A major United Nations meeting has collapsed because of its promotion of radical sexuality education for children.
The 56th session of the Commission on Population and Development concluded April 14 with no negotiated outcome between governments, resulting in the failure of yet another multimillion-dollar U.N. session as a result of vociferous opposition to extreme ideological agendas.
Spearheaded by the U.N. Population Fund, the primary driver of abortion promotion within the U.N. system, the commission has a history of repeated failures, given robust opposition from governments committed to preventing the spread of Western ideological colonization to their lands.
Despite immense diplomatic pressure from the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and others to promote “comprehensive sexuality education”—as well as procedural tactics meant to wear out diplomats negotiating for weeks long into the night— governments, primarily representative of the developing world, held firm to uphold their national laws and norms on the dignity of human life, parental rights, and the family.
These U.N. processes make clear that the exportation of Western dogmas is predicated on the silencing of dissent. The hope of ideologically driven governments and their U.N. accomplices is to infantilize countries that oppose their worldview, leveraging a combination of inducements and threats to capture their support.
Fortunately, many delegates at the session expressed exasperation with the West’s myopic focus on radical agendas to the detriment of their urgent and universally agreed-upon development needs, particularly in the area of education policy.
While an ostensible failure, given the sheer waste of diplomatic efforts and resources (governments dedicate significant focus to the negotiation of this process for several weeks every year), this should be heralded as a notable, though costly, victory.
Standing up to the West requires immense stamina on the part of developing countries. While victorious in their opposition—a remarkable win for the sake of children and their parents everywhere—the real loss is the abject, consistent failure of the U.N. to advance much-needed policy in the area of development and education.
The priority theme this year was seemingly benign “population, education, and sustainable development.” Regrettably, however, the process has been systematically leveraged to promote neo-Malthusian population-control measures via abortion and the promotion of explicit sexuality education for minors.
Time and time again, when the Commission on Population and Development fails, expressions of faux shock resonate throughout the halls of the U.N. When will U.N. bureaucrats realize that the rest of the world is simply not up for the disastrously bumpy, woke ride that the West has trailblazed?
“Comprehensive sexuality education” subjects children to a wildly inappropriate and inaccurate conception of the human body and sexual relations, relying on distorted assumptions regarding child autonomy, privacy and confidentiality, consent and decision-making standards that the majority of cultures around the world continue to strongly reject.
Such a view is based on an impoverished, individualistic anthropology that views children primarily through the lens of atomistic rights-holders with attenuated relationships with family and friends, antagonized from foundational reference points in their cultures or religions, and sex as an expression of power dynamics in conflict with others in their lives.
It must be made clear that promotion of “comprehensive sexuality education” and related aggressions against children has no foundation in international human rights law, in addition to being firmly rejected by national governments across the globe.
It’s thus no wonder that the promotion of these agendas by New York bureaucrats is met with such determined opposition.
As we are seeing increasingly here in the West, a purported commitment to “inclusion” actively suppresses those who hold traditional and religious values—the very values that have undergirded much of human civilization until this point.
The exportation of our distorted, and evidently failing, ideologies must be called out for what it is—a pernicious, neocolonial attempt to impose alien values on the rest of the world when, more often than not, real development policy requires nothing more than support for basic needs.
Fulfilling the right to education means supplying facilities, books, teacher development, vocational and technical training, access to financing and scholarships, and the like.
“Sexuality education” based upon gender ideology is most clearly not the answer to the real educational demands of the next generation.
While the failure of the Commission on Population and Development to produce an outcome represents an impressive moment of dissent, the battle is far from over.
We know proponents of these agendas are relentless in the fight to achieve global dominance for their views. The hope is that governments will continue to exercise their sovereign prerogative to defend national laws and values, and that consistent opposition can result in a reorientation of the U.N. back to the promotion of people’s authentic needs and integral human development.
Ultimately, we must aspire to a U.N. that produces truly consensual population and development priorities for its member nations. This is an outcome worth fighting for—and, as encapsulated by the U.N. Charter, one that would fulfill the dreams of its framers to reaffirm the “dignity and worth of the human person.”
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.