AFRICA FAMILY LIFE FEDERATION
Congress - Mauritius, November 10 – 18, 2013
The implementation of the Cairo Plan of Action: The post-2015 global development agenda, perspectives for the African continent
Marguerite Peeters
Your Eminence, Excellencies, dear friends,
It is a great joy for me to be with all of you, as friends, brothers and sisters, in a family atmosphere, in this foyer of charity on the beautiful island of Mauritius, to celebrate the family, the God-given African sense of the family, and the vocation of the Church in Africa as family of God. Thank you, Dany, for inviting me.
We meet at a special time for the Church and the world. With our new pope Francis, we are invited to carefully listen to what the Holy Spirit is telling the Church today. In the world, at the level of global governance, we are also at a critical turning point: the UN is, as we know, preparing a new development framework to substitute the Millennium Development Goals which expire at the end of next year. And we are nearing the so-called “target date” for the implementation of the 1994 Cairo Plan of Action, which was, in the mind of those who engineered it, to be completed within 20 year.
One generation has passed since Cairo. What have the leading agents of the sexual and reproductive health and rights (henceforth SRHR) agenda achieved so far in Africa? What is their global strategy beyond 2014? What is at stake at this critical juncture? My task at this Congress is to take stock of the situation in Africa today and try and identify the main challenges for the years to come. I look forward to our exchanges, as we all have so much to learn from each other’s experiences on the ground.
I will start by a quick reminder of what is the core of the SRHR agenda and a historical overview of what its agents have effectively achieved in Africa since Cairo. I will then move on to a brief analysis of the post-2015 global agenda-setting process currently underway. I will end with some practical considerations, inspired by the current Magisterium of the Church. My presentation, which confronts the institutional complexities of global governance is, you will forgive me, somewhat dry and technical.
1 – Achievements of the SRHR agents in Africa since Cairo
Ever since their historical breakthrough at Cairo, when they succeeded, through surreptitious means, in obtaining a “global consensus” on sexual and reproductive health and rights, the engineers of this agenda have moved forward with adamant determination. Their first achievement was to turn SRHR into a practical norm of global governance, a norm globally applicable. The Cairo consensus, however, was fake, because the language it used was deceptive and manipulative: maternal health, for instance, often translates in practice as “access to contraceptives” and to so-called “safe abortion”.
The goal of Cairo was to ensure, by 2015, universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. This euphemism, as we know, hides a deadly agenda. It means, inter alia, universal access to the full range of contraceptive methods (including so-called emergency contraception), voluntary sterilization, in vitro fertilization, and so-called “safe abortion” where it is legal (the idea being that, in order to be safe, it has to be legal: it therefore has to be legalized everywhere). “Access” is twofold: it regards information (which includes so-called “comprehensive sexual education”) on the one hand, and services on the other. By “universal”, Cairo meant for all, irrespective of age and marital status - and if you are young, without parental information and consent (which is what they meant by “confidential” services to young people). In other words, the objective of Cairo was to globalize a sexual revolution that has been so destructive of the institutions of marriage and the family, of culture and the faith in the West. The strategy of SRHR agents was to integrate their agenda into an appealing, holistic package so as to fool the majorities in the developing world: hence SRHR are also about the obstetric care that poor pregnant and delivering women vitally need, post-natal care, newborn health, breastfeeding etc. They also include the fight against the horrible practice of female genital mutilation.
Political, juridical and cultural inroads of SRHR agents in Africa since Cairo
With unrelenting perseverance, the reproductive health agents have used the Cairo consensus to pressure governments to honor their alleged “commitments”. Governments are not in any way legally bound by a consensus - and even less by a fake consensus. But the fact of the matter is that most, if not all, African governments have allowed their health and education policies, and even at times their laws, to be infected, at least to some degree, by the SRHR agenda.
The entanglement of African governments with the Cairo framework is compounded by worrisome developments at the African regional level, whose effects trickle back down to the national level. Let me name the most critical. In January 2006 (12 years after Cairo), African heads of states and government endorsed the Continental Policy Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health[1]. To implement this policy framework, the African Union Commission issued the Maputo Plan of Action. The Maputo Plan of Action well expresses the priorities of SRHR agents operating in Africa. Its strategic themes are:
- the integration of SRHR services into primary health care;
- strengthening community-based SRHR services;
- repositioning family planning as a key strategy for attaining the MDGs;
- youth-friendly SRHR services as key strategy for so-called youth empowerment;
- reducing unsafe abortion.
The Maputo Plan of Action, valid for the period 2006-2010, was prolonged by the African Union Commission’s Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA), launched in May 2009. To this day, 40 African countries have launched CARMMA and five additional ones are preparing to do so. CARMMA’s appealing goal – reducing maternal mortality – is deceptive: CARMMA maintains the anti-African objectives of the Maputo Plan.
