Victory at UN Commission on Population and Development

-->

The first week in April was not a good week for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund which was first given the news at the outset of its conference, the Commission on Population and Development, that the Trump Administration had decided to withdraw funding of  around $75 million on the basis that UNFPA’s activities in China are complicit with that nation’s coercive population control program, the implementation of which includes forced abortion and involuntary sterilization.

The UNFPA problems continued later that week with a firm rejection of the anti life and family policies they and other UN organs are attempting to impose globally.  The outcome of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) was in fact a significant victory by pro-life and family forces and was the second time in three years that the Commission failed to produce an outcome document.

The 50th session of the Commission held at UN headquarters in New York, was themed, ‘Changing population age structures and sustainable development’. This was the first CPD since the Trump Administration took office in the US and was viewed by UNFPA and their anti-life allies, such as International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), as a testing ground to establish the direction the administration would take when faced with demands for the acceptance of controversial language on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education for children.

In recent years the negotiating strategy adopted by Western governments has been to insert many references to controversial issues in documents during the negotiating period and rely on the chair to issue a compromise text which inevitably retains some of those issues.

In this case the outcome document was similarly loaded up with controversial language and when the chair’s text was circulated early on Friday morning it was completely unacceptable. Negotiations continued all day Friday and a so called compromise text was produced by the Qatar Chair, Ambassador Alya Ahmed Al Thani, which in the end failed to satisfy either side leaving her with no option for her but to withdraw the text.

The decision by the chair to withdraw the document was enthusiastically welcomed by pro-life and pro-family NGO’s but was greeted with a shocked silence and anger by the anti-life and family brigade when the realisation sunk in that there would not be an outcome document and that their plans for sexualising children had been stopped.

One of the most poignant interventions was made by the Russian Federation’s delegate who told the meeting that pushing sexual and reproductive health rights as indivisible from human rights was nothing but an attempt to undermine international agreements on human rights.  Such formulations, he said, diluted basic human rights, which only discredited the Commission’s work.

 He also expressed opposition to use of the Commission as a “back door” through which to force various human rights concepts that did not meet the broader consensus.

Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), expressed regret that the Commission had been unable to reach consensus on its outcome document for the second time adding that it was clearly a challenging time for the Commission. As population age structures changed, commitment to improving the lives of women and girls was becoming increasingly important, he said, and he urged all Member States to continue their funding of UNFPA so as to restore its core budget.

UN pro-abortion and sexual rights agenda defeated at major conference

The 48th UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD) ended on Friday April 18th with a firm rejection of the anti life and family policies the UN is attempting to impose globally. 

The 48th session of the Commission, was themed, ‘Integrating population issues into sustainable development, including in the post-2015 development agenda’. This was the last Commission before the upcoming negotiations on a new 15 year programme to be known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and was regarded by UNFPA the UN population fund and their anti life allies, such as International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), as their best opportunity to influence the outcome of the SDG’s by forcing the acceptance of controversial language on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education.

In recent years the negotiating strategy adopted by Western governments has been to insert controversial issues into documents during the negotiating period and rely on the chair to issue a compromise text which inevitably retains some of those issues.

In this case negotiations on the outcome document over a period of 10 days were similarly loaded up with controversial language and by Thursday evening (April 16th) had become completely unacceptable. Negotiations continued on Friday when a so called compromise text was produced by the chair Ms. Bénédicte Frankinet from Belgium.  The Chair had removed a reference ‘sexual rights’ from the text but it still contained a number of unacceptable references.

Ms. Frankinet made it clear that her so called compromise text was final and demanded that the text be accepted without alteration as a consensus document. The Nigerian Ambassador Usman Sarki speaking on behalf of the African Group informed the meeting that the text needed further work and that in his opinion agreement could be reached in 10-15 minutes given the political will to do so. The chair was  unwilling to accommodate the concerns of the African countries regarding terminology such as ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ (CSE) and reproductive rights. Rather than qualify or delete the controversial terms the Chair withdrew the document.

The decision by the chair to withdraw the document was greeted with a shocked silence by the anti-life and family brigade, when the realisation sunk in that there would not now be any outcome document and that there was no agreement on how to integrate population policies in the post-2015 development agenda, the actual purpose of this year’s commission.

Ambassador Sarki, who had diplomatically tried to persuade the Chair to be more accommodating when he sought time to discuss proposed changes spoke very forcibly following the withdrawal of the document. “We came to the meeting with an open mind,” he said, adding that from the outset they had to deal with drafts “replete with controversial issues that have in the past not only proved difficult to deal with but are also extremely divisive in nature.” He put down a marker for future negotiations saying that member state delegations and UN officials “should refrain from putting language in drafts on which there is no consensus”.  He also said that lack of an outcome document should not be seen as a failure. “Member states”, he said, “have resisted the imposition of unhelpful ideas and concepts on all the membership.”

Mr.Babatunde Osotimehin, head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) told the meeting, in an obviously crestfallen manner, that he “regretted” that an agreement could not be reached and then went on to criticise countries for not being “tolerant,” because of their resistance to the UNFPA agenda.

The delegate from Nauru, Rennier Gadabe, complained about UNFPA harrassment of his Government during the negotiations “Does UNFPA he said, think they can do this because Nauru is the smallest member state?” UNFPA had pressured the Nauru Government to change its position on reproductive rights and CSE and was critical of the position taken by the Nauru UN delegation. The delegate angrily told the meeting that such tactics were “unacceptable.”

UNFPA has over the last few years spent hundreds of thousands of dollars arranging conferences throughout the world, in places like, Accra, Kuala Lumpur, Ocho Rios, Montevideo and other venues, with the sole purpose of firstly influencing the outcome of this session of the Commission and ultimately the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The onward march of the Culture of death in the international institutions.

Completing our series on the Nigerian pro-life conference held in Abuja, Nigeria, on June 5th and 6, we report on a presentation by Patrick Buckley, UN lobbyist for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). 

Mr. Buckley in his presentation, ‘The onward march of the Culture of death in the international institutions’, told the audience of between 1500-2000 people that no United Nations Treaty or Convention includes a right to abortion, on the contrary he said, they uphold the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death.

Photograph shows Patrick Buckley with Antonia Tully and Jean Fleuron  of SPUC

In brief the agenda, aptly named, by St John Paul ii, the “Culture of Death’ attacks the accepted moral code based on natural law and Judaeo Christian principles, it can and does kill the body and it can also kill the soul.

The agenda in the International Institutions attempts to change society by changing sexual and gender norms through the introduction of, so called, ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ and seeks to:

• ·      Reduce population by making contraception available globally.

• ·      Deny the right to life from conception and attempt to declare abortion to be a human right.

• ·      Promote acceptance of diverse sexual activities, sexual orientations and gender identities.

• ·      Attack marriage and the family and undermine parental rights.

• ·      Sexualise young people by insisting on the teaching of so called ‘comprehensive sexuality education’.

• ·      Attack freedom of speech, religion and conscience.

In his 1993 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (EV 28), Saint John Paul II wrote:

‘(…) we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the midst of" this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life’.

Pope St. John Paul ii, in response to a demarché from US President Clinton in 2004 saying that the Cairo Conference would create a right to abortion on demand, called for civil society organizations to attend the conference and oppose that agenda, resulting in it being halted.

The Beijing conference in 1995 attempted to put a similar agenda in place but once again the attempt to declare a human right to abortion was halted and the gender agenda also included in the Beijing proposals was stopped.

When the attempts to attain the goal of a human right to abortion through the Cairo and Beijing Conferences, failed there was a high level decision in the UN to change the rules and to find other ways to achieve the complete agenda. Two alternative strategies were developed.

The first was a “stealth strategy” which commenced at a round table meeting in Glen Cove, New York in 1996. Participants from UNFPA the UN Population Fund, the office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, representatives from the UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies and select NGOs met and developed a strategy to reinterpret existing treaties in order to find a so called 'right’ to abortion-on-demand, in universally accepted norms, such as the right to life.

The second strategy used by the pro-abortionists was that of attempting to establish customary international law by constant repetition of concepts such as ‘sexual and reproductive rights’.

-->

Both strategies failed to achieve their goal of abortion on demand.

