Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Significant pro-life, pro-family success in the UN General Assembly


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.