In addition to CARMMA, the African Union Commission advocates for increased availability, affordability and accessibility of contraception through its Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa, adopted in April 2007 at the Third Session of the African Union Conference of Health Ministers in Johannesburg.
Let us also mention that the African Union welcomed the establishment of the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children – a commission which identified “emergency contraception”, female condoms and implants as “essential but underutilized life-saving health supplies”[2] – a scandal!
The most recent entanglement of the African Union with the SRHR agenda is the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in Africa beyond 2014. At a meeting jointly organized by the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union Commission and the UNFPA, African Ministers gathered last October 3-4 to review the implementation of Cairo and its follow-up beyond 2014. The Declaration they issued, clearly formatted by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the UNFPA, underlines the “integral link” between SRHR and “global efforts to eradicate poverty”. Ministers declare to commit to “expeditiously” implement the integral Cairo agenda. They “commit”, for example:
- To grant “universal access to sexual and reproductive health free from all forms of discrimination by providing an essential package of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services including through the primary health care system for women and men, with particular attention to the needs of adolescents, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous people, especially in the most remote areas” (par. 34). To “enact and enforce laws and policies within the national political and legal framework to respect and protect SRHR of all individuals” (par. 35).
- “In accordance with national laws and policies”, to “provide access to safe abortion services” (par. 38).
- To “adopt and implement relevant comprehensive sexuality education programmes, both in and out of school, that are linked to sexual and reproductive health services, with the active involvement of parents, community, traditional, religious and opinion leaders, and young people themselves” (par. 40).
- To “mainstream the Addis Ababa Declaration into the work plans of the bodies of the African Union and UN Economic Commission for Africa” (82) and “monitor regularly” the achievements of its goals “in the context of reporting on the post-2015 development agenda” (84).
Each of these items and the other “commitments” contained in the Declaration would need to be carefully analyzed: it is not within the purview of this presentation to do so. The themes that particularly deserve our attention are: remote areas; laws and policies; comprehensive sexuality education programmes; mainstream. If African governments are to take the Declaration seriously, it cannot but lead to the generalization of contraceptive practices and the legalization of abortion, and therefore to the destruction of African cultures throughout the continent. Their commitment to reinforce “comprehensive sexual education” is of particular gravity, considering its perverse content and the disasters it has produced in the West since the 1960s.
It seems that 17 countries[3] issued reservations to the Declaration. These reservations, however, seem to mostly concern an article about advancing the “human rights of all individuals without distinction of any kind”, as if African governments were predominantly worried about the LGBT agenda and had already given in to contraception, “emergency contraception”, IPPF-type sexual education and even “safe abortion”, overlooking their dangers for the African soul and integral development.
After having considered the inroads of SRHR agents at the African political level, let us now look at developments at the regional juridical level. In less than ten years’ time, the 2003 Maputo Protocol - whose article 14 on health and reproductive rights includes the right to abortion[4] - is already signed by almost all African states (48 out of 53) and ratified by 36 states[5]. The majority of countries that did not ratify the protocol[6] have a predominantly Muslim population and seven are the same that expressed reservations to the Addis Ababa Declaration (Burundi, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia).
Culturally, the language of SRHR has penetrated all strata of societies, NGOs, academia, social services, from the UN Economic Commission for Africa, NEPAD, the African Union to governments to the grassroots levels, to young people and even, and not infrequently, to members of the Catholic Church, thereby creating massive confusion. Even some prolife organizations now use this language[7], compounding the confusion.
Smashing victory, or bluff?
One could easily have the impression that in twenty years’ time, the SRHR agents have achieved a smashing victory in Africa, the continent that had been the most resilient to the attacks against life and the family that have surged in the world in recent decades, the continent where the average contraceptive prevalence rate of modern methods remains “the lowest among all regions of the world”[8]. But is African adherence to the decadent western agenda sincere? The situation is more schizophrenic than straightforward: SRHR are imposed on Africa. As an intrinsic, indissoluble part of gender equality, which is a transversal priority of global governance, SRHR have been for almost two decades a condition for development assistance. African institutions are engineered and African leaders are bought by the “global reproductive health community” to impose on their populations an agenda which is diametrically, profoundly opposed to African cultures.
The pharmaceutical industry[9] and its powerful foundations[10], looking at Africa as a huge potential market for contraceptives, have jumped on the Cairo bandwagon, partnering with the SRHR agents and providing them with winning financial means to “buy” efficient operational partners. The money factor is primordial. Many Africans become partners of the agenda primarily for financial purposes and use the new language without fully knowing what it hides. Africans do what they would not want to freely do. There is a great malaise, an unhealthy, incoherent, cacophonous situation.
