
Our colleague Peter Smith
reports on a significant pro-life,
pro-family success at the UN General Assembly as follows:
Under the inspired leadership of the Holy See's Nuncio,
Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the culture of death took a significant stumble
at the Third Committee of the UN in New York last week.
There are around forty resolutions crafted by this UN
committee in October and November each year. The worst resolution this year was
on “Protecting Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRD)” . Now to the uninitiated
this resolution sounds like a fine thing. However it is just a smoke screen
used by those promoting both a right to abortion and the radical homosexual
agenda.
To see what the opposition said about this resolution please
see a quote from the “The international Coalition of Women Human Rights
Defenders” own website :
“Also contentious were important references in the initial
draft acknowledging the risks faced by those working on issues of sexual and
reproductive health, reproductive rights and matters related to sexuality.
[Such words are always used as a euphemism for abortion and birth control.]
These references were excluded in later drafts of the resolution as a result of
the opposition voiced by a number of States from Africa, Asia and the Holy See.
It is regrettable and disappointing that the main sponsors and others were not
able to secure specific language related to women human rights defenders
working on these critical issues in the final text of the
resolution.”
The African group stood very strongly together , and introduced L-docs , which are
amendments that tabled just before the resolution is accepted. These were then
accepted by the sponsor Norway as they did not want a vote , but a resolution
accepted by consensus. This unusual step was taken because Norway and the
EU were not willing to accept
changes of any significance during the long and protracted negotiations.
This very good result, was obtained for many reasons. Myself
and my colleague Patrick Buckley, were there at the negotiations helping out as
we usually do. Sharon Slater and Marie Smith both did a fine job even though
not in New York. The African Group held together as I heard the South African
president had upset some African leaders and as a penance agreed not the split
this group at the UN. Another very clever tactic of Archbishop Chullikatt was
to have several Africans on the Holy See delegation. They also helped keep the
African Group on side. There was
help given by Muslim countries and Russia as well.
So the pro-aborts and LGBT advocates got no advancement of
their agenda at this session of the Third committee. As I have said many times
before, the Holy See at the United Nations is the conscience of the world on
issues of life and the family as well as many other things.