Bush Administration Sabotages International Women’s Conference with Right-Wing Backstabbing by KTK

The Bush Administration lost on one procedural move today, but otherwise has succeeded in derailing a UN-sponsored conference on women’s issues by injecting right-wing ideology on abortion (inevitably), women’s rights, sex, and, bizarrely, economic globalization.

The [first] document [being voted on] is a one-page statement drawn up for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to reaffirm the closing declaration of the group’s meeting 10 years ago in Beijing that organizers had hoped to pass as their first order of business.

Instead, in an action that has kept the first four days of the two-week session in turmoil, the United States proposed that wording be added noting that the declaration did not create “any new international human rights” nor “the right to abortion.”

The move prompted every regional delegation to the conference to object and call for the language of the statement to be approved intact with no adjustments. After days of lobbying, the United States was virtually alone in pressing the issue, and the many advocacy groups in attendance accused the Americans of trying to hijack the conference with obstructionist tactics.

After losing their fight to impose restrictive amendments, the Bushites claimed victory anyway:

Ambassador Ellen R. Sauerbrey, said that the United States was now convinced that its weeklong campaign for ensuring that the document not incorporate a new international right to abortion had been successful and that an amendment making that point was therefore unnecessary.

“We have heard from countries that our interpretation is their interpretation, so the amendment, we recognize, is really redundant, but it has accomplished its goals,” she said.

In the meantime they’ve managed to waste almost half the conference by delaying a statement that is merely an edorsement of what is already official UN policy.

After that, the Bush delegation sought to impose its anti-sex and globalization agenda in the guise of plans to deal with the exploitation of women.

The president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, Adrienne Germain, who had called the original American position a “mischievous distraction,” said that the conference could now get down to the business that had brought 6,000 women and government ministers to the United Nations.

While she applauded the American decision, she said American proposals on the economic empowerment of women and for a worldwide ban on prostitution might cause new stresses between the United States and many of the 130 countries represented. The United States is proposing the ban as a way of curbing sex tourism and the trafficking of women.

“Many countries believe that criminalizing prostitution can create new problems,” Ms. Germain said. “The worry is that when it’s criminal, it goes underground, and there’s no health care, no protection against violence and no counseling for the prevention of HIV/AIDS.”

As for the economic measures, she said that many countries were concerned about the treatment of women in a globalized, multinational environment.

As usual, the Bushites simply cannot bear any acknowledgement of the fact that people actually have sex, or have it in ways they do not approve of. Their plan for dealing with prostitution is the same as their plan for dealing with teenage pregnancy, or AIDS in Africa: “abstinence only.” And, in the height of cynicism, their plan for the economic empowerment of women is . . . globalization of trade. (Yes, what worked for Halliburton can work for Peruvian women’s weaving collectives! Just you wait!)

It’s hard to decide what is the most disgusting feature of this administration, but its almost gleefully cynical hostility to women is certainly well in the running. Its penchant for making the US – once a humane and admired country – the single most backward nation in the world on issue after issue (the execution of juvenile offenders, detention without charge or trial, torture, AIDS policy, imperialism, women’s issues . . .) is also in there. This latest incident is just – too typically – more of the same.