But it would be wrong to believe that the achievements of SRHR agents are superficial, just formal, and deprived of any real ideological grip on the mindset and behavior of African men and women. With urbanization which inexorably impacts the larger African family structure, the rising availability of the internet, constant exposure to radio (BBC and RFI) and television propaganda, African youth are bombarded by SRHR messages. Attracted as they are by western lifestyles, they sadly fall prey to western decadence and become promiscuous.
As they are not only bought but brainwashed by the SRHR enlightened despots, quite a few African leaders end up becoming front line agents themselves. I think of Babatunde Osotimehin, the current Nigerian director of the UNFPA, or of former President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique who co-chairs the High-Level Task Force for the ICPD - a task force that aims at “bridging” the Cairo Platform for Action and the post-2015 development agenda so that SRHR become a “central component” of the new vision. A third and major example is that of Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, a Ugandan physician who is Africa’s regional director of the powerful Partnership in Population and Development (PPD). Musinguzi works with Ministers of Finance, Ministers of Health, and parliamentarians in Africa to ensure that there is an increase and prioritization of funding for reproductive health (RH), family planning (FP), and “that policies and programs link these issues with population dynamics and development as a whole.”[11] Musinguzi helped draft the 1994 Cairo Programme of Action. He was a participant on the expert panel that negotiated the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). His office works with legislators to hold governments and leaders accountable on the alleged “commitments” such as to the Cairo Platform for Action and the MDGs at the global level, or to the Maputo Plan of Action at the regional level. Muzinguzi also facilitated last year’s London Summit on Family Planning, organized by the British government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation[12]. The main objective of the Summit was to have 120 million new users accessing modern contraceptives by 2020 in the world’s poorest countries. Muzinguzi and his colleagues managed to ensure the attendance of a critical mass of African heads of states[13] at the Summit and engineered their political commitment to prioritize reproductive health and increase funding in this area in their national budgets. One result of the Summit was Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s announcement in October 2012 of the Saving One Million Lives initiative, “a roadmap for achieving his pledge of nearly tripling funding for contraceptive access over five years”[14]. There is a lot of western money in Africa today for SRHR!
We can’t deny also the inroads, become particularly significant over the last decade, of contraceptive usage among Catholic youth and women in Africa. Not infrequently do Catholic religious congregations with SRHR agents. This sad reality is a pressing challenge for the Church in Africa. African Catholics should draw lessons from what happened in the West and how the sexual revolution and unfaithfulness to the Magisterium have contributed to the acceleration of secularization these last fifty years. Undeniably, the same causes producing the same effects, the salt of African Catholics will lose its flavor if they endorse the contraceptive mentality and disobey Jesus and the Church. What is looming, if African Catholics embark on this road, is nothing less than the “silent apostasy” of Africa, similar to the “silent apostasy” of Europe that John Paul II spoke about in Ecclesia in Europa[15]. This is where your important mission comes in!
2.- Post-2015 challenges
Let us now look at Cairo beyond 2014, and more broadly at the post-2015 picture of the global development agenda. I mentioned earlier that the 1994 Cairo conference had a plan of action unfolding over 20 years, therefore expiring in 2014. We must know, however, that in 2011, a UN General Assembly resolution[16] extended the Cairo Programme of Action for its further implementation beyond 2014. The resolution alleges that “considerable gaps still exist” in the implementation of the Cairo goals.
The SRHR partners are at a turning point. Great have been their achievements so far. But they haven’t reached their totalitarian goal yet: universal access to SRHR. “Universal” is the Cairo word. It is strikingly prominent in the post-2015 language. SRHR must spread horizontally to all individuals, of all ages, in all cultures and religions. We are not yet there, they complain and we gratefully acknowledge. They always want “more” within the same agenda, set in stone at Cairo, and tirelessly push the revolution further, to get as far forward as fast as possible. They are determined to seize the post-2015 transition to accelerate pace of implementation, reinforce the means, tighten controls over governments and all “stakeholders”. Incidentally, the use of the word “universal”, borrowed from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also from the Judeo-Christian tradition, is significant: the secularist ethic seeks to globally supersede an ethic open to divine transcendence at this time of globalization. Two visions of universality are in a tug of war.
The SRHR platform beyond 2014
Within the Cairo framework, what do SRHR partners consider as their “unfinished business”? What is their platform beyond 2014? Not claiming to be exhaustive, I will focus on four salient components.
