Pro-Life Intelligence, 14 December 2007

UN health rapporteur is challenged over abortion

By Patrick Buckley, SPUC Education and Research Trust

Geneva, 14 December 2007 - Egypt's delegate to the UN's Human Rights Council has challenged the impartiality of Mr Paul Hunt, UN special rapporteur on health, because of Mr Hunt's support for a right to abortion.

Mr Amr Roshdy yesterday pointed out that the Centre for Reproductive Rights' website describes Mr Hunt as an advisor and mentions his UN role. The centre wants to make abortion a global human right. Mr Roshdy also said that Mr Hunt had signed the Yogyakarta principles on sexual orientation and gender identity, again citing his UN status. The principles reinterpret genuine human rights and attack the natural family based on marriage and other critical human rights.

Mr Roshdy pointed out that there was no consensus in the UN system on abortion and sexual orientation and that it was unacceptable that some countries which supported these issues should continually try to impose them on the majority.

Mr Hunt conceded that he was an advisor to the Centre for Reproductive Rights and said his approach to abortion was in accordance with the Cairo and Beijing conferences, updated to take account of the Human Rights Committee decision on KL versus Peru.

Mr Hunt also agreed that he, and seven other UN special rapporteurs, had signed the Yogyakarta principles. Ms Louise Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights, had welcomed those principles in a statement issued when they were recently presented at an informal meeting in UN headquarters in New York.

Many delegates spoke in support of Mr Hunt's mandate and his work.

At an informal meeting, Mgr Bert van Megen, the Holy See's representative, supported Mr Roshdy and added that what was at stake with abortion was the taking of human life in the name of someone else's supposed right to physical or mental health. During the later plenary session Mr Roshdy repeated his remarks which were supported by Pakistan.

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: "It's tragic that anti-life, anti-family ideologues like Paul Hunt are so powerful in the UN. However, it is extremely good news that countries are standing up to those in powerful UN positions who are promoting ideologies which are pro-abortion and anti the natural family based on marriage. The world is changing because the world's silent majority are standing up to be counted."

On Wednesday Brazil proposed a resolution to extend the health mandate which will be finalised during today's meetings.