Mr. Buckley told the meeting that we are entering into very challenging times in that a number of UN multi year programmes are coming to an end at the end of 2014 and 2015. The original ICPD (CAIRO) programme ends at the end of this year, 2014 and both the Beijing programme and the Millennium Development Goals finish at the end of 2015. The UN is therefore in the process of arranging the extension of these programmes and at the same time debating a new 15 year programme, which will be known as the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ or SDG’s. Attempts are currently underway to include the entire culture of death agenda in the SDG’s

In a way he said, this period is rather like the time in 1994 when Saint JP ii called Civil Society together to oppose the agenda.

UNFPA and its associates including IPPF and IPAS carried out a review to determine what is standing in the way of implementing their complete agenda which involves abortion on demand, so called sexual rights, and comprehensive sexuality education for minors. They then developed a new plan to remove the obstacles and fully implement their agenda.

Briefly they identified the Holy See as the major obstacle standing in the way of their agenda and they decided to prioritize the sexualization of adolescents and youth.

The new approach can be seen in action when one looks at the recent attacks on the Holy See by both the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on torture, which are a blatant attempt to isolate and silence the Holy See at a critical time in order to ensure their deadly agenda is accepted.

The new approach can also be identified through the seemingly never-ending series of regional meetings on youth held at various venues throughout the world such as the UNFPA, UN ECA and African Union Commission meeting Addis Ababa in 2013, which published the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in Africa beyond 2014, The Colombo Declaration on Youth Mainstreaming in the Post-2015 Development Agenda’and the Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration December 2012, to name but a few.

Mr. Buckley then turned to the issue of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), which he described as a highly controversial, rights-based approach to sex education that encompasses much more than simply teaching children and youth about sexual intercourse and human reproduction.

CSE he said encourages:

•            Acceptance and exploration of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities,

•            Promotion of the use of condoms,

•            Promotion of abortion as acceptable and safe,

•            Encourages youth to advocate for sexual rights,

•            Teaches youth without parental knowledge or consent under the guise of confidentiality or      privacy rights,

•            Promotion of sexual pleasure as a right,

•            Promotion of masturbation as healthy and normal,

•            Claims that access to CSE is a human right,

•            Teaches children and youth they are sexual from birth,

•            Encourages sexual activities too disgusting to mention,

•            Encourages peer-to-peer sexuality education.

Comprehensive sexuality education is completely unacceptable, it is pornographic, it damages young people and robs them of their childhood.

Mr. Buckley finished by making a strong and urgent appeal to the international community to stand firm in the face of these attacks. He told the conference that we cannot let them win, because what we are dealing with is actually the lives of the children of this and succeeding generations, our children and our grandchildren.

Children, he said, have a right to a child hood and programmes like this are completely unacceptable.

Major clash on abortion and sexual rights at UN conference

The 47^th session of Commission on Population and Development (CPD 47) held at UN headquarters in New York last week was a controversial process from start to finish

This year’s CPD has to be viewed through the lens the original Cairo Conference on Population and Development (also known as the ICPD or Cairo Programme), during which an uneasy balance was reached between the radical western sexual rights agenda and the more generally accepted societal norms for life and family issues, but that did not stop the anti life brigade from endeavouring to implement their complete agenda of sexual and reproductive rights, which includes among other things, abortion on demand, comprehensive sexuality education for children and adolescents and acceptance of every form of sexual practice including sexual orientation and gender identity.

Despite the fact that it had been agreed during a previous session there would not be a negotiated outcome document this year nevertheless it transpired that there would after all be a document but this would be procedural only. In the final analysis the draft document produced for the purposes of commencing negotiations was is fact much more than a procedural text and included controversial paragraphs which if accepted would have expanded the scope of the original Cairo agreement despite the fact that it was purported to be simply, an ‘Assessment of the status of Implementaion of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.’

The ugly, anti life agenda was all too evident during the negotiations.  The gloves were off and a deadly war was waged against the unborn, marriage, children and the family.

In what could be termed a marathon session even for the UN, the attempt to expand the carefully crafted Cairo Platform language to include sexual rights came to an end when, in the early hours of Saturday morning, it finally dawned on the anti-life brigade that they would not succeed this time in obtaining their cherished pro-abortion and sexual rights language in the CPD outcome document. The tactic of stringing out the negotiations in order to tire out ones opponents and get them to agree controversial issues, simply to bring matters to a conclusion failed miserably and the Holy See, the African Union member states and some others bravely held the line to the end.

The final statement in explanation position made by the Holy See Negotiator the Rev. Fr Justin Wiley at 7am on Saturday morning is reprinted below.

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations 

Statement in Explanation of Position on the Resolution

“Assessment of the Status of Implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development”

47th session of the Commission on Population and Development

of the United Nations Economic and Social Council

New York, 12 April 2014

Mr. Chairman,

My delegation is convinced that only a truly human-centered approach to development can function as the authentic starting point for policy on population and development. Through its unparallelled global network of institutions, the Holy See unceasingly manifests its commitment to serving the poorest and most vulnerable populations in working to achieve their integral human development. This includes physical, social, and spiritual development – keeping the focus on those most essential factors for development, including: quality and affordable education and health care, access to food and nutrition, water and sanitation, the rights of migrants, as well as policies that support the family as the fundamental and most basic contributors of this development.

My delegation acknowledges with thanks your efforts and those of your bureau and the Secretariat for all the hard work during this Commission. The resolution just adopted contains many helpful contributions for advancing integral human development, and we are appreciative to you for including quite a number of our proposals. However, as already expressed on several occasions by many delegations, including my own, the balance of this resolution remains heavily skewed towards peculiar interests of certain developed countries, as evidenced by undue emphasis on selected rights over the real development priorities consistently elaborated by major regional groups, particularly those from developing regions.

I refer in particular to the heavy focus on sexual or reproductive mores. In this regard, the Holy See requests that its reservations on the following paragraphs be formally entered into the record of this meeting: PP16, OP9 and 9bis, OP10 and OP11.

With reference to “sexual and reproductive health”, so-called “reproductive rights,” “family planning” and other language on which the Holy See has registered reservations at Cairo, we reiterate these reservations as set out more fully in the Report of the ICPD. In particular, the ICPD rejects recourse to abortion for family planning, denies that it creates any new rights in this regard and recognizes that this is a matter subject to national legislation. Abortion is always gravely illicit and can never be called safe for the child who is killed or the mother who is brutalized. Yesterday Pope Francis publicly condemned yet again what he calls this “unspeakable crime” in the following terms: “[F]rom the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care.” “Therefore,” the Pope pleaded, “it is necessary to reaffirm our strongest opposition to any direct offence against life, especially ... the unborn child in its mother's womb.”

With respect to so-called “education” or “counselling” on “sexuality”, we reaffirm the “primary responsibility” and the “prior rights” of parents, including their right to religious freedom, when it comes to the education and upbringing of their children, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a State Party.

By “gender” my delegation understands to mean “male or female” only, and to have no meaning other than the customary and general usage of the term.

We also were disappointment by the methods of work that led to this resolution. What was promised to be a concise, procedural approach without renegotiation of the issues ballooned into a partisan substantive jamboree during a week in which very little time was set aside for actual multilateral negotiations. We regret that the series of general comments for which we were solicited never matured into a full and robust negotiation of a true compilation text. We share the concerns expressed by the distinguished delegate from Bangladesh and others regarding the transparency and inclusivity of this final session. As a final procedural irregularity, you have inexplicably preferred to give me the floor next to last, despite the fact that requested the floor in third place, if I am not mistaken (it might have been second place). This manner of proceeding should not serve as a precedent for future Commissions.

We ask that the text of this statement be included in the official records of this meeting.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

UN population reduction strategy for Kenya

-->

The New American has published an important article highlighting the anti-life agenda of the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA and commenting on one of its reports issued during 2013 under the title ‘KenyaSituation population Analysis’.

 We have linked to the complete article but will comment on the report, its implications and will highlight some of the issues raised in the article. 

The controversial report claims that Kenya’s population is too large and growing too fast. UNFPA through the report wants increased efforts to reduce the number of children Kenyan women bear and encourages more “family-planning” and “reproductive-health” schemes to reduce the Kenyan population to levels considered “desirable” by the UN. Millions of dollars have been spent by the UNFPA on schemes aimed at reducing the number of children women bear rather than on ensuring that every woman has a safe delivery.

The timing of the Kenyan report is significant in that the United Nations is currently working to establish the basis of the next phase of its development agenda because many of its earlier programmes are coming to an end.

A series of meetings and conferences have been held in different parts of the world to try to establish the different regional priorities. Needless to say this process has been targeted by ideologues determined to ensure that the final outcome documents contain their deadly anti-life and family agenda and reports like this one are intended to feed into that process.

The New American article comments as follows

The controversial report, produced by the Kenyan government’s “population” minions and the UNFPA, claims that — despite dramatic declines in fertility over recent decades — authorities must do much more to bring the population down to “desirable” levels. Citing debunked claims about what the UN views as “too many” people supposedly resulting in a wide range of real and imagined problems, the radical document outlines numerous schemes to reduce the population. Among the suggested plots: more taxpayer-funded contraception, re-education, “empowering” women, reducing the “demand” for children, and more.

“One issue surrounds the realization of the policy objective of reducing total fertility rates from the current level of 4.6 to 2.6 children per woman by 2030,” observes the report, taking special aim at the poor. “This is because the demand for children is still high and is unlikely to change unless substantial changes in desired family sizes are achieved.” Incredibly, the document also states matter-of-factly that there is a “need for rapid decline in fertility.” Thus, the UN population-control zealots claimed, “the challenge is how to reduce the continued high demand for children.”

The more than 300-page report, dubbed “Kenya Population Situation Analysis,” does not explicitly call for abortion. However, experts say anyone versed in the UN’s deceptive bureaucratic language would see the real agenda clearly. For example, the document is packed with references to so-called “reproductive health” and “reproductive rights.” As then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in a 2010 speech, “reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.”

The article also highlights other issues set out in the report such as delaying marriage, establishing comprehensive sexuality education and so called sustainable development.

Another common theme throughout the report on Kenya is the alleged “need” to prod women into delaying marriage, family, and child-bearing. Some of the proposed methods for achieving that goal include “education,” with a wide range of schemes admittedly aimed at brainwashing African women into having fewer children. “The achievement of lower fertility is complicated by differences between individual fertility preferences and desirable fertility levels,” the report explains. In other words, the UN knows better than African families.

“Investing” in what the UN calls “education” and “health,” the document continues, would “contribute to the attainment of more favorable demographic indicators.” The “favorable” outcomes the population-control zealots are seeking, according to the report, include “lower fertility through enhanced contraceptive use” and “lower ideal family size.” The document also advocates getting more women into the workforce and government-mandated changes in “gender roles” as a way to ensure fewer African births.

“Sustainable development requires Kenya to be in a position to proactively address, rather than only react to, the population trends that will unfold over the next decades,” the widely criticized UN report continues, alluding to another one of the international outfit’s controversial ploys — sustainability — to empower itself at the expense of liberty, humanity, and national independence. “Universal access to sexual and reproductive health is still being constrained by a number of factors that are economic, social and cultural. UNFPA is expected to be in the forefront in supporting implementation of the Reproductive Health Policy.”

Dangerous Estrela report for new vote in EU Parliament on Tuesday December 10th

On Tuesday 10 December the European Parliament will meet in plenary to vote on a new version of the "Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights" put forward by Edite Estrela, the radically pro-abortion MEP. We urge all pro-life and pro-family supporters to email their MEPs to encourage them to vote against this very dangerous report.

The report suggests that abortion is a human right, calls for compulsory sex education for all children in and outside of school, and attacks conscientious objection for healthcare professionals. It is believed that Vicky Claeys, president of the European section of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has claimed publicly to having been a co-writer of the report.

When the original version of the report was debated in plenary on 22 October, MEPs rejected it and voted to send it back to the FEMM women’s committee. On 26 November the FEMM's women's committee again passed the report and has now sent a new version forward to the plenary for 10 December. The new version of the report is extremely dangerous and must be rejected in its entirety.

The contact details for MEP’s from every European Member State can be accessed on this link. Simply enter the name of the Member State to list the MEP’s and click on individual names to find contact details.

The Estrela report is very dangerous because it:

• says that abortion is a human rights concern, uses the myth of backstreet abortion to claim moral high ground yet no national or International law states abortion is a human right (section 33)

• gives free reign to abortionists, calls for the non-prosecution of abortion (section 36)

• presents liberal abortion laws, sex education, contraception as the ideal (section AK)

• says attention should be devoted to killing unborn children, claims sex education and contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies, contrary to the peer-reviewed evidence (section AE)

• calls for the rejection and overriding of all pro-life laws (section 7)

singles out and attacks traditionally pro-life countries for protecting unborn children (section U)

• wants the EU to skirt around the right of Member States to implement pro-life laws and policies, via EU strategies and policies about public health (section 13)

• wants new EU Member States to make access to abortion and contraception easier, considering prolife laws and policies as obstacles (section 17)

• wants to curtail countries from protecting its citizens, born and unborn (section 29)

• calls for abortion on demand on spurious “risk to health or life” grounds, discriminates against unborn children conceived in rape, makes no mention here of support for mothers who do not want to abort (section 66)

• again calls for the non-prosecution of abortion, dictates to EU Member States and countries wanting to join, making pro-abortion position a requisite for membership (section 37)

• attacks large families (section 26)

• attacks and wants to curtail conscientious objection to abortion, attacks faith based hospitals and staff (section 34)

• targets children and teens, calls for children, teens, young adults to act as sex education propagandists in the EU and even to candidate countries (section K and section 40)

• calls for compulsory anti-life sex education for primary school children onwards (section 41 and 45)

• wants to make sex education a human rights concern (section 42)

• dictates that the homosexual agenda must be promoted in schools (section 51)

• wants the EU to impose abortion as part of overseas development assistance (sections 76, 81, 85)

• anti-life definition of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) purported as a human right, essential for highest level of health (sections G, 1, 4, 14, 25, 67)

Action Alert: Estrela Report

We reported on October 22nd that the controversial Estrela report to the European Parliament on “Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” (SRHR) was referred back to the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM).

We can now report that this controversial report and is to be dealt with by the FEMM committee very swiftly. The report is scheduled to be discussed and voted on, in the Committee next Monday and Tuesday November 25^th and 26^th.

The report and resolution on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights presented by Portugese MEP Edite Estrela, actually represents an assault on parental rights and would undermine the Sovereignty of member states, in that it attempted to make abortion a fundamental human right, remove conscientious objection and introduce pornographic sexuality education even for young children .

The Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community, COMECE, condemned the resolution and pointed out that the EU had no competence in the matter.

The report although presented by Edite Estrella is reported to be the work of  radical NGO’s including the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in Brussels. 

This was clearly stated by Ms Estrela herself as she thanked NGOs during discussion on the report on the evening prior to the plenary vote. The involvement of IPPF in the preparation of the report was confirmed within the FEMM Committee: IPPF Europe's representative publicly claimed having contributed to the draft report on the very same afternoon it was presented in the FEMM Committee.

The speed at which the report is coming back to the table is surprising given that there are many other reports awaiting attention. Not only has the FEMM Committee put this as the first item on its agenda for its next meeting on November 25^th, but the report and its resolution has also been placed on the draft agenda for the December plenary session

We recommend that readers should in the first instance contact the members of the Femm Committee before next Tuesday and to ask them the following:

• To promote transparency and the public parliamentary debate: the MEPs should be invited to explicitly express a request for amendments to be tabled in the Committee.

Explanation: As the agenda of the Committee stands today there is no room for amendments that could change the content of the report but the report would actually just be debated and then voted. According to the procedure of the European Parliament it is not necessary to make “cosmetic” changes when a report is referred back to its’ committee but the political contents should reflect the different political positions. 

• To vote the alternative resolution: 

This was tabled for the plenary session and therefore cannot be ignored. MEPs should be asked to ensure that the alternative resolution is voted in the Committee.

• Ask for a public vote in the Committee. 

The rules of the European Parliament allow for a nominal vote (roll call vote) in committee (art. 195-3 of the Rules of the European Parliament). A quarter of the voting members, i.e. in this case 9 of the 33 members must support such a request. All members of the Committee, both full members and substitutes can ask for a nominal vote. 

We will return to this issue next week to report on the outcome of the FEMM committee deliberations and with further recommendations.