- Expand access. First of all, they want to dramatically expand access to supplies and services, focusing on remote areas, the hard to reach, the poorest women and girls. They dogmatically affirm that 222 million women have a so-called “unmet need” for modern contraception – primarily African women and girls under 24 years of age. They consider “emergency contraception” as a neglected commodity and will therefore promote it. They will reinforce their aggressive focus on adolescent girls in the developing world by continuing to develop their so-called “youth friendly” services. Let us mention here the UNFPA State of World Population 2013 report, released on October 30, entitled “Motherhood in Childhood: facing the challenges of adolescent pregnancy”: an eloquent illustration of UNFPA’s focus on teenagers in developing countries. UNFPA claims there are 7.3 million teenager pregnancies every year, 90% of which would be within marriage[17]. The UNFPA’s proposed solution is not only expanding access to SRHR to teenage girls but an overall societal change in the developing world in favor of the contraceptive mentality. SRHR agents also seek to sustain coverage for the estimated 260 million women and girls in the 69 poorest countries who are currently using modern contraceptives. In a recent article, Melinda Gates[18] exposes what she calls “the proven tactics to expand access”. These tactics, she said, “range from lowering the costs of commodities to improving supply chains and increasing demand by educating consumers about their options. The overarching strategy,” she goes on, “is to maintain firm political commitment to driving reform, while increasing action in countries and measuring the progress”[19]. Let me mention here the existence of a powerful network started in 2004 at the UN aiming to “secure reproductive health supplies by increasing resources, strengthening systems and harnessing the power of partnership”[20]: the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition. Gates’ unambiguous statement - “increasing demand by educating consumers about their options” – highlights the priority sexuality education will have in the post-2015 agenda.
- Rights approach. Another aspect of the Cairo beyond 2014 strategy is the determination to focus on sexual and reproductive rights[21]. There is nothing new in this strategy, but SRHR agents are unsatisfied with their achievements in the area of rights, complaining their fabricated rights, which are fake and do not exist in reality, are not yet recognized as universal human rights and are not properly enforced. So they want human rights to be considered as the core framework in the next development agenda. Let us carefully monitor developments in this area.
- Integration. There is still a lot to do, in their eyes, to mainstream SRHR throughout development: they want to integrate them with primary health care, adolescent health, gender equality, non-health sectors, climate change (population control), food and security (population control), “equity”, elimination of the “root causes of poverty”, participation (of young people, women), accountability, transparency, non-discrimination, empowerment, rule of law, holism (“the future agenda should be as comprehensive as possible and include the wide range of different aspects of SRHR”[22]). They want SRHR to be fully part, if not the driver of the “global transformative change” envisioned in the post-2015 agenda. Lastly, they want to integrate the ICPD+20, Beijing+20 and Rio+20 processes with the post-2015 framework.
- Change culture. SRHR agents believe there is still a lot to do to eliminate “cultural barriers” to their deadly agenda. They are determined to further engage in partnerships with faith-based communities so as to change them from within. This concerns the Catholic Church directly and calls for the utmost pastoral vigilance, a sound formation of Catholic youth, the laity and pastors.
The formal post-2015 agenda-setting process
The post-2015 agenda-setting process started at this year’s UN General Assembly and was preceded by the publication of a report, published last May 31, by the High Level Panel set up by Ban Ki-moon to assist him in developing a vision the post-2015 global agenda[23]. The report is entitled “A New Global Partnership”. While the UN is elaborating the post-2015 vision, it is also pressuring governments to accelerate pace in their implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Let us remember that “universal access to reproductive health” was included as a target (target 5b) of the MDGs only in 2007[24], after years of pressure and maneuvering, by stealth, not through a genuine and open consensus. The target explicitly merged the Cairo Platform of Action and the MDGs. Cairo sought to put SRHR at the core of development. SHRH agents currently seek to turn SRHR into a top development priority in the post-2015 agenda and put it at the “heart” of the global health agenda.
The SRHR agents’ strategy in the formal post-2015 development agenda-setting process is two-fold. First, they fight for SRHR to be an explicit target. Second, they strive for the treatment of SRHR as a “cross-cutting” theme - that is, a theme implicitly present across all the goals and targets, as a precondition for development.
Let us consider the first aspect. In the report of the High Level Panel, which inspired Ban Ki-moon’s submission to UN member states, SRHR is an explicit target within the health goal. It reads as follows: “Ensure universal sexual and reproductive health and rights” (target 4d of goal 4, “Ensure healthy lives”). This proposal, let us stress it, goes much further than target 5b of the MDGs, which only mentioned reproductive health – not rights, nor sexual health and rights. Should this proposal be adopted by UN member states, the post-2015 agenda will have a dangerously stronger sexual and reproductive rights approach, at a time when sexual rights are interpreted to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Let us now consider the second aspect, SRHR as a cross-cutting issue alongside other cross-cutting issues treated as preconditions for sustainable development[25], such as “gender equality”, “human rights” and “youth empowerment”. SRHR agents claim that “health, education and gender have been too segmented” and that in the MDGs framework, “they have suffered from an approach that is too narrow and not rights-based”. Therefore, beyond 2015, they want to integrate “the cross-cutting issues of SRHR, gender equality and women’s empowerment… throughout the framework”[26]. SRHR have been, since Cairo, a constitutive component of sustainable development. Their agents now call SRHR the “enabler for reaching any other poverty reduction target”[27]. The High Level Panel includes lack of access to SRHR in its very definition of “poverty in all its forms” (p. 4), as one of its dimensions (see IIS 296). This is particularly significant knowing that the stated overall objective of the post-2015 is the eradication of poverty - of extreme poverty. Integration of the three parameters of sustainable development (economic growth, social equity, environmental protection) is one of the key themes of the post-2015 agenda. SRHR agents present their agenda not only as an intrinsic part of sustainable development[28] as a whole, but as “relevant to each of the three pillars of sustainable development”[29].
Apart from these mainstreaming efforts, let us also note, in the High Level Panel’s report, an obsessive focus on SRHR, which is the only[30] aspect of health that the report specifically mentions in its paragraph dedicated to young people, and the only aspect of health that it specifically mentions in its paragraph on girls and women[31]. This is not uncommon in UN documents relating to health, but this is HLP’s post-2015 vision! The proposed education goal (goal 3) (“provide quality education and lifelong learning”) describes the partners’ view of education, which would be about “far more than basic literacy and numeracy” and would, inter alia, lead people to “gain an understanding of sexual and reproductive health” (p. 37). The explanation that the report gives of its goal 4 (“ensuring healthy lives”) spells out the content of the education goal and contains a long paragraph about SRHR, in which SRHR is described as “an essential component of a healthy society” (p. 39). It makes a special mention of the “needs” of adolescents. The HLP’s report does explicitly mention LGBT youth, gender identity and sexual orientation, but only in the outreach section (p. 62).
It is impossible to predict at this stage what SRHR agents will obtain in the formal, intergovernmentally endorsed post-2015 agenda. Always demanding “more” and allowing the radical agenda to fully “come out” publically is a risky business. Opposition to radicalism is on the rise and is getting more publically visible and organized. The SRHR revolution may now be overreaching itself. We have recently seen it in Europe with, for example, the European Parliament Estrela report, sent back to the Commission because of its extreme radicalism[32] by the usually lukewarm center right European Parliamentarians, and a battle is looming over LGBTI rights in the 2014 European Parliamentary elections. The One of US campaign, aimed at protecting human life from conception in Europe, collected 1.6 million signatures. The “marriage for all” law in France has provoked the Manif pour tous and the Veilleurs movements. A resistance movement has seen the day in Croatia where the socialist government has introduced a sexual education program in schools promoting the choice of sexual orientation. We could give many other examples in the West. And several African heads of states have made it publically clear that they would not give in to pressures to comply with the demands of the LGBT lobby. Everywhere in the world, resistance, though deprived of relevant political or financial power, is mounting, silent or loud, spontaneous or already organized. Power, however, is still overwhelmingly in the hands of those who endorse the secularist worldview.
The partnerships’ revolution
Whatever their “gains” or “losses” will be at the formal, intergovernmental level, whether universal sexual and reproductive health and rights will end up being a target in the next set of global goals, SRHR agents will continue moving forward as far as they can go through informal, parallel channels, such as multi-stakeholder partnerships, so-called “bottom-up, participatory approaches”, “participatory democracy”, consensus-building, “constructive dialogue”, awareness-raising, “country ownership”, “inclusiveness”, “good governance”, “transparency”, “accountability”, “monitoring mechanisms”... These new political paradigms express a political revolution that special interests groups such as SRHR lobbyists have advocated and driven for decades. The power these lobbies could not obtain through representative democracy, when they met formal opposition, they did manage to grab through informal processes. They then built on the gains they had achieved by stealth to try and advance their agenda also through formal institutions. For example, they used the Cairo consensus, a soft, non-binding document, to engineer a reinterpretation of existing conventions or the drafting of new legally binding documents, such as the Maputo Protocol. Twenty years after Cairo, SRHR partnerships are by now crushingly powerful. They call themselves the “global reproductive health community”[33].
The political revolution did not leave democratic channels intact: multi-stakeholder partnerships have by now taken over intergovernmental processes in some significant ways. The Cairo agenda did not come primarily from governments but from the IPPF and its non-state partners who now hold governments “accountable” and monitor their “progress” in implementation. The powerful transnational LGBT lobby already enslaves quite a few governments. Interpreted and practiced in such a domineering way, partnerships reduce governments to “equal partners” of transnational NGOs and “experts”. They deconstruct governmental authority, therefore democracy, from within. What is more, such partnerships are “flat” and “equal” only in appearance. In reality, they are surreptitiously governed by those partners who set the agenda, the NGOs, “visionaries” and trailblazers who posit themselves above the other “stakeholders” - sometimes calling themselves “horizontal leaders”: they are deceptively “equal”. Partnerships undermine the capacity of governments to represent those who mandated them - the real people. They have largely contributed to the power shift from the people and their governments to other “stakeholders” such as the IPPF, the spearhead of the SRHR revolution. Partnerships explain how the SRHR agenda has achieved such dramatic inroads in Africa in the last twenty years.
