United in Opposing People

November 14, 2000

Volume 2/ Number 20 

Dear Colleague:

Driven by a population control agenda, running roughshod over the rights of sovereign states, the UN seems increasingly out of control.

Steven W. Mosher

President

United in Opposing People

As the Second World War drew to a close, the victorious allies met in San Francisco to discuss how to keep a peace that had been won at such a cost in blood and treasure. They drew up a charter for a new international organization that would prevent war, protect human rights, affirm the dignity and worth of the human person, and promote freedom around the world.

Over the ensuing decades, however, the United Nations has strayed from, even abandoned, its founding principles. Indeed, the UN bureaucracy and its affiliated agencies, such as the United Nations Population Fund, often seem to be working at cross-purposes to these goals.

Instead of protecting existing human rights, for example, the UN twists the notion of human rights beyond recognition by attempting to define new rights, such as the “right” to an abortion. Instead of reaffirming the worth and dignity of the human person, the UN seeks to reduce the population of the planet. Instead of promoting freedom around the globe, the UN holds conferences and pushes for “consensus” documents that undermine family values and national sovereignty on a whole host of issues.

The UN attack on national sovereignty takes many forms. At the June 1998 Rome Summit, the UN sought to strengthen its judicial arm by pushing for the authority to arrest and try any person in the world before its criminal court. The September 1999 UN Report of the Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms called for the global abolition of the right to keep and bear arms. The Declaration of the UN Millennium Summit, held in New York the week of September 4, called for a central role for the UN in “managing worldwide economic and social development.” The UN Environmental Programme, in its Human Development Report 1999, went even further, advocating the creation of a world central bank and the imposition of global taxes. No less a figure than UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself has openly called for the creation of a body of international law to be enforced by “global governance.”

It doesn’t seem to bother UN officials that such attacks on national sovereignty are specifically forbidden by their own Charter, which states in Article 2 that the UN is not authorized “to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” If the trial and punishment of criminals, the imposition of taxes, and the issuance and control of currencies is not a function of national governments, then what is? These steps in the direction of “global governance” should be halted.

The alternative is to allow our liberty to be slowly strangled by unelected, unaccountable and rootless bureaucrats.

The UN and its affiliated agencies have also fallen prey to an environmentalist fancy that sees human beings in their numbers as a threat to the planet. Despite having a Charter that touts the “dignity and worth of the human person,” the UN acts as though all people, born and unborn, are a burden and not a blessing. UN documents paint humanity as an unwelcome intruder on the planet’s surface, a trespasser in the Garden of Eden, rather than a responsible steward, or a creator of beauty. People are pollution; the UN almost seems to be saying. This comes through in various ways. The recent Millennium Summit Declaration, for example, exhorts us all to have “respect for nature,” and to abide by something called the “precepts of sustainable development.” Sustainable development, as it happens, is shorthand for centralized control of all economic activity and restrictions on childbearing—both motivated by a fear of overpopulation.

This anti-people bias means that much of the UN’s work in the areas of peace and security, economic and social development, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and international law—the five areas mentioned in its Charter—does not support, but actually undermines, the dignity and worth of the human person.

The UN speaks of peace and security, yet through its population control programs is carrying out a true war against unborn children. This is not a conventional war with soldiers and tanks maneuvering on a field. But it involves a deliberate effort to kill, and there have been far more casualties from abortion than from all the other wars in the past century combined. Is it not schizophrenic for the UN to preach about disarmament, while at the same time distributing manual vacuum aspirators and morning after pills to assault the unborn in utero?

The UN speaks of economic and social development, but economic development has come to be virtually synonymous with lowering the birth rate. Former colonial powers demand that their one-time charges have population control programs in place as a condition of receiving foreign aid. How can the UN tout its commitment to decolonization and at the same time, through its Population Fund, spend hundreds of million of dollars each year to promote population control, a new and deadly form of neocolonialism? How can the UN speak of peacemaking and at the same time employ techniques of psychological warfare to alter the child-friendly attitudes of targeted communities in Africa and elsewhere? Poverty cannot be combated by eliminating the poor.

The UN speaks of humanitarian affairs, but what is humanitarian about forcing UN-sponsored medical clinics to dilute health care through the aggressive promotion of so-called family planning? The UN speaks of human rights, yet continues to pander to powerful countries like China that run roughshod over the rights of their citizens. The UN’s defenders argue that China’s permanent membership in the Security Council, which gives it a veto over UN operations, makes it impossible to effectively respond to China’s misdeeds. But China’s veto doesn’t mean that the UN has to endorse China’s oppression of Tibet, for example, or its coercive one-child policy.

It is a scandal that the UN Population Fund gives millions of dollars of aid each year to the PRC’s State Family Planning Council, the Chinese government agency in overall command of the one-child policy. And what is one to call the UN decision of a few years ago to hold a conference on the status of women in Beijing? A country, which dictates to women the number of children they may have, and aborts them if they violate the rules, is hardly a suitable location for such an event. Yet the UN allowed China to host the event anyway, engaging in the crass pretence that Beijing would be helpful in promoting international women’s rights.

No “New World Order”

The UN is not violating its Charter lightly, but for what UN bureaucrats believe to be the loftiest of purposes: The establishment of a New World Order. The undermining of national sovereignty paves the way for a new world government. The assault on human dignity frees the proposed world government to selectively reduce the population of the world to a “manageable” number.

A new US President will appoint a new UN ambassador. What should the new US ambassador do?

First, he should seek to rein in those UN bureaucrats who are aggressively pursuing an agenda of global governance. The new ambassador should forcefully remind UN bureaucrats that the UN Charter guarantees that the national sovereignty of member states be respected.

Second, the new Ambassador should publicly and forcefully reject the neo-Malthusian paranoia that is at the heart of the UN’s attack on life and the family. For decades prophets of doom have been predicting disaster when the earth’s limited resources are outrun by population growth. Their prophecies are wrong, the U.S. Ambassador should say. The greatest resource on the planet is none other than humanity itself.

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