly special session.

Sexual colonialism attempts to spread to the developing world a personal immorality that has failed the rich West, Mr. Ruse explained. Rich Western countries not only cajoled the smaller ones, they also threatened them with losing aid, jobs and with being called "rogue states". The cultural imperialism meant that the rich Western countries were forcing smaller States to accept language that violated their own national laws and their long-held cultural and religious beliefs.

Some radicals claimed that a few countries were holding up the negotiations on the proposed outcome document of the General Assembly special session on Women, he continued. That was only political spin, and it was a lie. Opposition to the document was much more widespread than was reported by the media and it was far larger than just eight States. The real reason the outcome document remained unfinished was because of radical language being pushed by the rich Western States. It could have been completed last March if not for the radical nature of Western proposals on sexual rights, on homosexual rights and on abortion among others. The purpose of the press conference was to defend the Group of 77 developing countries and China against unfair attack and to point the finger back at the rich for stalling negotiations, Mr. Ruse said.

Highlighting specific complaints with the text of the proposed outcome document, Kathryn Balmforth, Executive Director of the World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University, said that the term "sexual rights" was a prime example of the "slippery" language being used to manipulate the developing world into accepting concepts that were not a part of their national laws and customs. Special interest groups were trying to use the United Nations human rights system in the same way they have used the courts in the West, she said. When democratic support for an unpopular cause could not be found, special interest groups often found their way around the democratic system. In the United States they used the court system. That was a model for what was happening at the United Nations.

The term "sexual rights" had never been accepted in any consensus document, she said. On the contrary, the term was rejected in several commission meetings following the Beijing Conference and at Cairo +5. The term, moreover, had never been defined. Those who were promoting the concept of sexual rights were pointing to a sentence in the Beijing document, which said that that women had the right to have control over and decide freely on matters relating to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Many women from the developing world rightly thought that that sentence meant the right not to be raped. It certainly did mean that. The problem with

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the language however, was that there were no limits on it. Issues such as rape should be addressed specifically and openly, and not be used as a thin edge of a wedge to get tricky language into the document that could then be reinterpreted in a way that was never intended by most of the women supporting that language.

Jeanne Head, the United Nations Representative of the National Right to Life Committee and Federation, said that as an obstetrics nurse she was concerned about the document's proposal to require training of healthcare providers to make abortion "safe and accessible". Abortion would never be made completely safe for the mother. The other problem was that the language would violate the "rights of conscience" of healthcare workers. The Platform for Action said that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion was inalienable and must be universally enjoyed. Almost 100 countries protected the unborn child in some fashion. The mandate for training healthcare providers and for increasing accessibility would apply to all the countries of the world, even though the language of the proposed outcome document did specify "if it was not against the law". Moreover, "rights of conscience" was a minimum requirement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The language violated the Hippocratic oath. There would soon be a situation where every healthcare worker in the world would have to provide abortion training to healthcare workers. No United Nations document should mandate accessibility or training to carry out a procedure for which the majority of the countries had laws prohibiting it and which believed that it was a violation of the rights of the unborn child.

Another speaker said that that the breakdown of the family had cost society a great deal. Sophia Aquiree, Vice-President of the National Institute of Womanhood, said that developing countries could not support their debt, let alone the cost brought upon them by the breakdown of the family. While it affected the economy in many ways, it had a particular impact on the development of the child, which in turn affected the human capital of a country. Moreover, resources were not being focused on the leading causes of death around the world, namely tuberculosis, malaria and diarrhea for children. The use of contraceptives was being promoted to prevent the spread of AIDS, which was not the leading cause of death.

What was being done to protect single mothers? she asked. The proposed outcome document did not offer an economic solution to the problem of the female poverty. While no money had been allocated for micro-credit schemes, funds had been very clearly allocated for reproductive health. In the developed nations, there had been a systematic change in policies affecting the family in the last few years because they had realized the costs incurred by the breakdown of the family.

Preservation of language supporting the family was crucial to the realization of policies and programmes which support women throughout the world, Yvonne Odero, Special Adviser on Gender Issues for the African Youth Alliance said. Without the support of the family, young women and girls were especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation, prostitution, trafficking and pornography. The family was the ultimate safeguard of women in all cultures, providing an area of stability and security in which women could develop skills, knowledge and creativity. Protecting the family as the basic unit of society could not become a

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clichèd phrase. It must be promoted and understood as a concrete reality. The family promoted youth and protected the most vulnerable members of society.

Wendy Wright, Director of Communications for Concerned Women for America, said that while women really were suffering around the world from abuse, neglect of human rights, what the Western nations were promoting would bring more degradation, abuse and violence on women. The western nations were allowing for pornography in the documents before the special session. Pornography not only affected women, but it also affected the men who were addicted to it, who were often left financially destitute and whose families were destroyed. "Pornography is not something that the Western world should wish upon the developing nations", she said.

