For the attention of
Sir Emyr Jones Parry
UK Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York

15 July 2005

Dear Sir

I am very concerned with the activities of the Canadian, Finnish and Norwegian governments at the United Nations recently.  According to an organisation called C-FAM, these governments partially funded a meeting of NGO’s to lobby for abortion rights to be included in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the goals of the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign.

At present the MDGs do not include ‘abortion rights’.  However, the UN’s Millennium Project Report calls for abortion to be included in the MDGs.  The Report claims that ‘safe abortion’ and ‘abortion rights’ are necessary to achieve the MDGs.  According to C-FAM’s Friday Fax for February 11, 2005, the Millennium Report will be the basis of the review of the MDGs at the Millennium Summit + 5 to be held in New York in September 2005.

C-FAM’s Friday Fax for June 24, 2005, entitled: UN Excludes Pro-Life Groups from Important UN Meeting, claims that pro-life groups - most with official UN status - were not allowed to participate in the meeting with the UN General Assembly while hundreds of UN-picked international lobby groups were allowed to attend and that the meeting ‘consisted of repeated and unopposed calls for more access to abortion and homosexual rights through the Millennium Development Goals’.

I am sure you are aware of the international campaign by charities and others in Britain to 'make poverty history'. ⁽¹⁾  However, we need to remind ourselves that the 'right to life' is the fundamental right upon which all other rights are based.  The right to food, education, health care, clean water or housing for instance, are meaningless if there is no 'right to life'.  To make poverty history we have to realise that 'the nations with legalised abortion are the poorest of nations.  The great destroyer of peace in the world today is the crime against the innocent unborn child'. ⁽²⁾

In an abortion a tiny human life is torn apart and thrown away.  Since the 1967 Abortion Act, six million two hundred thousand (6,200,000) ⁽³⁾ children have been killed by abortion in Britain alone.  Every week in Britain, 3,500 children are deliberately killed by surgical abortion and an untold number of tiny human lives are killed because they were unable to implant in their mother's womb as a consequence of their mothers taking the Pill or the 'morning after pill' (otherwise known as 'emergency contraception').  Still further tiny human lives are killed during IVF and human embryo experimentation, including human cloning and embryonic stem cell research.  In fact in February 2005 the United Nations banned human cloning. ⁽⁴⁾  In the United States, since abortion became legal in 1973, forty five million (45,000,000) children have been killed by abortion.

Abortion violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child which states that, '...the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.'

United for Life believes that any nation, charity, organisation or individual which supports, advocates or carries out abortion violates the human rights of the unborn, violates the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The United States has formerly complained to the President of the UN General Assembly that conservative groups have been excluded from the current round of talks on the MDGs and according to C-FAM dozens of leftists groups were hand picked to speak to the general assembly and not a single conservative group was picked.

We therefore raise our objection to these governments’ participation in this human rights abuse by its recent activities at the UN and urge you as the UK Ambassador to follow the US lead on this.

I await your earliest reply.

Yours sincerely
Chris Mason
United for Life.

Enc:

C-FAM - US Protests Exclusion of Pro-Life Groups from UN Conference - July 7, 2005

C-FAM - UN Excludes Pro-Life Groups from Important UN Meeting - June 24, 2005

C-FAM - UN-Commissioned Report Advocates Abortion Rights/Attacks Christian Beliefs - February 11, 2005

References

1. BBC News, 3 Feb 2005, Mandela calls for poverty action
2. International campaigner for the world's poor and Nobel Peace prize winner - Mother Teresa
3. UK national abortion statistics
4. MichNews.com   Also see c-fam.org

From Sir Emyr Jones Parry KCMG

1 August 2005

Chris Mason
Co-ordinator
United for Life
22 Moreton Close
Bishops Cleeve
Cheltenham
GL52 8AW

Dear Mr Mason

Thank you for your email of 15 July in which you expressed your concerns regarding the 23-24 June meeting of non-governmental organisations at the United Nations.

The informal hearings of the United Nations General Assembly with non-governmental, other civil society and private sector organisations were held to allow these organisations to express their views and opinions on the range of issues covered by the recent report of the UN Secretary-General "In Larger Freedom".  This will form the basis for the discussions by world leaders during the forthcoming summit at the United Nations in September.  The United Kingdom Government greatly values the contribution that these organisations make to our work at the UN and we warmly welcome these meetings as an opportunity to engage in open and frank discussion on a number of crucial issues affecting both the United Nations and the international community.

As mandated by the UN's General Assembly, the President of the General Assembly established an NGO Task Force to assist him in preparing for this event.  This Task Force established a clear and transparent criteria for the selection of the meeting's 250 partnerships, drawn from over 770 nominations.  These criteria included:

- Broad substantive expertise and/or experience in one or more of the four sections of the Secretary-General's report, "In Larger Freedom;"

- Representation of organisations/networks with a broad constituency, of a public interest nature, and operating at a local, national or international level;

- Gender, geographic and sectoral balance, with attention paid to racial, ethnic, intergenerational and religious diversity:

- Significant representation from the southern countries, indigenous peoples and other under-represented regions or groups.

We are aware of claims by a number of organisations that they were deliberately excluded from the meetings.  We take such claims extremely seriously and we have followed these up with the Task Force.  Member States' involved in the actual selection of the participants was limited.  This enables the Task Force to expedite their work in the short time available but also, and more importantly, to allow the organisations to maintain their independence and impartiality.  We believe that the Task Force followed a very deliberative and thorough process throughout.  They have reassured us that all organisations who correctly submitted their attendance form within the deadline and met the criteria above were considered.  Colleagues from the UK Mission attended the meetings throughout and I can assure you that the participants at the meetings represented a wide diversity of views, from a range or organisations from around the world.

With regard to the specific point you raise, the UK Government believes that sexual and reproductive health, as defined in the International Conference on Population and Development's Programme of action (Cairo, 1994), is an essential element of good health and human development.  More progress is necessary in these areas if we are to meet the Millennium Development Goals, particularly those concerned with child and maternal health, HIV and AIDS and other communicable diseases, and gender equality.  Better sexual and reproductive health will also accelerate progress towards the MDGs on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving universal primary education.  The UK Government supports the line of the ICPD Programme of Action that abortion should not be promoted as a form of family planning.  However, we believe that when any woman seeks an abortion, it should be safe and she should have access to post-abortion care and counselling on and access to a wide range of family planning.  For more information on the UK Government's approach to sexual and reproductive health, I attach a copy of the Department for International Development's position paper on "Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights".

Yours sincerely

Emyr Jones Parry