Approaching midnight on the final day of the 2022 United Nations (UN) World Health Assembly (WHA), a technical World Health Organization (WHO) strategy on HIV, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections response was put to a vote[1] for the first time in history.[2] The Assembly, which typically makes decisions by consensus, had found no other path forward. The WHO had allowed the technical strategy to become subject to rare political negotiations at Russia’s request, turning the process into a long and contentious one.[3] States like Indonesia and Nigeria campaigned against evidence-based mitigation strategies like comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and sought to exclude LGBTQI and other marginalized communities,[4] prioritizing their conservative aims over the global interest in an equitable, evidence-based infection response.[5]
These conservative-led states’ tactics came right out of an organized U.S. Christian Right’s playbook for pursuing its anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQI agenda at the UN. Still, despite decades of Christian Right advocacy and mobilization at the UN, attacks on the WHO’s work on infection response and other “unexpected spaces” like it have been rare—that is, until recently.
In the last five years, large Member States such as Egypt, Iran, and Russia have increasingly used UN policymaking processes and specialized agencies that are not dedicated to gender issues to advance right-wing “anti-gender” agendas.[6] These states have brought the anti-gender movement into the halls of the International Labor Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, and more, with the U.S. Christian Right’s backing. Together, they leverage divisions over gender issues, aiming to undermine the UN to the point where it becomes powerless to protect human rights and ceases to be a barrier to right-wing social policymaking on national and sub-national levels.
The U.S. Right’s Role in the Movement’s Transnational Growth
Conservative governments and U.S. Christian Right nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are part of a global anti-gender movement that has grown over the last three decades. The movement unites diverse religious and right-wing actors in opposition to “gender ideology,”[7] an umbrella term invented[8] to disparage feminism, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), CSE, and LGBTQI identities. At the UN, these actors work to roll back progress on gender justice by calling into question the human rights of women, girls, and LGBTQI people;[9] removing references to abortion from policymaking documents;[10] and adding language excusing states from accountability for violating the human rights of these groups.[11] They often do so under the guise of protecting “the (traditional) family” or “parental rights.”[12]
As Pam Chamberlain outlined in an early PRA report, U.S. Christian Right NGOs like the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) and Concerned Women for America first engaged with the UN in the mid-1990s.[13]Taking their cues from the Holy See,[14] they rushed to thwart feminist policymaking gains that they viewed as an “attack on the family.” [15] The Christian Right’s influence at the UN spiked in the early 2000s when the George W. Bush helped groups like Focus on the Family and Family Research Council (FRC) gain access to the UN as accredited civil society.[16]
These organizations were born out of the anti-government Christian Right of the 1970s.[17] They were also influenced by the Old Right isolationists of the Cold War who opposed the UN’s existence, viewing it as a “One World Government” that threatened America’s sovereignty.[18]Small organizations found institutional support from isolationist think tanks like the Heritage Foundation[19] and the larger U.S. conservative movement, sharing funding and board members as well as their sponsors’ contempt for the UN.[20] As a result, Christian Right organizations obtained UN consultative status and became active in the late 1990s with open disdain for the institution they sought to undermine.[21]
The U.S. Christian Right’s Leadership in the UN’s Gender-Dedicated Spaces
For decades, U.S. Christian Right organizations have directed their efforts at UN spaces where feminists have made significant progress on gender and SRHR, like the yearly convenings at the Commission on the Status of Women and Commission on Population and Development. [22] They have lobbied conservative-led states to remove or weaken language on gender equality, reproductive health, and LGBTQ human rights in the negotiated resolutions and treaties that set global policy and human rights norms. Such organizations have become so ubiquitous in gender-dedicated spaces[23] that progressive states and feminists expect opposition[24] and come prepared.[25]
Advocates must contend with claims that, as C-Fam president Austin Ruse puts it, UN agencies have been “taken over by radicals, who change them into engines of radical social policy.”[26] For the Christian Right, the UN’s initiatives on reproductive health—viewed as a coded phrase for abortion[27]—and gender equality are proof of this takeover.[28] Already adamantly opposed to LGBTQI people’s existence, U.S. Christian Right actors oppose the term “gender” itself,[29] arguing that it conflicts with a Christian notion that each person is created male or female by God.[30] When “gender equality” becomes “equality between men and women” at their suggestion, the UN’s efforts ignore how gender shapes lived experience, and non-binary and trans people are excluded.
