3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street
London, SE11 4AB, United Kingdom
Telephone: (020) 7091 7091
Fax: (020) 7820 3131
Email: information@spuc.org.uk
Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) - 2 to 13 March 2009
by Peter Smith, 23 March 2009
For the past 14 years Peter Smith has represented SPUC at the UN, here he reports on a recent session in New York.
Each year in early March the United Nations (UN) in New York holds a two week session called the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). This Commission was set up in 1946 and was tasked with promoting women's rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields. Following the Fourth World conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, this annual CSW meeting has been used by many governments and various pro-abortion NGOs to promote a right to abortion. An NGO is a Non-Governmental Organisation that is approved to attend UN meetings. SPUC and a few other pro-life groups also have NGO status.
The negotiations at each CSW meeting revolve around a document called the "agreed conclusions". The topic for this year was titled "The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS". In practice, it does not matter much what the topic is, the government delegations from certain countries push their own agendas.
There has been much legal debate about whether the documents produced by the UN at meetings like the CSW are binding or not. The actual document produced from each meeting is clearly not binding and is just a recommendation for all the countries of the world to follow. However liberal legal scholars claim that repeating a phrase many times in UN documents can lead to customary international law. Conservative legal scholars and most countries of the world do not accept this view.
There are a number of key phrases that are used at these meetings, like the term "reproductive health". The meaning of this phrase has been fought over for the last 15 years at UN meetings. When a new delegate for a country asks for a definition of the term, there is a massive groan from the room. At the Beijing Women's Conference there was agreed a three page summary of "reproductive health" and related terms. By itself, "reproductive health" does not mean a right to abortion. However wording like "reproductive health services" may be taken to include abortion and the "right to reproductive health services" is a term the pro-life countries and pro-life NGOs resist with all their strength. The term is sometimes expanded to "sexual and reproductive health," encompassing a further range of medical and social issues.
At these UN meetings there are normally no votes, the delegates from all the countries keep negotiating until everyone agrees. Some countries work as a group like the European Union and sometimes the African Union. There is safety in a group, the individual spokesman can claim he is representing the group and doesn't need to justify his position with reference to a particular country.
A great battle joined at the UN in early March, 2009. Pro-life and pro-family NGOs were concerned that the Obama administration would be well prepared to promote an anti-life agenda at the CSW. They were not so prepared and got very little to be pleased with. Their two negotiators were junior career diplomats. Their attempt to get wording including "comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services", divorced from HIV/AIDS, was a complete failure. At the UN, words matter, and precedent matters. The term "comprehensive" had never been used with these words in any previous UN document. It is always hard to get a consensus for novel wording in UN documents.
The original document, of only five pages, had no Sexual & Reproductive Health (S&RH) wording to start with. This original document is produced by a small group of individuals from all over the world working with UN bureaucrats from the Division on the Advancement of Women
The NGOs were only permitted to observe the negotiations for the first reading of the document. For the remainder of the time we had to rely on reports of the business.
We were confronted with a 25-page compilation text after four days of negotiations. The different countries' delegates had proposed extra wording and thus the addition of 20 extra pages. This had seven potentially harmful references to sexual and reproductive health. The USA had put forward two references to "comprehensive S&RH services." They were also pushing for this wording in another place with no reference to HIV/AIDS. The tiny pacific island of Niue had inserted two references to S&RH services. The EU and Cuba put in one reference each to S&RH. Then Turkey had a "youth friendly S&RH" proposal. It was the usual suspects, pro-abortion countries and groups like the European Union, pushing a culture of death.
On Wednesday night, 11th March, negotiations went on to about midnight, and Thursday night was an all-nighter, we left the building at 7am on Friday (13th March). This is not an unusual occurrence at such meetings, and we provided food & water to delegates all that evening. This kind of service is much appreciated by delegates from poorer countries which cannot send enough delegates to work the long sessions in shifts. We welcome everyone, even people from pro-abortion countries.
Negotiations resumed on Friday and by 6pm the chairman issued an ultimatum: he said there would be no document unless an eleven-page text prepared by the vice-chairman was accepted. As there was no agreement on much of the 25-page text, the vice-chairman of the meeting picked out the paragraphs where there was most agreement and scrapped the most controversial sections. There was initial opposition from Iran and the Africa Group. However the document was finally agreed.
There were only two references to S&RH in the document and the first is of a general nature with the term "services" separated from S&RH, the second was so closely tied to AIDS that it would be difficult to read it as promoting abortion. We cannot claim a great victory, but this was certainly not a defeat.
The wording for these paragraphs is below:
That the commission calls upon member states to:
aa. Strengthen education, health and social services and effectively utilize resources to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and ensure women's and girls' rights to education at all levels and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, as well as quality, affordable and universally accessible primary health care and services, as well as sex education based on full and accurate information in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of girls and boys, and with appropriate direction and guidance;
and to:
ll. Emphasize the importance of HIV prevention as a long-term strategy to reduce the number of new HIV infections and, consequently, to reduce the burden of caregiving responsibilities on both women and men through universal access to comprehensive prevention, treatment, care, and support programmes, including sexual and reproductive health and services, and to increase access to voluntary and confidential counselling and HIV testing, investments in HIV/AIDS and sex education and awareness, based on full and accurate information in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, with appropriate direction and guidance, research and development of, and access to, new, safe, quality and affordable HIV/AIDS prevention products, diagnostics, medicines and treatment commodities, including female-controlled methods, and new preventive technologies and microbicides and AIDS vaccines;
The above wording was produced by the vice-chairman, Mr. Magarian from Armenia.
There was also the deletion of a reference to a convention mentioning the decriminalisation of abortion. It was good that this wording was deleted.
As with all UN consensus, non-binding documents, neither side is completely happy with the outcome, but in the prevailing political conditions this was something of a relief. . The result could have been far worse.
Most countries in the world do not take much notice of these kind of documents as they are non-binding. They are also very heavily slanted towards the most developed countries. The danger lies in the rich countries making their developmental aid to poor countries conditional on "international obligations" - essentially, demanding that poor countries promote reproductive health/abortion provision if they wish to receive aid. Compliance Committees of the UN are also trying to make countries decriminalise abortion. Although, like the documents they "enforce" these Committees can only make recommendations that are non-binding and non-enforceable, they are another hostile factor and a source of difficulties for states with restrictive abortion laws.
These pressures from "non-binding" conferences and
enforcement committees, must be resisted if countries - especially poorer countries
- are to maintain the right to protect unborn children and their mothers from
the scourge of abortion.
