Report On The UN’s Special Session Of Cairo+5

NEW YORK, July 2 (LSN) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
addressed the opening session of the 21st special session of the UN’s
General Assembly on Wednesday. The special Cairo+5 session was
designed to review the success (or failure) in countries’ attempts to
implement the population control agenda of the 1994 Cairo conference
on population.

Setting the tone for the conference, Annan attempted to create an
artificial sense of agreement over an issue which has bogged down so many
subsequent UN conferences including the prepatory conferences for
Cairo+5. “All States now understand that, if they are to provide
adequately for the future health and education of their citizens, they
need to incorporate population policies into their development
strategy,” alleged the UN leader.

Apparently wanting to give the impression that he has his hand on the
pulse of the world, he said, “since Cairo, the world does understand
it - and understand, too, that we have to stabilize the population of
this planet…. There is a limit to the pressures our global environment can
stand. One form of pressure is the sheer size of the world’s population.”

Human rights is the solution to this problem, he continued, adding
that “we now realize that sexual and reproductive health is an essential part
of those rights.”

For Annan’s full address see:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990630.SGSM7056.html

During the opening session of the conference, the alleged acquiescence
to the UN’s ideal of universal reproductive rights was exposed as the
fraud it is. On one side, abortion proponents were talking about the
inexcusable act of denying abortion, on the other, developing nations
were demanding autonomy, especially over decisions around the legality of abortion.

Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development for the
United Kingdom told the General Assembly that “it is hard to forgive
those who deny women access to contraception and drive them into the
arms of illegal abortionists and then claim to dislike abortion. The
fact is that women regularly risk their lives for want of a safe
abortion,” she said.

The radical pro-abort added that “there can be no talk about safe
motherhood and commitments made at Cairo if there is a failure to
recognize that abortion is a reality in the lives of tens of million
of women.” Continuing to advance her extremist view that abortion is
an absolute right that should trump all religious and cultural
concerns, she added: “Those who want to deny women’s rights cannot
hide behind culture, religion or tradition. None of the values of the
great world religions or proper interpretation of any tradition calls
for the oppression of women. The right to health is a fundamental
human right. Reproductive health is an essential element of health.”

Countering the pro-abortion offensive Galuak Deing Garang, Chairman of
the National Population Council of Sudan, argued that “a comprehensive
and holistic solution to population problems is one deeply rooted in
faith and a commitment to basic human values enshrined in all
religions and traditions.”“At the forefront of these values is the central role of the family as
the basic unit and the foundation of society,” he continued. “Equally
important,” he said, “planned parenting and population control must
not be viewed as a universal social charter seeking to impose the issues of
puberty, abortion and sex education on individuals and societies with
their own distinctive religions, social values and traditions.”

Garang challenged the attempts by the UN and Western nations to coerce
the developing world into compliance on population control. “The
credibility of the whole process will be jeopardized if any group of
countries [seek to] impose a certain course of action on other groups
or obstruct other groups from following a chosen course of action that
is compatible with generally agreed international principles and
norms.”

Defining his country’s position on the issue, Garang said, “it is not
for governments, non-governmental organizations and civil society to
formulate a particular form of social conduct for the young
generation, but for parents, notably mothers and grandmothers, who are
society’s primary socializing agents.”

For a UN report on these proceedings see:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990630.GA9573.html