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Right-Wing Forces Mobilize to Challenge Beijing Platform

By Sandhya Nankani

NEW YORK, June 5 - Outside the US Customs House at Bowling Green, Alice Turley hands out literature advocating "family friendly public policy" to passerbys. Representing the Salt Lake City-based organization, Worldwide Organization for Women (WOW). She and her colleagues are members of a multi-denominational coalition that is working to "oppose the efforts by some radical NGOs to promote immoral public policy at Beijing +5." In other words, these activists are working hard to challenge diverse forms of families and women's self-autonomy over reproductive and sexual matters. These are all provisions agreed upon in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action.

AT STAKE NOW

For those who have worked tirelessly to secure the rights of women worldwide over the past 25 years, the presence of groups such as WOW is a chilling one. Allied with Vatican-based groups such as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) and Human Life International, they are a threat to the stated goals and rights that are written into UN human rights documents, particularly in the sphere of reproductive healthcare. By forming coalitions between Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Muslim and Jewish groups around issues such as "family" and "tradition," right-wing groups over the past few years have worked tirelessly to alter the international dialogue on human rights.

Because UN agreements are drawn up by consensus and not by votes, the presence of these strong and unified right-wing voices is of great concern to human rights activists monitoring Beijing +5. Referring to the coalition of the Vatican and pro-choice NGOs within the UN as "an unholy alliance," Peter Sane, Executive Director of Amnesty International, warned women's activists to be vigilant in the coming week. "In the preparatory sessions, some governments have been challenging the very basis of what was reaffirmed in Beijing: that women's rights are human rights," says Amnesty International. "The unholy alliance formed by the Holy See, Iran, Algeria, Nicaragua, Syria, Libya, Morocco and Pakistan has attempted to hold women's rights ransom." What's most vulnerable right now is the language of the outcome document for the Beijing+5 review. MORE

MOBILIZING AT THE UN

The move to accomplish this has been evident since the Beijing Preparatory Committee meetings that took place in New York this March. At a March 15th press conference at the UN, which coincided with this process, C-Fam illustrated a new level of cooperation between the main political organizations of the evangelical Christian right and the Catholic Right's "pro-life forces." C-Fam Executive Director Austin Ruse released a statement announcing the cooperation between 1,015 NGOs to work against the "vociferous voices of intolerance and bigotry" in the UN, those engaged in an "organized drive to expel the Vatican from observer status." Referring to the interdenominational coalition, Tom Minnery, Vice-President of Colorado-based Focus on the Family, said, "The pro-life issue is about abortion. It is not about religion."

The message sent that day was a clear one: the UN is the playground of fundamental leftwingers who, no matter how much they talk about fundamental human rights, do not want to give unborn children the right to live. "It is important that we understand the changes that are taking place in the global organizing against gender equality and female reproductive rights because what is going on now threatens to reverse the gains of the past fifteen years," says Lee Cokorinos, Research Director of the Institute for Democracy Studies. "These changes are a permanent feature of the landscape of the battle." IDS was formed in March of 1999 by three Planned Parenthood alumni with the stated objective of defending "democratic values from unprecedented challenges that threaten fundamental human rights."

Through cutting-edge "strategic research," the Institute seeks to draw a complete picture of the organization, strategies and funding of key right-wing groups that are impacting and seeking to impede the progress of the international human rights movement. "We have the sense that the missing piece in defense of civil rights, including women's rights, is an understanding of the pieces the right wing is putting on the chessboard," says Alfred Ross, IDS President. "To play the chess game, you need to know how the chessmasters of the right wing are playing the game."

INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES TO GENDER EQUALITY

Conservative groups are keenly aware that their presence at the UN during conferences such as Beijing + 5 "makes the other side very unhappy" and have made significant strides in making their representatives integral to the negotiations, which puts a wedge in the process. Several of them, including WOW, have consultative status at the UN. This means that they may designate representatives to UN offices which allows them to organize at local and international levels. Furthermore, over the past five years, one of the key strategies has been to extend their efforts to developing countries, where they can influence political processes and affect local legislation. "To shape the debate at the UN, you have to control which delegates are being sent by governments," says Olivia Gans, President of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) at its annual conference in 1999. "Our strategy is to put conservative governments in place." NRLC is accomplishing this by pouring resources and energy into countries like Sweden and Mexico - both of which are role models for their regions - by sending model legislation to local politicians and networking with country representatives to provide research and resources.

Last year, NRLC boasts that it was able to have 11 pro-life parliament representatives elected in Sweden. And, in Mexico, the group hopes that the right-wing party, the National Action Party (PAN), will oust the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). This would, in turn, secure a "no exception" ban on abortion, which is already illegal in Mexico, except in the case of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the woman. Groups like Focus on the Family, the 700 Club and the National Right to Life Committee - that have budgets of more than $100 million and sophisticated technological and communication infrastructure - have constructed a right-wing coalition of international NGOs that has made significant inroads into domestic and international arenas, appealing to the masses and receiving support from right-wing politicians worldwide.

The battle for Mexico is proof positive that U.S.-based anti-choice movement is poised to influence policy across borders. Working with the 700 Club, the ultra conservative American Life League and various other groups, the NRLC ideology has a long-term goal. Put simply, according to Gans, "with pro-life governments in power, it will be harder for U.N. member states to form pro-choice coalitions."

In the Global South, conservative groups are invading and using the mass media to form highly organized blocks. To bolster this strategy, the "Promise Keepers," a right-wing Christian group based in the U.S., has hired a U.S. army expert on "information warfare" for their Board of Directors. Drawing upon the resources of the IT boom, right wing groups have been able to set up permanent and specialized list-serves, interactive websites that feature streaming audio and video, local television programming and radio broadcasts to spread their message and gain access to local constituencies.

What can women's groups do to protect their gains in the face of these worldwide mobilization efforts? Cokorinos spells it out clearly:

* Be aware of what the right wing is doing in the local context.

* Develop communications with research groups.

* Visit the websites of right wing organizations and attend their meetings.

* Understand their strategies and organize unified responses.

"Some governments have come to New York with the genuine aim of reviewing the Beijing Platform for Action," says Amnesty International. "A number of Latin American and Southern African countries have played an exemplary role in attempting to steer the Beijing +5 process toward a meaningful outcome. Their efforts have been hampered by a handful of countries after months of negotiation."