Secretary-General Puts “Gender Equality” At Center Of UN Reform Proposal 
By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK — C-FAM) Last week, a high-level panel commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan released a key report on UN reform. While the purpose of the report was to recommend ways to make the UN more effective, one of its major recommendations is a sweeping overhaul of the UN in order to promote “gender equality” and “women’s empowerment.”

Among the top recommendations is the creation of a powerful UN “gender entity” that will make “gender equality and women’s empowerment” central to all UN activities in member states, including all development budgeting and programming.

Entitled “Delivering as One,” the report calls for supporting “the integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment concerns in intergovernmental bodies for development, humanitarian assistance, environment, human rights, peace-keeping and peace-building.” The report continues, “The promotion of gender equality must remain the mandate of all UN entities.”

Delegations such as Canada and the Netherlands have made it clear that “gender equality” is inextricably linked to “reproductive rights” and “sexual and reproductive health services.”  Both terms have been used as code words by UN agencies and powerful nongovernmental organizations for abortion. At the Commission on the Status of Women in 2005, the Canadian representative stated, “We would emphasize that the advancement of sexual and reproductive health and rights is nothing less than intrinsic to the achievement of gender equality.”

The term “gender” is among the most controversial at the UN. The UN General Assembly has defined “gender” twice, both times in ways acceptable to conservatives. In the Beijing Platform for Action, “gender” is “understood as it has been traditionally understood.” And in the International Criminal Court document “gender” is defined as “men and women living in the context of society.”

Even so, the Secretary General’s office of Gender Advisor defines “gender” as a “social construct,” meaning that it can be changed. And at the recently-concluded negotiations for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, several Muslim delegations fought down to the wire to have the word “gender” removed from the draft text because they were concerned that UN agencies would use it to push a homosexual rights agenda in their country.

The report also proposes unified multi-agency country teams to increase UN agency coordination. The problem with this proposal, sources tell the Friday Fax, is that it is precisely this multi-agency coordination that enables agencies to hide behind “system-wide compliance.”

Last month, the Friday Fax reported that a UNICEF official signed an open letter to the Nicaraguan National Assembly with the intention of stopping legislators from criminalizing therapeutic abortion. When asked why the children’s agency intervened in a matter regarding that nation’s abortion law, UNICEF spokesman Geoffrey Keele stated that the UNICEF country representative was going along with the rest of the UN country team.

Upon release of the reform report, Secretary General Annan said: