The Pushback Against “Pushback”
The UN Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian Committee, also known as the Third Committee, convened diplomats from the 193 member states to discuss gender equality and women’s rights issues. While developing countries talked about the need to invest in education infrastructure and essential health services, such as prenatal care and skilled birth attendants, Western countries seized the opportunity to rally against a common foe, “the gender equality pushback.”
The narrative among progressive countries was so similar one would be hard-pressed not to think it was coordinated. It went something like this: we are witnessing a dangerous rollback on women’s reproductive rights coordinated by a handful of actors and we [the progressive countries who believe in women’s rights] need to fight back to stop them from turning our societies into today’s Afghanistan.
Norway talked about the deeply disturbing “forces that would like to take us back” and that “sexual reproductive health and rights and the right to decide over one’s own body is not only important in itself but it is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of other rights.” The UK emphasized access to comprehensive sex education and the need to stop those trying to roll back rights in these spheres.
The EU said, “We call for continued strong cooperation at the UN to stand firm against the organized pushback against women’s and girls’ rights. We must not turn back the clock on the decades of hard-earned progress.”
The US grilled Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on women’s rights, for daring to say that women’s sports should be women-only and for referring to transgender women participating in women’s sports as biological men.
“Unfortunately, in that very same report, you erroneously conflate transgender persons with intersex persons or others with naturally occurring variations in sex characteristics and use demeaning language to refer to transgender persons,” the US delegate said.
In response, Nigeria said that it “commends the exceptional and noble courage of Ms. Reem Alsalem for stepping out into the uncharted waters of enlightening us of the misuse of the so-called “progressive agenda” which ends up undermining women’s rights.
Who are these “anti-rights” actors? The left says the Taliban regime is an extreme example but those who oppose abortion and have conservative views on human sexuality and marriage qualify for the label, as well. Rebecca Oas, Director of Research at C-Fam, has recently published a paper on the “anti-rights” label and how it is used to censor conservative speech at the UN and beyond.
“As this report will explain, the “anti-rights” label is not merely an exercise in political name-calling but rather part of a larger strategy to delegitimize social conservative voices in multilateral spaces and to redefine civil society to exclude such conservative organizations.”, Oas said.
Despite the alarmist rhetoric that opposing the gender ideology agenda would bring us back to the Stone Age, a more fitting analogy would be the 2009 America. Imagine the horror!
Archbishop Caccia of the Holy See said women’s rights cannot be respected without supporting their “unique capacities”, including motherhood.
“More resources are devoted instead to preventing pregnancy and applying Malthusian theories aimed at reducing global population. It would be a misleading assertion to claim that the advancement of women is being promoted or advanced when the pressing issues of poverty and abuse are not addressed, and when the particular issue of women who are pressured to undergo an abortion, often feeling that they have no other choice, is neglected.”
-Archbishop Caccia