Claiming that the UN is overturning “traditional values based on morality under the guise of protecting ‘human rights,’”[31] as Family Watch International (FWI) president Sharon Slater has, Christian Right organizations increasingly justify their attempts to weaken the UN’s human rights mechanisms by asserting nations’ sovereignty. They echo conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly’s 1990s-era claim that the UN would exercise “obnoxious control”[32] over U.S. citizens, and holds that UN entities overstep their mandates when they address gender.[33] As punishment, these bodies are to be cut off at the knees with sovereignty provisions that weaken their ability to hold states accountable for rights violations.[34] Making the Old Right proud, Christian Right actors also call for defunding the UN.[35] The Trump administration was obliging: asserting its anti-abortion stance, it withheld U.S. funds from the UN’s family planning agency in 2017, leading to a $32.5 million loss.[36]
In the 2010s, U.S. Christian Right organizations grew their power by partnering with conservative governments that saw human rights as a threat to their power[37] and sought to limit their accountability for them based on religion, culture, and sovereignty,[38] like many in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).[39] The movement with a soft spot for the Russian Orthodox Church[40] also found common cause with Putin’s Russia and many African states,[41] eventually influencing some like Uganda toward enacting draconian anti-LGBTQI legislation domestically.[42] They also helped build coalitions of “pro-family” states large enough to push through language in negotiations or break consensus.[43] One is the Group of the Friends of the Family (GoFF),[44] which C-Fam helped bring into being in 2015.[45] It counts Iran, Saudi Arabia,[46] and Syria[47] among its membership and partners with Concerned Women for America, FWI, and FRC.[48] These organizations gain access to delegates through the GoFF, which provides them with strategies for advancing anti-gender agendas at the Commission on the Status of Women[49] and beyond.
What’s New: The Anti-Gender Movement in “Unexpected” Spaces
The anti-gender movement’s newest chapter is especially dangerous. UN advocates like Estelle Wagner of International Planned Parenthood Federation’s UN Liaison Office, “have seen a substantial escalation of anti-gender efforts across the UN since 2019, not just in the increase in rhetoric and aggressiveness of tactics, but also in the expansion to new, unexpected fora and administrative processes.”[50] The number of incidents in these “unexpected” UN spaces rose from at least one in 2019 to nine by 2023,[51] and the number of states involved has jumped from six to 90.[52] The majority of the 20 most vocal states—headed by Egypt, Iran, and Russia—are GoFF members.[53]
Such efforts have also become more coordinated, with states increasingly negotiating as members of shared-interest groups like the OIC. This coordination helps members take advantage of collective influence[54] and demonstrates the movement’s growing ability to wrangle multiple states toward a single anti-gender position.[55] Efforts also appear more systematic, with states[56] working together to block gender language wherever it appears.[57] For example, in 2023, conservative-led states emboldened by their gains at the 2022 WHA stridently opposed references to gender and sexuality in multiple WHO documents, including internal human resources policies.[58]
As if they had FWI’s Family Defense Handbook[59] or Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF’s) UN language negotiations white paper[60] on hand, these states attacked unsuspecting UN institutions using the same tactics as the Christian Right’s campaigns against the UN’s gender-dedicated spaces. At the 2022 WHA, these tactics led to an unprecedented vote, a weaker statement of adoption, and a document compromised by a sovereignty provision[61] as states called the WHO’s technical authority into question and accused the entity of stepping outside its mandate to promote sexual rights.[62] In other negotiations, U.S. Christian Right organizations watched attentively[63] as states repeatedly claimed[64] that the UN was exceeding its mandate[65] and competence[66] while insidiously[67] trying to create “new rights.”[68] And they delighted when, at their suggestion,[69] states withheld funds,[70] barred a new mechanism from discussing gender,[71] broke with consensus,[72] or rejected resolutions encroaching on sovereignty.[73] Once leveraged mainly at gender-dedicated UN entities, these attacks now target any UN institution that dares to affirm gender equality or human rights.
Why It Matters
Unexpected UN spaces on the new anti-gender front are less equipped to defend against such attacks.[74] In these spaces, anti-gender states deliberately seek conditions[75] where they will encounter fewer feminist advocates[76] as well as delegates who are less familiar with gender issues and more likely to accept weaker language.[77] As a result, anti-gender campaigning has also blocked, weakened, and delayed the UN’s vital work on other issues like global health—as seen at the 2022 WHA—while undermining the credibility and efficacy of its institutions.[78]
While far from perfect, the UN is the principal global institution for setting human rights norms and holding states accountable for rights violations. Without it, there is little standing in the way of human rights backsliding or violations for those who live in countries like the U.S. with constitutions that do not guarantee equality or everyone’s human rights.
