Global Policy Forum List-Serv March 20-24
Right-wing religious organizations arrived in force at UN headquarters
recently to participate in the Beijing+5 PrepCom. Three hundred and
fifty highly-organized conservatives from seven organizations created a
vocal presence during two weeks of NGO workshops, forums, strategy
sessions and lobby meetings, March 6-17. As governments reexamined
agreements from the historic Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing, the conservatives hoped to roll back important provisions,
particularly on reproductive rights and gender empowerment, and to
prevent any further progress in areas like sexual orientation.
One conservative group managed to register ninety "representatives,"
breaking the UN record for an NGO delegation and clearly ignoring the
spirit of NGO accreditation rules. Virtually all the conservatives came
from North America and more than half were men, including about
twenty-five robed Catholic friars from a Canadian monastery. The
conservatives were united in a coalition of fundamentalist Protestants,
conservative Catholics and Mormons. In the past, these groups have been
hostile towards each other and towards the United Nations, but now they
have adopted a strategy of joint action including participation in
UN events.
The right-wing lobbyists wore big buttons proclaiming "Motherhood" and
"The Family." They also produced a daily newspaper. They
lobbied the
G-77 intensely, arguing that Northern feminists had imposed anti-family
values on the rest of the world. A thousand representatives of women's
rights NGOs worked to limit the damage of the right-wingers and to
preserve the Beijing spirit, developing imaginative counter-strategies.
Still, the conservatives may have bogged down the negotiations. The
religious Right will certainly be back at the UN for the June conference
and beyond, imposing unpredictable and unwelcome changes on the role of
NGOs in the world body. Governments will probably now impose formal
restrictions on the number of NGO representatives, and the Secretariat
may propose further curtailment of NGO rights.