New York, NY (CFAM/LifeNews) — A UK-based advocacy group received high-level news coverage this week with a survey claiming that “women’s rights defenders” are facing increasing threats in their efforts to end violence against women and girls.
However, the only evidence they provided was a poll of only 47 unnamed activists, with highly subjective questions. No information was provided about how the participants were selected or how a “women’s rights defender” was defined, a phrase commonly used by abortion activists to define themselves.
Action Aid released the survey as a way to promote their recent report on violence against women, which was published to influence the UN as it decides a multi-year, multi-billion dollar agenda for global development.
“Eighty per cent of activists working on abortion or on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights felt less safe or much less safe,” according to the Action Aid press release, which did not specify how many members of their already small sample were included in that group.
The question of who qualifies as a “human rights defender” depends on the definition of human rights, which has become a highly controversial subject. Activists claim that abortion is a human right and that “sexual rights” exist, despite no where near a global consensus and the outright rejection of both in one way or another by most of the world’s countries.
In its report, Action Aid, which supports abortion and homosexual activism, combines these efforts with those of women lobbying for universally agreed human rights such as the right to vote, hold property, have due process under the law, and live free from the threat of violence.
The report expresses concern that feminist organizations are “increasingly starved of funds” and subjected to “narrow donor-driven agendas” and “fragmented, short-term ‘results-based’ funding.” Action Aid doesn’t say who is responsible to ensure that women’s groups receive a steady stream of income.
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Earlier this year, feminists were outraged when countries at the UN issued a declaration on the twentieth anniversary of the landmark Beijing women’s conference and omitted any mention of feminist groups or women’s “human rights defenders.”
The International Women’s Health Coalition circulated a petition to “express our outrage at the way that we have been excluded” from the negotiations between government diplomats. If denied involvement, “we will stay home.”
Professor Anne Marie Goetz, on sabbatical from the massive agency called UN Women, complained, “the negotiation process meant that feminist organizations were kept at arm’s length and could not perform their usual function of lobbying (outside the room) for stronger language.”
All non-diplomats were subject to the same rules.
In 2013, the international women’s health conference Women Deliver featured LeRoy Carhart, an abortionist who specialized in live-birth abortions, on a panel of so-called “human rights defenders.” Carhart characterized himself as the victim of persecution, citing an alleged arson attack at his farm in 1991. The fire was never officially declared to be arson, and there were no prosecutions.
Earlier this year, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights released a series of videos highlighting “human rights defenders.” Among them was Dr. Willie Parker, a full-time abortionist who operates the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. His video does not mention the word “abortion.”
The UN’s human rights office did not include any defenders of the rights of unborn children among their selections.
LifeNews Note: Rebecca Oas writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group’s Friday Fax and is used with permission.