Attacks on the UN serve the aims of a broader U.S. conservative movement that seeks to weaken the UN while enacting domestic policies that violate civil and human rights. This is no fanciful notion, but an imminent threat. The plan to do so is laid out in a 900-page policy prescription for the next Republican administration written by Project 2025, a collaboration between former Trump officials and leading right-wing groups that researcher Peter Montgomery calls a “fast road to fascism.”[79]
Created by the Heritage Foundation in collaboration with C-Fam, ADF, and FRC,[80] it’s unsurprising that Project 2025 is exceedingly hostile toward global bodies. It calls for the U.S. to be wary of international organizations that promote “radical social policies as if they were human rights priorities”[81]then lays out a plan for how and when the next administration should withdraw from them.[82] The rest of the document outlines steps the new administration can take to ensure support for the family “color[s] each of our policies”[83] from health care to foreign policy.[84] This is its rationale for calling for a de facto abortion ban through restrictions on medication abortion[85] and rescinding regulations prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQI people,[86] among other human and civil rights violations.
That said, there is hope. Progressive governments and the UN can resist anti-gender campaigning in unexpected UN spaces by preparing delegates and staff working across all issue areas to defend gender equality wherever attacks occur. Policymaking and governance processes should also be made more transparent and participatory. In our daily lives and organizing, we can counter the anti-gender movement by calling out its false narratives about abortion, CSE, and LGBTQI people and sharing personal stories that illustrate the movement’s real-life harm.
But if the anti-gender movement’s mission creep continues unabated, the UN could become a hollow shell of an institution, allowing governments to flout human rights unchecked. With the threat of another Trump presidency and authoritarianism increasing worldwide, we need the UN’s international principles now more than ever.
Endnotes
[1] “Seventy-Fifth World Health Assembly, Summary Records of Committees,” World Health Organization, May 22, 2022, https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA75-REC3/A75_REC3-en.pdf#page=1.
[2] SILGA, “World Health Assembly Affirms Right to Health Without Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation,” ILGA, May 31, 2022, https://ilga.org/news/wha75-world-health-assembly-affirms-right-health-without-discrimination-sexual-orientation/.
[3] “Executive Board 150th Session Summary Records,” World Health Organization, January 2022, 107 –108 and 118, https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB150-REC2/B150_REC2-en.pdf#page=1.
[4] “Executive Board 150th Session,” 107. The abbreviation used to describe sexual and gender minorities, communities, and movements is usually presented as “LGBTIQ” in global policymaking.
[5] “Draft GHSS 2022-2030,” World Health Organization, October 4, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20211008110727/https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/hq-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-library/who_draft_ghss_hiv_hep_stis_2022-2030_for-comments.pdf; “Global health sector strategies,” World Health Organization, June 2022, https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/hq-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-library/full-final-who-ghss-hiv-vh-sti_1-june2022.pdf?sfvrsn=7c074b36_13.
[6] Zoë Schott, “Mission Creep: Expanding Attacks on Gender Threaten the United Nations,” Ipas, 2024.
[7] Eszter Kováts and Maari Põim (eds.), Gender as symbolic glue: The Position and Role of Conservative and Far-Right Parties in the Anti-Gender Mobilizations in Europe (Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2015).
[8] Gillian Kane, “Exporting ‘Traditional Values’: The World Congress of Families,” The Public Eye, Winter 2009/Spring 2010, https://politicalresearch.org/2009/12/01/exporting-traditional-values-t….
[9] Naureen Shameem, “Rights at Risk: Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report 2017,” Observatory on the Universality of Rights, 2017, 11, https://www.awid.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/rights-at-risk-ours-2017.pdf. For many anti-gender actors, their efforts are less about gender itself than about maintaining the traditional social and political hierarchies that have historically benefitted them.
[10] Lynda Gilby, Meri Koivusalo, and Salla Atkins, “Global health without sexual and reproductive health and rights? Analysis of United Nations documents and country statements, 2014–2019,” BMJ Global Health 6 (February 2021): https://doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmjgh-2020-004659.
[11] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 23.