It seems that a majority of governments have by now, to a dangerously large extent, passively submitted to the “multistakeholder” character of current UN agenda-setting. Multistakeholder partnerships both already set the agenda and implement it. They are a practical political norm of global governance. No other political leadership seems to be emerging than that of the UN’s partnership regime, which takes advantage of today’s moral and political vacuum to try and impose itself globally. The passivity of governments is amazing.
Partnerships are not pluralistic: they are like-minded. When they enter partnerships, African governments have to endorse the ideological view of those western governments, NGOs, technical experts, “eminent persons”, academics and other so-called “civil society actors”, minorities and lobbies that rule the show. When jumping on the partnerships’ band wagon, they get irremediably entangled with an agenda that excludes human happiness, love and the family, joy, hope, faith, a sense of service and work well done amid other essential components of integral human development.
The partnerships revolution is at a critical stage. The key challenge of the post-2015 agenda is political. “A new global partnership” is the title of the High Level Panel’s report and one of the overriding themes of the post-2015 global agenda. The post-2015 HLP report calls the new partnership “global”. The word “global” conveys the idea of “transcending” sovereign governments and all other “stakeholders” (businesses, civil society organizations, “global citizens”). Global political power then would then be in the hands of the “global experts” and “partners” consulted by the UN Secretariat. This trend is all the more worrisome than the post-2015 agenda will have a strong focus on monitoring mechanisms. The new goals, reads the HLP’s report, “should be accompanied by an independent and rigorous monitoring system” (p. 21). The HLP calls for a “data revolution”, “with a new international initiative to improve the quality of statistics and information available to citizens” (p. 21).
In their Addis Ababa Declaration, African Ministers commit to “promote strengthened partnerships with local, national and international civil society organizations in the design, implementation, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of population and development programmes and policies” (78). They “encourage the promotion of activities directed at increasing the participation and building the capacity of these organizations” (78). They also “recognize the role of civil society organizations… in the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of population and development policies and programmes including for achieving the goals of sexual and reproductive health and rights” (79). By so doing, African governments and African peoples give up the self-determination they aspired to at the time of independence and decolonization and desire more than ever in this age of globalization. Partnerships, of course, mean money. But on the path of money and lust, Africa will not reach its true destiny no and fulfill its specific mission in God’s eternal design.
Conclusion
What conclusions can we draw from this panorama? It will have helped us, we hope, to be realistic. While today Africa remains outspoken against the LGBT agenda, more than any other continent, abortion is increasingly practiced here and Africa is undeniably becoming more and more contraceptive. The African Union, NEPAD, governments, health and education institutions, development agents, and often the Church too, are inextricably entangled with dangerous partnerships and their SRHR agenda. Through its endorsement of SRHR, Africa is engaging on a path already trodden by the West. This path started with the commercialization of the contraceptive pill in the 60s, provoking the sexual revolution and its concatenation of anthropological disasters today ushering in the gender identity and sexual orientation agendas. While it took 50 years for the West to move from contraception to homosexuality, things may go much faster in Africa.
Fifty years ago Gaudium et Spes prophetically declared, describing the vocation of the Africa Family Life Federation: « There are many today who maintain that the increase in world population, or at least the population increase in some countries, must be radically curbed by every means possible and by any kind of intervention on the part of public authority. In view of this contention, the council urges everyone to guard against solutions, whether publicly or privately supported, or at times even imposed, which are contrary to the moral law. For in keeping with man’s inalienable right to marry and generate children, a decision concerning the number of children they will have depends on the right judgment of the parents and it cannot in any way be left to the judgment of public authority. But since the judgment of the parents presupposes a rightly formed conscience, it is of the utmost importance that the way be open for everyone to develop a correct and genuinely human responsibility which respects the divine law and takes into consideration the circumstances of the situation and the time. But sometimes this requires an improvement in educational and social conditions, and, above all, formation in religion or at least a complete moral training. Men should discreetly be informed, furthermore, of scientific advances in exploring methods whereby spouses can be helped in regulating the number of their children and whose safeness has been well proven and whose harmony with the moral order has been ascertained”[34].
