Pro-life advocates scored another victory at the United Nations this week when the chairman of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) withdrew a draft agreement rather than force through controversial language promoting abortion and gender ideology.
The annual one-week CPD session in April ended without adopting any final text after Ambassador Zéphyrin Maniratanga of Burundi, serving as chairman, declined to present the draft for approval. The move preserved the UN body’s long-standing practice of adopting documents only by consensus, without objections.
Several countries, including the Holy See, The Gambia, Egypt, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the United States, congratulated the chairman for maintaining consensus and voiced concerns over the draft’s heavy emphasis on “sexual and reproductive health” and related terms.
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The Holy See thanked Maniratanga for upholding consensual adoption and criticized the “inordinate focus” on sexual and reproductive health, noting that such language has “always been controversial” and that negotiations should address a broader health agenda instead.
European Union countries and their allies expressed disappointment that the draft did not reaffirm commitments to “women’s and girls’ rights and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” along with language tying technology and policies to human rights, non-discrimination, and gender equality.
This marks the seventh time in the last ten CPD sessions that no agreement was reached, continuing a pattern in which pro-life and developing nations have successfully blocked efforts by progressive governments to insert explicit endorsements of abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and gender ideology into UN documents.
The commission adjourned without a final text, leaving European and allied governments to pursue their priorities through UN agencies and NGOs instead.