[12] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 11.
[13] Pam Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom: Christian Right NGOs Target the United Nations,” Political Research Associates, November 2006, 3, https://politicalresearch.org/sites/default/files/2018-10/UNdoing-Repro-Freedom_0.pdf.
[14] Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom” 7; Kapya Kaoma, “The People’s Pope?
How the Vatican’s Position on Gender Threatens Human Rights,” The Public Eye, Spring 2018, https://politicalresearch.org/2018/05/16/peoples-pope, discusses the Vatican’s strategy under Pope Francis of privately supporting the Christian Right’s anti-sexual rights agenda while publicly courting progressives.
[15] Cole Parke, “Whose Family? Religious Right’s ‘Family Values’ Agenda Advances Internationally,” Political Research Associates, July 16, 2014, https://politicalresearch.org/2014/07/16/whose-family-religious-rights-family-values-agenda-advances-internationally.
[16] Kane, “Exporting ‘Traditional Values’”; Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom,” 6. All the anti-abortion and anti-CSE organizations that gained consultative status around this time were associated with the U.S. Christian Right.
[17] Jennifer S. Butler, Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized (Pluto Press, 2006), 13-14. The Christian Right movement opposed the liberalization and secularization of government occurring during the 1970s, exemplified by the Supreme Court’s ruling against school prayer ruling and the Scopes trial over the teaching of evolution in public schools. The movement was also initially suspicious of the UN because of “godless” Communist Russia’s involvement.
[18] Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom,” 5.
[19] Butler, Born Again, 141-142.
[20] Nile Gardiner and Baker Spring, “Reform the United Nations,” The Heritage Foundation, October 27, 2003, https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/report/reform-the-united-nations.
[21] Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom,” 6.
[22] Catholics for Human Rights, “Report on the Holy See at the United Nations,” March 14, 2019, 4, https://www.womensordination.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/C4HR-Report.pdf; Emil Edenborg, “Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of ‘Traditional Values,’” Problems of Post-Communism, 70:2 (2023): 181, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1987269; Gilby, Koivusalo, and Atkins, “Global health without sexual and reproductive health and rights?”
[23] Anne Marie Goetz, “The New Competition in Multilateral Norm-Setting: Transnational Feminists
& the Illiberal Backlash,” Daedalus 149, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 169, https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01780.
[24] “We Must Push Back against Anti-Rights Pushback, Secretary-General Stresses in Opening Remarks to Commission on Status of Women,” United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, March 14, 2022, https://press.un.org/en/2022/sgsm21181.doc.htm.
[25] “Solutions Are in Collaboration: Countering Anti-Rights Movements at UNGA 78,” Count Me In!, 2023, https://cmiconsortium.org/countering-anti-rights_atunga78/.
[26] Austin Ruse, “A Dangerous Place,” Catholic Culture, June 2004, https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6103.
[27] Stefano Gennarini, “General Assembly Adds Abortion Language to Resolutions on Clean Water and Rare Diseases,” C-Fam, November 18, 2021, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/general-assembly-abortion-language-to-resolutions-on-clean-water-and-rare-diseases/.
[28] Kane, “Exporting ‘Traditional Values’.”
[29] Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, Letter to the CFS Secretariat, 2021, https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/cfs/Docs2021/gender/210705/RussianFederation_01.pdf; Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations, “Comments from Egypt,” March 2023, https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/cfs/Docs2223/Gender/OEWG-23-03/Input/Egypt.pdf.
[30] Peter Sprigg, “The Trojan Horse of ’Gender’ at the United Nations,” Family Watch International, September 16, 2022, accessed March 24, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20230128171652/https://familywatch.org/19910-2/.
[31] Kane, “Exporting ‘Traditional Values.’”
[32] Chamberlain, “UNdoing Reproductive Freedom,” 5.
[33] Stefano Gennarini, “Hope for Human Rights: Why the UN General Assembly Must Address Treaty Body Overreach,” C-Fam, February 15, 2020, https://c-fam.org/definitions/hope-for-human-rights-why-the-un-general-assembly-must-address-treaty-body-overreach/.
[34] Gennarini, “Hope for Human Rights.”
[35] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 103.
[36] Carol Morello, “Trump Administration to Eliminate its Funding for U.N. Population Fund Over Abortion,” The Washington Post, April 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-eliminate-its-funding-for-un-population-fund-over-abortion/2017/04/04/d8014bc0-1936-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.38ff6048e58f.