In the West, the breakdown of the family led to inflating the role of the state that comes in and substitutes the role of the family to resolve problems. Since the 18th century, the western secular state has built itself on the citizen-individual, divorced from the citizen-person (father, mother, spouse, son or daughter). And such a “state” now is increasingly subject to the emerging global partnerships regime and its norms – a process which seems to pave the way for a new and global form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism. The African political traditions did not divorce the citizen and the person made for love. On the contrary, they are founded on the family and love relationships. In this respect, they express a universal truth that all civilizations should now return to. This is the fatal divorce between the citizen and the person that SRHR now operate on the continent is so tragic.
So what are we called to do? We do not have the power, nor the divine mandate, to overturn global governance or seek to influence its course. We are called to humbly and joyfully, patiently and courageously, without giving in to any compromise, give witness to the truth about man and woman, human love and the family.
The stars shine the brightest at the darkest hour of the night. We must put our lamp on the hilltop. This lamp makes the splendor of the truth about our eternal vocation shine in the darkness of the world. As John Paul II wrote it in his Letter to Families, human beings’ “vocation to love… introduces them as male and female into the realm of the ‘great mystery’”[35]. This great mystery is God’s Trinitarian love.
Pope Francis rightly highlights the money component of the global contraception and abortion industry: lust for money. Resisting this temptation requires a lot of courage. Let us be vigilant in our fight against the lust for money, which is the main factor tempting us into partnerships. Isn’t the Spirit calling the Church anew to a witness of poverty?
We must also heed his warning not to separate the moral teachings of the Church from the fullness of the Gospel message and in particular from our vocation to partake in the plenitude of Trinitarian life.
[1] This framework had been adopted by their ministers of health at the 2nd African Union Conference of Health Ministers (held in Gaborone, Botswana) in October 2005.
[2] See IIS 298, item 10.
[3] Uganda, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Ethiopia, DRC, Congo Republic, Niger, Mali, Burundi, Gabon, Mauritania, Nigeria, Benin, CAR and Sudan.
[4] Article 14 (2c) reads as follows: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to... protect the reproductive rights of women by authorizing medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus.”
[5] And these are the 2010 figures available on the African Union website; there may be more signatures and ratifications since then.
[6] Algeria, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sao Tome & Principe, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia.
[7] Such as the World Youth Alliance.
[8] Addis Ababa Declaration.
[9] Bayer HealthCare, for example, the world’s leading company in the field of hormonal contraception, “actively supports family planning programmes in more than 130 countries”. Bayer has recently “joined a new global initiative for Better Access to Safe and Effective Contraception” - a joint initiative with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supported by the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the governments of Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US and the Children Investment Fund Foundation. This group of donors announced a US$230 million volume guarantee for expand access to Bayer’s Jadelle contraceptive implant “to 27 million women in low-income countries” (in 42 of the world’s poorest countries). This, explains Melinda Gates, will make it “much more practical for developing countries to offer as part of their family planning programmes”. Bayer’s role is to “supply over the next six years a long-acting, reversible method of contraception” which will be supplied at 50% of its current price. The initiative will “also seek to remove some of the barriers to contraception by providing health workers with training and counseling in family planning and ensuring that affordable modern contraception is available”. See IIS 298.
[10] An increasing number of powerful foundations are supporting the SRHR agenda, among which: Rockefeller Foundation, UN Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Nike Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gapminder Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, Merck for Mothers, Hewlett Foundation, Packard Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Children Investment Fund Foundation…
[11] The InterDependent. June 26 interview with Muzinguzi.
[12] See IIS 293 and 294.
[13] The countries that participated at a senior level, in addition to the African Union, are : Burkina Faso; Ethiopia; Ghana; Ivory Coast; Kenya; Malawi; Mozambique; Niger; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; South Africa; Tanzania; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
[14] The Global campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals - Accelerating progress in saving the lives of women and children. 2013.
[15] Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa. June 2003.
[16] UN General Assembly Resolution 65/234. The further implementation of Cairo, reads the resolution, must be “undertaken with full respect for the Programme of Action”: “there will be no renegotiation of the existing agreements contained therein”. SRHR agents do not want governments to reopen the alleged “Cairo consensus”. But they are always ready to reopen it themselves to enlarge it through the integration of new, radical components. Their agenda is now moving to gender identity and sexual orientation, gender training from kindergarten, same sex marriage: elements which were included neither in Cairo nor in Beijing.
