Traditional Countries Squash Sexual Revolution 30 Years After Cairo Conference

May 4, 2024 by Jill

By Stefano Gennarini, JD, C-Fam:

Traditional countries blocked any mention of abortion and homosexual/transgender issues in a political declaration adopted by the UN Commission on Population and Development this week.

In a major setback to Western countries, the declaration to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the landmark UN Conference on Population and Development held at Cairo in 1994 does not even contain euphemisms for abortion and homosexual/trans policies like the term “sexual and reproductive health” and language about “intersectionality.”

The declaration was adopted by the UN Commission on Population and Development this week after negotiations that delegates described as “hot” and “tense.”

From the outset, the Honduran Ambassador to the United Nations, Noemí Espinoza Madrid, attempted to bypass paragraph by paragraph negotiations, as is customary in intergovernmental processes. This was made worse by the fact that her proposed agreement emphasized sexual and reproductive health multiple times but did not focus on the priorities of many traditional countries, specifically, the family, poverty, and the right to development.

Western governments could not risk another failure to reach an agreement at the Commission on Population and Development. Seven of the last ten sessions of the annual commission have failed to produce an agreement after negotiations collapsed over these very issues.

In the end, traditional countries convinced other UN member states to adopt a short procedural document that does not mention sexual policies at all.

The setback for Western countries is compounded by the fact that the declaration does not expressly commit countries to the 1994 Cairo agreement past the year 2030, as they wanted. The UN system is already debating the UN development goals that will replace the current ones in 2030.

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