Anyone else worried by this?
More than 250 global leaders in all fields - including 85 heads of state and government - have signed a statement endorsing a U.N. plan adopted 10 years ago to ensure every woman's right to education, health care, and to make choices about childbearing. But President George W. Bush's administration refused to sign because the statement mentions ‘sexual rights’.
A decade after the landmark International Conference on Population and Development, the statement was handed Wednesday to Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette who called it "a brilliant idea" that will renew the commitment of governments and leaders to achieve the goals that 179 nations agreed to in Cairo.
The United States was one of the 179 nations that backed the Cairo plan of action.
It notes that in 1994 ‘the world's governments and civil society committed to an action plan to ensure universal access to reproductive health information and services, uphold fundamental human rights including sexual and reproductive rights, alleviate poverty, secure gender equality, and protect the environment’.
While progress has been made, the statement says the world is facing an exponential increase in HIV/AIDS, a growing gap between rich and poor, persistently high death rates related to pregnancy and childbirth, and inadequate access to family planning services. It calls on the international community to fund and implement the goals of the conference, known as the ICPD.
Wirth noted that 134 million couples who want family planning services don't have access to them and there is an average of just three condoms per year available to men in sub-Saharan Africa - "a very, very significant shortfall."
The statement was signed by leaders of 85 nations including the entire European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and more than a dozen African countries as well as 22 former world leaders, notably U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
In a letter to organizers of the statement, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kelly Ryan reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to ‘the goals and objectives’ of the Cairo conference and ‘to the empowerment of women and the need to promote women's fullest enjoyment of universal human rights.’
"The United States is unable, however, to endorse the 'world leaders' statement on supporting the ICPD," Ryan said. "The statement includes the concept of 'sexual rights,' a term that has no agreed definition in the international community, goes beyond what was agreed to at Cairo and is not a component of the ICPD."
Technically, the State Department is correct. The Cairo programme of action states that women have the ‘right to make decisions concerning reproduction, free of discrimination, coercion and violence as expressed in human rights documents.’ But it doesn't specifically mention ‘sexual rights.’
Sexual rights were specifically mentioned a year later, however, in the platform of action adopted by over 180 countries including the United States at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing.
That platform, which the United States also took a leading role in drafting, states: ‘The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.’
The U.S. letter did not elaborate on the Bush administration's objections to ‘sexual rights,’ but at past U.N. meetings U.S. representatives have spoken out against abortion, gay rights and promoting promiscuity by providing condoms to young people to prevent AIDS.
To those who signed the statement, ‘sexual rights’ means the right of women to decide when to have sex and who and when to marry, and the right to protection against sexually transmitted infections such as HIV and violent acts such as rape.
http://uk.oneworld.net/external/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fippfnet.ippf.org%2Fpub%2FIPPF_News%2FNews_Details.asp%3FID%3D3836