[37] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 26.
[38] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 23.
[39] International Islamic Fiqh Academy, “Fatwa regarding ‘Critical Issues in the Treaty of the European Union and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States,’” November 14, 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20231219215441/https:/c-fam.org/wp-content/uploads/Fatwa-on-ACP-EU-treaty-English-French-Arabic.pdf?mc_cid=30002afb97&mc_eid=e94aef3d27.
[40] Katherine Kelaidis, “A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right,” The Public Eye, Winter 2022, https://politicalresearch.org/2022/05/11/twisted-love-story.
[41] Peter Montgomery, “International Backlash: The Religious Right at the UN,” The Public Eye, Fall 2016, https://politicalresearch.org/2016/11/14/international-backlash-the-rel….
[42] Kapya John Kaoma, “Colonizing African Values: How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa,” Political Research Associates, July 24, 2012, https://politicalresearch.org/2012/07/24/colonizing-african-values.
[43] Shameem, “Rights at Risk,” 102.
[44] “Date and Venue,” Uniting Nations for a Family Friendly World, 2019, https://unitingnationsforthefamily.org/program-events/date-venue/.
[45] Julian Borger and Liz Ford, “Revealed: the fringe rightwing group changing the UN agenda on abortion rights,” The Guardian, May 16, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/may/16/cfam-rightwing-white-house-anti-abortion-un.
[46] Ipas, “False Pretenses: The Anti-Comprehensive Sexuality Education Agenda Weaponizing Human Rights,” Ipas, 2023, 8, https://www.ipas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/False-Pretenses-The-Anti-Comprehensive-Sexuality-Education-Agenda-Weaponizing-Human-Rights-OPPCSEE23b.pdf.
[47] UNDESA DISD, “CSocD62 Event on The Importance of the Family in the Eradication of Poverty,” YouTube, February 9, 2024, 1:19:56–1:32:05, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNRGZ9uY5HQ&t=4797s.
[48] “Date and Venue,” 2019.
[49] Borger and Ford, “Revealed: the fringe.”
[50] Conversation with Estelle Wagner, March 25, 2024.
[51] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 22. These numbers are from the 13 cases studied in the report. The report does not claim to cover every single instance of anti-gender campaigning outside a traditionally gender-focused UN space from 2019, there are likely more.
[52] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 23. As the UN increasingly recognizes the need to address gender across all issue areas to ensure equity, gender language is appearing in new contexts and drawing anti-gender attention there. However, there were several cases where states objected to language that they had adopted just a year before in prior iterations of the same documents, suggesting that this is not the only reason for the observed escalation in anti-gender activity in unexpected spaces.
[53] Schott, “Mission Creep.”
[54] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 15.
[55] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 23.
[56] Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the United Nations and other International Organizations, Geneva, Letter to the UN Secretary General, August 25, 2023, https://www.ipas.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023_August_OIC_Letter.pdf; Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the United Nations and other International Organizations, Geneva, Letter to the Executive Director of the United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, September 21, 2023, https://www.ipas.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023_September_OIC_Letter_UNAIDS.pdf.
[57] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 24.
[58] “Executive Board 152nd Session Summary Records,” World Health Organization, 2023, 305–308, https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB152-REC2/B152_REC2_Interactive_en.pdf#page=1.
[59] Sharon Slater, Stand for the Family, The Family Defense Handbook: Alarming evidence and firsthand accounts from the front lines of the battle (Litchfield Park, Arizona: Inglestone Publishing, 2016).
[60] Meghan Grizzle Fischer, “The Rise of Faux Rights: How the UN went from recognizing inherent freedoms to creating its own rights,” ADF International, https://adfinternational.org/resources/white-paper/the-rise-of-faux-rights.
[61] “Seventy-Fifth World Health Assembly,” World Health Organization, May 2022, 210–214, https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA75-REC3/A75_REC3-en.pdf#page=1. Despite months of negotiations, conservative-led states like Egypt were still unwilling to accept the document. As a result, states “noted” the strategy informally at the last minute and only agreed to implement it as it suited their national contexts.
[62] “Seventy-Fifth World Health Assembly,” 166.
[63] United Nations General Assembly, “High-level meeting on HIV/AIDS,” A/75/PV.74, 2021, 7, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3937625; Stefano Gennarini, “UN Agencies and Western Donors Reveal Sexual Agenda Ahead of HIV/AIDS Summit,” C-Fam, April 29, 2021, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/un-agencies-and-western-donors-reveal-sexual-agenda-ahead-of-hiv-aids-summit/.
