By Richard G. Wilkins
Professor of Law and Director, NGO Family Voice
An important United Nations Youth Forum was held February 6-7, 1999, in The Hague.Ê
The meeting, purportedly held to gather and restate the views of youth, resulted in a
Report which contained a detailed set of Recommendations for Future Action for the
upcoming five-year review of the Programme of Action established by the International
Conference on Population and Development (commonly known as ICPD + 5”).
The Report of the Youth Forum, however, does not accurately reflect the views of world
youth.Ê Moreover, many of the Recommendations in the Report directly conflict with
widely held religious norms.Ê The conduct and outcome of the Hague Youth Forum portend
the use of the ICPD + 5 review process to attack basic moral values on a massive scale.
As an initial matter, the Hague Youth Forum (as well as the NGO Forum that was held
contemporaneously with the youth meeting) was hardly representative of world opinion.Ê
Although both the Youth and NGO Forums were attended by numerous global NGOs, the
participant list for both events was managed by the Secretariate of the United Nations
Population Fund (formerly, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, still
referred to as UNFPA ).
Marianne Haselgrave, conference organizer for the World Population Foundation, announced
at a press conference that all NGOs attending the Youth Forum were selected by UNFPA
officials.Ê As for the NGO Forum, Ms. Haselgrave informed Peter Smith of International
Right to Life that there was a quota for pro-life and pro-family NGOs: only four were
permitted to attend.Ê This highly manipulative selection process could hardly produce
a group of attendees which accurately reflected world opinion.
But the UNFPA was not content merely to pre-screen all participants in the Youth Forum
and shut out undesirable participation at the NGO Forum. Pro-life and pro-family
participants at both Forums were closely scrutinized Ð and eventually harassed.Ê For
example, M. J. Anderson, contributing editor of the widely respected Catholic Monthly
Crisis Magazine, was followed by uniformed UN security throughout the conference.
In fact, Ms. Anderson s interview with the First Lady of El Salvador was monitored by
UN security until they were chased away by the First Lady’s own security detail.Ê UN
Security also tried to intrusively question a weeping young American journalist, whose
only crime was speaking to Bashar Jamali Ð a Muslim law student from Norway who was
accredited to the Youth Forum as a news correspondent for a Syrian magazine.
Mr. Jamali, for his part, was eventually subjected to the worst abuse at the Youth Forum.
After he had interviewed various Youth Forum attendees about controversial sexual
orientation language contained in the Forum’s draft Recommendations, Mr. Jamali was
accosted by uniformed UN security guards who demanded the return of his accreditation
papers.Ê When Mr. Jamali refused to surrender his papers, he was slammed into a wall,
thrown to the floor, handcuffed and escorted from the Forum.
Why did the UNFPA Secretariate go to such great lengths to pre-screen and limit
participation at the Youth and NGO Forums?Ê And why were pro-life and pro-family
representatives at the Forums subjected to surveillance and eventual abuse?Ê One need
only look at the work product of the Youth Forum.
The recommendations contained in the Report of the Youth Forum ICPD + 5” represent a
frontal assault on the family and traditional religious values. The very first
recommendation for action calls for instruction before the end of primary school on
sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The sexual and reproductive health right most often stressed by UNFPA officials, of
course, is abortion.Ê But the recommendations in the Youth Forum Report did not stop
there.
EXTREME “SEX EDUCATION” TO BE IMPOSED ON ALL CULTURES
Under the heading of Human Rights, the Report stated that: “Comprehensive sexual
education in schools should be mandatory at all levels.Ê This should cover sexual
pleasure, confidence and freedom of sexual expression and orientation.”
Mandatory sexual education in such matters as sexual pleasure and homosexuality
(encompassed by required training in freedom of sexual expression and orientation )
runs counter toÊ values of Islam, Christianity and Judaism Ð which all stress the
importance of sexual chastity and forbid homosexual relationships.
Such education, furthermore, can be expected to undermine not only the moral
authority of established religion, but the primary rights of parents who (confronted
by mandatory sexual training) will face considerable restraints in passing on their
own moral codes to their children.
The attack on the family and traditional religious values made by the Youth Report
is not accidental.Ê Parents are mentioned just once in the Report: in connection
with the supposed obligation of parents to mobilise media and diverse interest groups
to work with youth.Ê Religion, in turn, is also mentioned once Ð and then only to
diffuse and soften its impact.
Under the heading of Individual Development, the Report states that [e]lightenment,
education and sensitization of religious leaders and policy-makers to the rights of
young people is mandatory.ÊÊ In other words, if young people are to have the
supposed rights of sexual pleasure, sexual expression and sexual orientation elsewhere
proclaimed in the Report, religious leaders (as well as other policy-makers) will have
to be appropriately sensitized and enlightened. Even the UNFPA will not go so far as
to assert that religious leaders should be bound and gagged.
The world s religious leaders would indeed do well to become sensitizedto the
Recommendations contained in the Report of the Youth Forum, ICPD + 5. But not for the
reasons stated in the Report.Ê The world s religious leaders must become sensitized to
the Recommendations because, unless those Recommendations are effectively countered
in the coming months, basic values held by the world s great religions may in fact be
undermined.
OMINOUS WARNING
The Recommendations in the Youth Report are just the beginning.ÊThe Report itself
ominously proclaims: “This is not going to stop here, the Process has begun.Ê It has
been set in motion and will continue. The next step is to carry these recommendations
for future action forward to the Commission on Population and Development, also named
PrepCom, which takes place from March 22 to 30, 1999 in New York.”
Unless parents and religions from throughout the world make their opposition to the
Recommendations in the Report of the Youth Forum known during the March 22 – 30
PrepCom in New York, the ICPD + 5 review will become a vehicle for mounting a major,
frontal assault on traditional values.Ê This outcome is not only unfortunate, it is
unnecessary.
The Report on the International Conference on Population and Development proclaims
Ð not the irrelevance Ð but the centrality of religion and traditional norms.Ê
Chapter II of the Report, in a section entitled Principles, states that the ICPD
Programme of Action should be implemented with full respect for the various
religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of its [i.e., the world s]
people.
The Recommendations in the Report of the Youth Forum, far from giving full respect for
the various religious and ethical values of the world’s people, attempt to subvert and
change those values.Ê That attempt is improper.Ê The time to stop that attempt is now.