A new report by International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Vision 2020: Sexual and reproductive health and rights – a crucial agenda for the post-2015 framework, details its attempts to advance universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including abortion in the post-2015 development agenda.   

IPPF is working closely with other pro-abortion NGOs and activists at the United Nations, especially the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to not only inject the radical agenda in new sustainable development goals but to have the agenda be the centerpiece of the new goals: “Guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health and rights for all must be at the heart of the world’s response to the challenge of generating sustainable development.” 

The report laments that globally, “Some aspects of the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda are inadequately resourced and sorely neglected, including access to safe and legal abortion, access by adolescents, and access for the poorest and most marginalized groups. Many individuals and groups experience discrimination and stigma based on their sexuality, their gender identity, and their sexual and reproductive choices and behaviours.” 

IPPF is promoting what it calls “a sea-change from the current Millennium Development Goal framework” and to establish by 2015 “a new international development framework that includes sexual and reproductive health and rights as essential priorities.” The post-2015 agenda is being shaped through a multi-faceted process that includes the review of ICPD Beyond 2014, marking twenty years since the infamous International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action in Cairo. This meeting takes place April 7-11 at the UN in New York and has been preceded by regional meetings. 

IPPF boasts of its success in hijacking these regional meetings:

The International Conference on Population and Development review process has been an overwhelming success for sexual and reproductive health and rights. This positions sexual and reproductive health and rights strongly vis a vis the post-2015 process. All the regional conferences – four of which were negotiated by Member States – produced progressive commitments to the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda. The phrase ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ was adopted in most of the regional outcome documents, going beyond the previous terminology of ‘sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights’. 

UNFPA has been at the side of IPPF in the scheme to co-opt the meetings in order to produce contrived outcome documents to which Members States in some cases issued reservations which UNFPA failed to acknowledge in the outcome document as PNCI previously reported about in the ICPD Beyond 2014 meeting in Addis Ababa.  

One of the meetings that IPPF claimed as most successful was the Global Youth Forum which took place in Bali in December 2012. The ‘Bali Declaration’ includes a reference to IPPF’s own declaration, Sexual Rights: an IPPF Declaration, and the highly controversial Yogyakarta Principles. 

This dangerously extreme declaration demands action from governments including: 

• Governments and UN agencies should support the sexual and reproductive rights of young people including ensuring access to legal and safe abortion that is affordable, accessible and free from coercion, discrimination and stigma, providing support and protection mechanisms that promote the right to choose.
• Governments should implement financially sustainable policies and legal frameworks that protect, promote and fulfill the reproductive and sexual rights of all young people, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identities.
• Governments must ensure that international and national laws, regulations, and policies remove obstacles and barriers – including requirements for parental & spousal notification and consent; and age of consent for sexual and reproductive services—that infringe on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents and youth.
• Governments must repeal laws and regulations that permit violence and/or discrimination against young people, especially those who are marginalized, including laws that limit same-sex marriage, and criminalize YPLHIV and LGBTQI.
• Cultural and religious barriers such as parental and spousal consent, and early and forced marriages, should never prevent access to family planning, safe and legal abortion, and other reproductive health services – recognizing that young people have autonomy over their own bodies, pleasures, and desires.

The emphasis on the regional meetings derives out of necessity for IPPF and UNFPA due to their lack of success advancing the disruptive and distorted agenda at UN meetings where knowledgeable country delegations have debated and rejected the agenda. This attempt to use the manipulated regional outcome documents as a bogus show of support for the SRHR agenda will figure into the current meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) as well as CPD in April. 

There is good news for pro-life and pro-family NGOS as IPPF acknowledges, “The political pressures that oppose prioritizing sexual and reproductive health and rights are strong, and the landscape of issues that must be considered for inclusion in the framework is crowded.” 

IPPF and UNFPA plan to use the regional statements to “feed into the Secretary General’s report for discussion at the 2014 Commission on Population and Development. Following this, at the UN General Assembly Special Session in September 2014, the Secretary General’s report on the Programme of Action and next steps will be presented to Member States, and it is anticipated that it will then be integrated into the post-2015 process.” 

PNCI joins Priests for Life and other like-minded NGOs working at the United Nations to stop this hijacking of the critical post-2015 agenda and will work to defeat IPPF’s plan to force inclusion of any reference to “sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)”, “access to sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “inclusion of sexual and reproductive health services under Universal Health Coverage” in the upcoming UN meetings and in the post-2015 agenda.