Prostitution was another issue that the western nations wanted to allow for in the outcome document, she continued. Prostitution was the buying and selling of people. It was unbelievable that the Western nations would allow for the reduction of a woman to a piece of property that could be bought and sold. Abortion was also being pushed in the document. Abortion ignored the human rights of the youngest humans. Women were the ones to suffer the consequences of abortion, even legal abortion. They suffered infection, sterility and higher risks of breast cancer.

Pornography, prostitution and abortion did not free women, but rather led them into bondage, disease, violence and abuse, Ms. Wright said. Yet, it was the Western nations, the United States delegation included, that were pushing these things on the developing world. United States citizens had seen the failed results of those social policies, including the affect of abortion on women. The final outcome documents went beyond what was seen in the United States, where there were still some laws that regulated abortion, prostitution and pornography, by not allowing for any kind of regulation. Concerned Women for America had a petition signed by over 30,000 people asking the United States delegation to defend traditional values at the Beijing + 5 Conference and repudiate the United States administration's past support for the anti-women and anti-child agenda at past conferences, including abortion.

Mr. Ruse then said that a letter signed by some thirty United States Congressmen to the ambassadors at the conference would be released. It expressed great alarm over the negotiations at the special session and explained that the majority of United States citizens did not support the agenda being promoted at the conference.

A correspondent asked how the outcome document promoted child sexuality and pornography. Mr. Ruse explained that the term sexual rights was "elastic and empty"; that it could mean practically anything. He believed that it would ultimately mean that anyone could do anything with anybody at any time, beginning at age 10. It meant that once there was sexual desire, one had the right to express that desire in any way he or she saw fit. That would include children. The terms "sexual rights", which was overwhelmingly rejected in Beijing and at The Hague Forum in February 1999, was being forced by the rich West into the document.

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On pornography, Ms. Balmforth said that the United States was not explicitly promoting pornography, it was trying to modify the term when it appeared. Instead of condemning pornography in general, they wanted to modify it with the term "child pornography". It was degrading to women and deserved the condemnation of all the Western countries. There were similar efforts of Western nations to modify prostitution, so that it condemned only child or forced prostitution, as if voluntary prostitution was perfectly fine.

Asked to give a specific example of a gun being held to someone's head to accept the sexual imperialism of the West, Mr. Ruse said that just the past week, the Minister for the Family of Nicaragua was fired from his job at the insistence of the developing agencies of the Scandinavian countries and Germany. The Minister had also been the head of his delegation of Cairo+5 and Beijing +5. The reason he was fired was because he had refused to change the definition of the term "gender" to include a broad definition beyond men and women. His country also lost all United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) money, because they did not want to accept money on UNFPA-style family planning.

In terms of NGOs, they knew that they were outnumbered, Mr. Ruse continued. It was 10,000 to 25. Yet, they did not believe that the 10,000 NGOs were representative of their people, especially Latin America, a deeply conservative society. The idea of sexual rights for children was more radical than anything they were talking about. The conservative delegations were talking about traditional values, the things held dear by people in every country all over the world. They were not the radicals.

In response to a question, Mr. Ruse said that the human rights were not being narrowed down but were being broadened. Human rights properly understood was a good thing. But there were certain human rights that were not human rights and were deeply wrong. The killing of the unborn was one such example. Sexual rights for children could not be considered a human right. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women specifically prohibited prostitution. Yet not long ago, the Committee monitoring the Convention instructed the Government of China to legalize prostitution. Such documents were written in an elastic way, and filled in any way the Committee saw fit.

What did you think of the speeches of the African and Latin American countries that had gone out of the Group of 77 because they did not want to accept the church's or the Islamic position? a corespondent asked. Ms. Balmforth said that there were no conflict of interest rules at the United Nations. People could sit on national delegations and say things that did not represent the majority view of that country at all. There was almost a presumption that NGO and not the government was the authentic voice of the people. When there was any kind of democracy at all the opposite should be true. Some of the women from conservative cultures for example did not even know that the Committee was beginning to treat prostitution as a human right. When they found out they were appalled.

Asked to elaborate on the statement that the group opposed to the proposed final outcome document was larger than had been reported in the press, Ms. Balmforth said that there was a like minded group at the session. Five of six countries with the best negotiators had been targeted and isolated from the rest

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of the like-minded group. Those delegates had been attacked individually, and tremendous pressure had been put on them.

In response to a question about the position of the Holy See at the special session, Mr. Ruse said that the Holy See had no development money to withhold or people to fire. They had moral suasion, not billions of dollars to withhold from a government that did not do what it liked. Regarding opposition to the documents, there had been dozens of reservations to large parts of the documents.

Ms. Head said that the coalition represented every religious persuasion in the United States. They were not representing the Holy See. The Holy See was visible and was being used as a target. Many of the governments that were upholding the values of many religions around the world happened to share the same religion of the Holy See. The governments of developing countries were subject to great pressure, because they were dependent on development funds.

Mr. Ruse added that a government in line for membership in the European Union had been threatened this week with not being able to enter the Union because of some of the positions it had taken. "If you don't think these things are real, then you're not doing your job. You should go out and talk to these people and at least get them off the record".

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