Secret
Meeting to Plot Global Abortion Strategy Exposed - UN Personnel Present
LifeSiteNews ^ | 8/15/08 | Samantha Singson
Posted on Friday,
August 15, 2008 12:47:00 PM by wagglebee
The GJC meeting brought together academics,
lawyers, and practitioners with ties to such radical anti-life and anti-family
groups as the George Soros' Open Society Institute,
Equality Now, Center for Reproductive Rights, Women's
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and Amnesty International.
Jeremy Sarkin, the current UN Special Rapporteur for Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances was
also at the meeting.
Participants at the meeting lamented the lack of
international political will to enforce "gender justice" around the
world and agreed that "shock treatment" was needed to change
"the entrenched political and cultural norms that perpetuate male-dominated
decision-making bodies and constrain women."
Janet Benshoof, former
president of the Center for Reproductive Rights and current president and
founder of the GJC, asserted that conflict situations could be used as an
"access point" to change the culture and the players. Benshoof argued that the prime opportunities for advancing
their cause lay in the "transitioning government structures which afford
particular opportunity for repositioning women's role in public life and
decision-making."
Meeting participants deliberated on how human
rights law precedents could be made in conflict situations to "reshape
power structures," ensure gender equality, create "judicial
entrepreneurs" and change norms. Some ideas included: increasing the
number of women judges, increasing the number of female legislators by getting
political parties to actively recruit women, and implementing affirmative
action policies.
One participant mused, "A lot of laws have
not been interpreted or defined in a new country and you can assume that
whatever you want the law to be, it is - unless it is proven otherwise. So of
course we put the most progressive spin on it."
Apart from getting involved in conflict
situations, the group discussed other possible opportunities and entry points
to change norms and advance the agenda. The group expressed hope in being able
to take advantage of the new human rights bodies that are being created by the
Association of South East Asian Nations and the Arab League.
One member of the group boasted, "The more we
say it, the more people get to believing it. We're changing the norm. First
they laugh and then they start repeating it."
The
By the end of the day-long meeting, participants
said they were looking forward to coming together again to discuss monitoring
and implementation and "to think of creative mechanisms for enforcing
laws." Future meetings of the "brain trust" have not yet been
announced.