The Bush administration entered a historic United Nations summit on children this month with a bold strategy: persuade a skeptical world that its offspring would be better off under a conservative Texan’s concept of family and sexual health.
The administration did not achieve everything it sought. But it succeeded in a different act of persuasion: convincing members of the global community that this White House has little regard for international consensus.
“As President Bush has said, abstinence is the only sure way of avoiding sexually transmitted disease, premature pregnancy, and the social and personal difficulties attendant to non-marital sexual activity,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said to a General Assembly chamber full of leaders from 180 countries.
Bush representatives went on to tell delegates over the three-day meeting that abortion has no place in reproductive health services, that “family” should refer only to marriage between a man and a woman, and that the concept of “children’s rights” undermines parental control.
Most of the world still didn’t get it–or simply didn’t buy it. In speech after speech, world leaders stressed the need for the aggressive promotion of birth control education and devices as the best way to prevent HIV and unwanted pregnancies.
Delegates expressed frustration that the Bush stance, opposing abortion and promoting abstinence, has virtually no connection to everything most of the world body has agreed on in these matters during the past eight years. Moreover, they pointed out that the U.S. and Somalia are the only countries in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Finally, delegates privately puzzled over the fact that abortion, after all, is legal in many of their nations–as it is in the U.S.
Bush scored mixed results
In the end, after 30 hours of bitter negotiations over the language of final agreements, the Bush administration scored mixed results. The U.S. prevailed in downplaying the children’s rights treaty. But it failed in its bid to have the final document include explicit policies favoring abstinence and mother-father families and opposing adolescents’ access to abortions.
The Bush delegation did not stand alone. Its positions on abortion and sex education drew cheers from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and other Islamic nations, as well as the Vatican. But the Bush agenda fell flat with America’s more usual allies in Europe, Asia, and most of Latin America and Africa.
Delegates and, later, editorial writers left the meeting saying that the U.S. effort to steer the UN meeting was just the latest move by the White House to withdraw from global cooperation. Only days earlier, the Bush administration broke with 138 countries by withdrawing its participation in the establishment of an International Criminal Court. Previously, Bush had walked away from other treaties, including the Kyoto pact on global warming and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
At the close of the UN special session on children, the Dutch development minister told reporters that U.S. attempts to change long-accepted norms on abortion rights were “irresponsible.” Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala called the U.S. efforts to downplay the children’s rights treaty “unacceptable.” And, according to a guest at a private luncheon of dignitaries, South African delegate and former President Nelson Mandela warned: “If the U.S. continues to act as if it’s the only country in the world, it will increase chaos around the globe.”
“With such initiatives, the U.S. believes it is defending its national interests. But President Bush is wrong,” wrote Spain’s centrist daily, La Vanguardia, referring to the meeting on children. “Bush should be interested in fostering the operability and credibility of international institutions rather than weakening them with his refusal.”
If this perception deepens, some former U.S. diplomats suspect it could undermine American efforts to maintain international support for other Bush initiatives, including the war on terrorism and pressure on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
`Isolated’ from the world
“The administration continues, to the surprise of many of us, in being so isolated from most of the rest of the world,” said Tim Wirth, former Democratic senator and State Department official in the Clinton administration, who now heads the United Nations Foundation.
“Domestic politics are always a consideration,” said Wirth, who led U.S. delegations to previous UN conferences. “But I think today, people in the U.S. understand that we have to be a member of the international community, particularly post-9/11. So I don’t understand how we can ask the world to cooperate with us when we don’t cooperate with them.”
Current State Department officials reject criticism of their negotiating posture at the meeting on children, saying it was other countries, not the U.S., that put politics ahead of children’s best interests.
“We were trying to get real protections for children. A lot of what was going on in the negotiations in New York was focusing on rhetoric,” said a senior State Department official who participated in the talks.
Another official, who acted as a senior negotiator, said the U.S. has been unfairly blamed for what human-rights advocates consider an attempt to undermine the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.S. has not ratified the 1989 pact, which conservative members of Congress have criticized as a threat to parental authority.
Acknowledging significance
“We weren’t in any way saying that the treaty isn’t of historical significance,” said the U.S. negotiator. “But, what we did not want was the [final agreement] to suggest that it is legally binding on the United States.”
In the arcane linguistics of diplomacy, many of the high-toned debates ultimately boiled down to single words and phrases included in the final agreement, titled “A World Fit for Children.”
The U.S., for instance, agreed to drop its bid for a footnote declaring abortion unacceptable for teenagers. In return, opponents agreed to delete the word “services” from the phrase, “reproductive health services,” which the U.S. delegation argued was an implied endorsement of abortion.
Tool for advocacy groups
Whatever the political impact, the practical effect of those debates will be revealed when governments and activists return to their countries to address the problems of the world’s 1.2 billion young people. Though not enforceable by law, the agreements give advocacy groups the footing to hold governments accountable for promises made to the international community.
Strong language gives small voices the power to shame their governments into acting as promised. In this case, say critics of the U.S. position, the U.S. watered down the final document in ways that may limit their ability to pressure governments into funding sex education and supporting clinics that provide realistic approaches to the problems of teenage pregnancy and the spread of AIDS.
“What we ended up with was an extremely weak document,” said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, who attended the meeting. “This was an opportunity to do something great and they missed it.”