[17] The UNFPA affirms that out of the 7.3 million births, 2 million are to girls who are 14 or younger, “many of whom suffer grave long-term health and social consequences from pregnancy such as obstetric fistula, and an estimated 70,000 adolescents in developing countries who die each year from complications during pregnancy and childbirth… In addition to funding, the report stresses that to tackle teenage pregnancy, countries must adopt a holistic approach which does not dwell on changing girls’ behaviour, but seeks to change attitudes in society so girls are encouraged to stay in school, child marriage is banned, girls have access to sexual and reproductive health including contraception, and young mothers have better support systems… The report seeks to offer a new perspective on teenage pregnancy, looking not only at girls’ behaviour as a cause of early pregnancy, but also at the actions of their families, communities and Governments… ‘We must reflect on and urge changes to the policies and norms of families, communities and governments that often leave a girl with no other choice, but a path to early pregnancy,’ said Mr. Osotimehin. This is what we are doing at UNFPA and what we will continue to do and recommend until every girl is able to choose the direction of her life, own her future and achieve her greatest potential’”. (UN Press Release, October 30, 2013).
[18] Melinda Gates declared on the occasion of the July 2012 London Summit that she would dedicate the rest of her life to granting access to contraception to poor women, putting her financial emperorship and contacts at the service of this cause.
[19] The Global campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals - Accelerating progress in saving the lives of women and children. 2013.
[20] It counts 240 members, among which a number of foundations and enterprises.
[21] They define SRR as “the rights of all people to make decisions regarding their own sexuality, without infringing on the rights of other people: to decide if, when and how many children to have; to have all the necessary information, means and services available to reach the best possible sexual and reproductive health, and to be free from coercion, stigma and discrimination” (IPPF European Network, Euro NGO, Countdown 2015. Towards a post-2015 development framework. Position paper N°1 January 2013).
[22] Ibid., p. 10.
[23] See IIS 295-300.
[24] Become effective on January 1st, 2008.
[25] The IPPF’s submission to the WHO consultation, Ibid.
[26] IPPF European Network, Euro NGO, Countdown 2015. Towards a post-2015 development framework. Position paper N°1 January 2013, p. 6.
[27] IPPF European Network, Ibid., p. 3.
[28] “Sustainability must be clearly defined to include population dynamics” (The IPPF’s submission to the WHO consultation, “Health in the post-2015Development Agenda”. December 2012).
[29] “Crucial investments should be made in the social dimension of development, particularly in terms of SRHR… lack of universal access to SRHR represents the biggest obstacle to achieving sustainable development and making substantive progress in terms of poverty reduction”; SRHR would also be “key to addressing the issues of leveraging people out of poverty by helping young people, especially girls, to access education and engage in productive activities… as well as by addressing the issue of population growth which in turn affects economic growth rates. Many developing countries are experiencing high rates of population growth, which is associated with high levels of poverty and low levels of human development”; lastly, SRHR would be “key to addressing population dynamics and migration issues which impact the environment and climate change. This includes, in particular, addressing the huge unmet need for family planning in areas of increased climate change and environmental degradation, which is a key strategy to increase poor people’s resilience to climate change…. Population growth is highest in the world’s poorest countries, which are most vulnerable to food and water insecurity… Addressing the unmet need for SRHR services … offers scope to advance environmental sustainability, support climate adaptation and increase resilience in ecologically fragile areas” (IPPF European Network, Euro NGO, Countdown 2015. Towards a post-2015 development framework. Position paper N°1 January 2013, p. 4).
[30] IPPF explains that SRHR “must be distinguished from the broader, comprehensive package of health interventions because in spite of related UN commitments, historically this field has proven to be controversial in many conservative contexts and as a result, governments have swayed from their obligations of delivering sexual and reproductive health services” (The IPPF’s submission to the WHO consultation, Ibid.).
[31] “Young people need access to the right kind of health (including access to SRHR)” and “women and girls must have equal access to… the full range of health services including SRHR” (High Level Panel’s report, p. 17).
[32] The report treated reproductive and sexual rights as fundamental human rights, indissoluble from other human rights, openly advocated the creation of a culture of “acceptance, tolerance, respect, non-discrimination” in sexual matters, the right of single and lesbian women to benefit from fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization, a right to abortion in all EU member states and in developing countries, bashed conscientious objection and the sterilization of transsexual individuals, advocated long term financing of SRHR. The report recommended that people performing abortions illegally be not prosecuted. It also recommended mandatory “comprehensive” sexuality education in primary and secondary schools, in an enabling atmosphere and interactive way. It recommended teenage access to SRHR services without parental consent. It advocated giving a “positive image” of LGBTI people. It requested the European Commission to establish a special budgetary lign for SRHR in development assistance and to guarantee the access to abortion for girls and women victims of rape in armed conflicts.
[33] Recent manifestations of this “community” are the movement that came out of the July 2012 London Family Planning Summit and Women Deliver, whose gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in May 2013 described itself as its “largest global event of the decade” (120 sessions, 400 presenters and over 7,000 participants, according to the organizers and a UN release).
[34] Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes, 87.
[35] John Paul II. Letter to Families, February 2, 1994.