By Samantha Singson
NEW YORK, July 15 (C-FAM) - For months, the international community has been preparing for the September review summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As part of the preparations, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently announced the formation of an MDG advocacy team composed of prominent politicos and philanthropists who will “build political will and mobilize action on the eight Goals.” The list, which includes noted population control supporters and abortion advocates, is causing concern.
At the announcement, Ban Ki-moon praised his advocacy team as “a collection of superheroes in fighting poverty.” Co-chairing the superheroes are President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain. Group members, who are assigned to specific development goals, include former President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, cable billionaire Ted Turner and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Feminist groups have been targeting the September meeting as an opportunity to push for abortion as part of MDG 5 to “improve maternal health” and some have expressed dismay over the gender composition of the advocacy team. A recent post on the Ted Turner-funded RH Reality Check website decried “the gross irony” that in the same week that the UN announced the creation of a new agency on women, there is a gender imbalance on the UN high-level advocacy team.
Though Bachelet was named to the team, radical feminists are upset that she was not assigned the goal on maternal health. Pro-life advocates are also concerned about Bachelet, pointing out that she has pushed for access to the abortifacient “morning after pill” and supported regional efforts to increase access to “reproductive health services” despite Chile's pro-life laws. Bachelet is the rumored frontrunner to head the new UN Women agency.
Other Ban Ki-moon team selections are making conservatives uneasy based on their positions on abortion and population control programs. Zapatero, one of the team “captains,” has come under fire from millions of his Spanish countrymen for his socialist government's push to liberalize abortion laws, legalize homosexual marriage and remove religious education within school curriculums. Sachs, head of the UN Millennium Project, has avidly pushed tying “sexual and reproductive health” and “reproductive rights” to each of the Millennium Goals.
Ted Turner, who has given over $1 billion for UN programs, is on the record calling for a world-wide one-child policy similar to the one in China that practices forced abortion and coercive sterilization. Bill Gates, whose foundation has given millions in funding to abortion providers like the International Planned Parenthood Federation, is also on the record supporting population reduction programs.
According to reports from last year, Gates convened a secret summit of billionaires in May 2009, which was also attended by Ted Turner. With Gates taking the lead, the group decided to focus on overpopulation, and a “consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.”
Zapatero will host the first meeting of the MDG Advocacy Group in Madrid this month.
This article reprinted with permission from https://www.c-fam.org/