CLC Blog

From November 12-14, thousands of abortion activists stormed into Kenya's capital to attend the Nairobi Summit, a conference that was organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the government of Denmark, in partnership with a few member states and organizations, to promote abortion as a solution to world poverty.

Over the years, these same activists have been high jacking the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, an annual conference that monitors, reviews and assesses the implementation of the Cairo Programme of Action through intergovernmental negotiations and consensus building by members of the General Assembly. For 25 years, their goal has been to institutionalize an international ‘right to abortion’. Year after year, they have failed in large part due to the strong pushback from the majority of nations and pro-life non government organizations.

With no success within the UN framework, these activists organized their own conference in Nairobi, Kenya, deceitfully labeling it as a 25th anniversary of the Cairo Commission on Population and Development. They created their own declaration document called the 'Nairobi Statement', which outlines all their goals and promises to promote so called sexual rights, abortion rights, LGBT rights, and radical sex-ed under the umbrella term of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), and they urged nations and organizations to make financial commitments to help realize their goals. This conference was not representative of the General Assembly as only a few member states participated, and pro-life and pro-family NGOs were strategically denied access.

Leading up to the summit, Bishops from Kenya, together with dozens of religious and faith based organizations and NGO's, condemned this conference for forcing SRHR on the developing world, and for targeting the African continent. The chair of the Kenyan bishops' family life office, Bishop Alfred Rotich, told Africa's Catholic News Agency that "We find such a conference not good for us, (and) destroying the agenda for life.”

In a news conference prior to the summit, the chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Philip Anyolo, said that the bishops "view this agenda as an intent to corrupt our youth and enslave them to foreign ideologies." He was referring to the harmful LGBT ideology that has been imposed upon Africans for decades by the UN and western organizations.

As CLC has reported in the past, the imposition of these ideologies by wealthy nations and organizations on countries dependent on foreign aid is a form of ideological colonialism. But of course, this did not stop summit organizers from carrying on with their agenda.

On the final day of the summit, as organizers celebrated victory, gloating about the billions of dollars they were able to raise in pledges from governments and private donors, the United States, together with 10 other nations (Brazil, Belarus, Egypt, Haiti, Hungary, Libya, Poland, Senegal, St. Lucia, and Uganda), released a strong statement highlighting the illegitimacy of the summit and its declaration. They questioned the validity of the summit's priorities, and refuted the notion that abortion is a human right by doubling down on their previous statement from September's General Assembly, stating that "There is no international right to abortion; in fact, international law clearly states that ‘[e]veryone has the right to life’ (e.g. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)."

In addition to this clear and firm language on abortion, the statement also criticized the summit for lacking transparency and inclusivity: "While the Cairo ICPD Program of Action was negotiated and implemented with and by the entire UN General Assembly membership, only a small handful of governments were consulted on the planning and modalities of the 2019 Nairobi Summit."

The statement pointed out that summit organizers did not follow proper UN procedures stating, "Therefore, outcomes from this summit are not intergovernmentally negotiated, nor are they the result of a consensus process. As a result, they should not be considered normative, nor should they appear in future documents as intergovernmentally-agreed language."

By delivering this strong and accurate declaration, the United States along with the 10 other countries have derailed years and years of abortion activism led by UN agencies and NGO’s. The importance of this message cannot be overstated. It will help carry the efforts of the international pro-life movement for years to come.

Read the full statement here