[64] “Policy Brief: Threats to National Sovereignty: UN Entities Overstepping Their Mandates,” Family Watch International, http://familywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/10/fwipolicybrief_
National_Sovereignty.pdf. FWI has encouraged states to restrict these bodies’ abilities to promote gender equality, SRHR, and the human rights of women, girls, and LGBTQI people.
[65] “High-level meeting on HIV/AIDS,” 8; “San Jose Articles,” C-Fam, 2011, https://c-fam.org/wp-content/uploads/San-Jose-Articles-with-Footnotes.pdf.
[66] Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, “Comments and suggestions to the elaboration of the draft Terms of Reference (TORs) for the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition,” 2020, https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/cfs/Docs1920/Gender/OEWG_30_October_2020/inputs/RUSSIAN_FEDERATION_Gender.pdf.
[67] “FWI At The African Bar Association Conference 2022,” Vimeo, 2022, 2:33, https://vimeo.com/738021132/0e3816b69a?inf_contact_key=1d26ee20d36271debb619f20bd2492567e470d92b8b75168d98a0b8cac0e9c09. Sharon Slater of FWI argued that UN agencies have been “hijacked by Western donor countries and have a hidden sexual rights agenda to sexualize children, to legalize and destigmatize abortion, and to mainstream homosexuality and transgender ideology.”
[68] “High-level meeting on HIV/AIDS,” 8; Political Network for Values, “The New York 75 Commitment to Universal Human Rights on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR,” 2023, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWIlSKfq6pQIJRTgMc0n9-UQA7vRe9BPty8jlKMNt5t3ANyg/viewform.
[69] Slater, Stand for the Family, 167–168. This tactic does double duty as it also deters other UN entities from working on gender equality.
[70] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 30–32.
[71] Stefano Gennarini, “Traditional Countries Outfox Western Powers on Gender Ideology,” C-Fam, November 30, 2023, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/traditional-countries-outfox-western-powers-on-gender-ideology/.
[72] Sharon Slater, “U.N. Declaration on HIV_AIDS Prioritizes Sexual Rights Over Sexual Health,” Daily Signal, June 18, 2021, https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/18/un-political-declaration-on-hiv-aids-prioritizes-sexual-rights-over-sexual-health/.
[73] Stefano Gennarini, “U.S. and Africans Foil Latest Ruse to Advance Abortion Rights,” C-Fam, April 19, 2018, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/u-s-africans-foil-latest-ruse-advance-abortion-rights/.
[74] Schott, “Mission Creep,” 27.
[75] Naureen Shameem, “Rights at Risk: Time for Action: Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report 2021,” AWID, 2021, 125, https://www.awid.org/ours-2021.
[76] Anne Marie Goetz, “The New Competition in Multilateral Norm-Setting: Transnational Feminists & the Illiberal Backlash,” Daedalus 149, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 167, https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01780.
[77] Damjan Denkovski, “Disrupting the multilateral order? The impact of anti-gender actors on multilateral structures in Europe,” Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, 2022, 23 and 46, https://centreforfeministforeignpolicy.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Final_Multilaterialism-Study.pdf.
[78] Nina Larson, “LGBTQ Standoff Blocking UN Labour Agency Budget,” Barron’s, June 9, 2023, https://www.barrons.com/news/lgbtq-standoff-blocking-un-labour-agency-budget-8afd0226, for an example of how such campaigns can bring agencies’ existence into question by interfering with their budget approval processes.
[79] Peter Montgomery, “Project 2025: How Trump Loyalists and Right-Wing Leaders Are Paving a Fast Road to Fascism,” The Public Eye, February 14, 2024, https://politicalresearch.org/2024/02/14/project-2025.
[80] The Heritage Foundation, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (2023), xi.
[81] Mandate for Leadership, 191.
[82] Mandate for Leadership, 191–193. Instead, Project 2025 holds that the U.S. should use its influence within international organizations to promote “respect for sovereignty” and “authentic human rights” as laid out in the anti-abortion U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights report and the Geneva Consensus Declaration.
[83] Mandate for Leadership, 5.
[84] Mandate for Leadership, 192.
[85] Mandate for Leadership, 562.
[86] Mandate for Leadership, 584.