Sexual Rights Initiative & Association for Women’s Rights in Development
Fact Sheet
Recent moves at the UN for ‘protection of the family’ conflict with established principles of international human rights law, including universality and indivisibility.
Equality and respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all family members is essential to family well-being and to society at large. We must recognize the centrality of the human rights of individuals within family contexts and condemn and effectively act on abuses of human rights that take place in family contexts.
NORAD
A Study of Religious NGOs at the United Nations
This study focuses on religiously motivated lobbying groups at the UN. This process engages powerful alliances across religious divides – Catholics and Mormons; Christians and Muslims; Russian Orthodox and American fundamentalists find common ground on traditional values at the UN.
The conservative religious lobbies comprise constellations of different organizations with various religious affiliations. However, conservative Christian actors constitute a particularly influential bloc wedded to a distinctly conservative social agenda and motivated by pre-modern ideas about family politics, gender issues and women’s health. Their influence does not reflect their number but is largely due to a striking ability to build alliances across religious boundaries as well as elicit the support of religious communities around the world.
This loose coalition of conservative, Christian and mainly US-based NGOs is unified by a critical and defensive stand against modern socio-political developments (secularisation, feminism, the sexual revolution), which they see as a serious threat, not only to religion, but to society, which depends for its stability on traditional moral values and a patriarchal social order, framed as “family values”, and conceived as absolute moral standards laid down in pre-modern sacred texts or authoritative religious teachings.
In addition to their engagement in UN committee work, the religious NGOs are effective at reaching out to member states on pro-family values and against a liberal SRHR-agenda at the UN General Assembly. Their long-term aim is to build a permanent pro-family bloc among conservative member states from Muslim and developing countries. To this end they pursue a strategy carved out by the Vatican. Having a special status as permanent observer state to the General Assembly, the Vatican has full access to the entire UN system, and plays a key role among religious actors.
This report to the Thirty-first session of the UN Human Rights Council (February/March 2016) by the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues covers the following areas:
- Country Visit to Brazil
- Afro-Brazilians, including Quilombos and other traditional communities
- Brazilian Roma
- Religious communities of African origin, including Candomblé and Umbanda communities
- Minorities and discrimination based on caste and analogous systems of inherited status
- Specific areas of impact of discrimination in caste-based and analogous systems
- Civil and political rights
- Economic, social and cultural rights
- Situation of caste-affected women and girls
- Initiatives and good practices to address caste-based discrimination
- United Nations system
- National legislation and special measures
- Civil society initiatives
This resource is a news item from Christian Daily, reposted from a publication by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), an anti-rights, anti-choice, and anti-LGBT organization based in the USA, which works to influence policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions.
The news item covers elements of the 48th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development in New York, April 2015. It depicts the UN Population Fund as bullying smaller Global South nations towards “tolerance” in areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights.
This resource from Catholics for Choice provides a selected biography of speakers from the World Meeting of Families (WMF) held in Philadelphia USA in 2015.
The WMF is a United States based coalition that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. The WMF is active worldwide and organizes regular “pro-family” conventions. The organization has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group since 2014, for its involvement with the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law and opposing LGBT rights internationally
Read futher coverage of the World Meeting of Families 2015:
This resource from Catholics for Choice gives an overview of the World Meeting of Families (WMF) held in Philadelphia USA in 2015.
The WMF is a United States based coalition that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. The WMF is active worldwide and organizes regular “pro-family” conventions. The organization has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group since 2014, for its involvement with the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law and opposing LGBT rights internationally
Read futher coverage of the World Meeting of Families 2015:
This resource from Catholics for Choice covers Day Three of the World Meeting of Families (WMF) held in Philadelphia USA in 2015.
The WMF is a United States based coalition that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. The WMF is active worldwide and organizes regular “pro-family” conventions. The organization has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group since 2014, for its involvement with the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law and opposing LGBT rights internationally
Read futher coverage of the World Meeting of Families 2015:
- Day One
- Day Two
- Selected Biography of Speakers
- The World Meeting of Families: An Introductory Report
This resource from Catholics for Choice covers Day Two of the World Meeting of Families (WMF) held in Philadelphia USA in 2015.
The WMF is a United States based coalition that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. The WMF is active worldwide and organizes regular “pro-family” conventions. The organization has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group since 2014, for its involvement with the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law and opposing LGBT rights internationally
Read futher coverage of the World Meeting of Families 2015:
This resource from Catholics for Choice covers Day One of the World Meeting of Families (WMF) held in Philadelphia USA in 2015.
The WMF is a United States based coalition that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. The WMF is active worldwide and organizes regular “pro-family” conventions. The organization has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group since 2014, for its involvement with the 2013 Russian LGBT propaganda law and opposing LGBT rights internationally
Read futher coverage of the World Meeting of Families 2015:
