UN This Week Jan 8-11
UN Agencies
Clash between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, over transgender guidance!
Earlier last year, the WHO announced the development of a universal guideline on the health of transgender people. As expected by many social conservatives, the WHO wants to promote gender-affirming care interventions, including hormone therapy and sex change surgeries, as staple strategies when dealing with individuals facing gender dysphoria.
Interestingly enough, Reem Alsalem, raised concerns over the makeup of the WHO committee tasked with developing this guidance, flagging that “stakeholders whose views differ from those held by transgender activist organizations do not appear to have been invited. Such stakeholders include experts from European public health authorities who have taken the lead on developing an evidence-based and consequently cautious approach to youth gender transitions (eg England, Sweden, and Finland).”
“Not one appears to represent a voice of caution for medicalising youth with gender dysphoria or the protection of female-only spaces”
Reem Alsalem
While Alsalem is known for her a pro-abortion and feminist views, in this story, she represents the voice of reason and aligns herself with many conservatives and other level-headed people who are rightfully alarmed by the potential disastrous effects of such guidance. Alsalem contacted the WHO to postpone a Committee meeting scheduled this February to discuss the guidance but as of January 4th, she has not heard back from them.
Stories like this one expose what social conservative organizations have been saying for decades now- sometimes, beneath the facade of “experts”, the UN is hiding agendas that have no honest scientific backing. They issue recommendations and perhaps even obligatory guidances based on the caprice of the noisiest crowd of advocates. Now, even progressive UN agents are increasingly recognizing a dearth of professionalism and a lack of genuine commitment to the pursuit of truth within certain UN Agencies.
Summit of the Future and UN Reform
Talks about the UN Summit of the Future are on the way as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity…to mend eroded trust and demonstrate that international cooperation can effectively tackle current challenges as well as those that have emerged in recent years or may yet be over the horizon.” Many look at September 2024 as an important moment to commit to a new vision for the UN.
Progressive UN personnel, who makes up the majority of the UN bureaucracy and UN agencies, share a vision for a UN that is more representational, feminist, intersectional, sexually fluid, gender inclusive, sustainable, non-conforming and all other words that make these people feel fuzzy and warm inside. To them, the UN should take care of all world problems or non-problems and also dictate how they are to be solved with the input of carefully curated civil society leaders and NGOs that align with their world vision.
For example, in a podcast on the future of the UN, Maria Fernanda Espinoza, The President of the seventy-third session of the General Assembly, shared that the biggest problem the world is facing right now is intersectional inequality that is at the root of poverty and that the UN needs restructuring and retooling to properly address that.
On the other hand, what conservative policy and civil leaders have been saying for quite some time is that the UN has distanced itself from its original mandate. The UN seems to lack a clear hierarchy of priorities and sometimes ends up wasting millions or even billions of dollars in the process. See the results of this EU audit on how a UN-EU project worth over 50 million dollars to fight violence against women and girls proved to have no tangible results.
There is just simply too much going on at the UN. For example, Jay Richards from the Heritage Foundation and Neydy Casillas from the Global Center for Human Rights said that the current tendency to frame mere “goods” and “wishes” as rights degrades the character and value of fundamental human rights.
While, the transition from essential interventions and humanitarian aid by the UN to advocating for a universal right to abortion and sex change surgeries is a shift not veiled in mystery, a discussion of how it came about is best suited for a different time.
Other
To everyone who says “what happens at the UN does not matter,” we assert that, regrettably, the reality is quite the opposite. As shared in the UN segment last week and as C-Fam reported over the years, UN agencies streamline progressive ideas and turn them into normative frameworks for countries to follow. The UN enhances the credibility of progressive agendas by making them seem backed by “science” and “experts.” For example, look at what Ipas, an international organization whose expressed purpose is to promote abortion everywhere in the world, says about the UN Human Rights Committee recommendation on abortion:
“Ipas is already making plans with its partner State Innovation Exchange (SiX) to turn the UN committee’s recommendations into state-level laws that will decriminalize abortion. Early in 2024 the two organizations and other partners will begin working with state legislators to develop and introduce bills that make abortion legal and accessible in accordance with the WHO guidelines.”
