Endeavour Forum banned from UN

Pro-life groups, including Endeavour Forum, Inc., have been barred from participating in the UN Commission on the Status of Women's CSW 66 forum meeting currently being held in New York for two weeks during March 14–25. Worse still, powerful pro-abortion activists have declared their intention to exclude all pro-life groups from the United Nations permanently.

This has been a bitter blow to us. It is a source of pride for me that for decades we have enjoyed being able to participate in UN events owing to our being a non-government organisation (NGO) with special consultative status with the UN's Economics and Social Council (ECOSOC). On numerous occasions we have been entitled to run parallel and side events at UN conferences, and to sponsor those of other organisations which share our values.

For years I have attended international functions both at the UN headquarters in New York and in other countries, and made many friends and valuable contacts. My friendship with Denise Mountenay has been pivotal to our global outreach. Denise is founder and president of Canada Silent No More, and a key figure in Together for Life Ministries, a Christian outreach to women suffering post-abortion grief. In recent years she has been my voice at the UN.

Endeavour Forum has provided finance for presentations both by her and by sympathetic UN member-states, including for one memorable presentation by an American Samoan Christian women in 2018. Denise's regular participation in UN events has allowed us to continue on a global level to raise support for pro-life causes and especially the welfare of women and girls.

However, powerful pro-abortion activists in the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) see things very differently. Through a distorted reading of the CSW's declared purposes — in particular, that the CSW is to be an inclusive and respectful forum "to disseminate information" and "to promote policies and programs to further the rights of women and girls, with a gender perspective" — they have contrived to justify this ban.

Endeavour Forum has been summarily informed that "your event does not align with NGO CSW values and/or mandate".

The two virtual parallel events that we had planned to run — one on violence against women and girls during pregnancy, and the other on the same issue from the perspective of religious faith and women's rights — apparently do not sit well with the "woke" insistence on diversity and the neo-Marxist lens of "intersectionality". This translates into the elevation of race, class and gender as the only approved approach to feminism.

I was deeply shocked at the injustice and hypocrisy involved. Denise Mountenay and others have appealed against this gross example of cancel culture.

In particular, Denise has protested against the CSW's "unfair decision", invoking our 15 years of conducting parallel events at the UN. She reminded the CSW that its stated role is about "women advocating to empower women and girls".

She explained: "That is exactly what we do. We advocate to save women and girls, by using our personal stories, and bringing education and awareness to the forefront to help women and girls make informed choices about their lives.

"We bring to our events medical doctors, researchers and other experts who sit on our panels, and who are very qualified to help women and girls make good healthy choices in life. … We totally believe in gender equality. We believe that men and women are different but equal."

The CSW's unprecedented and undemocratic ban extends to all pro-life groups including, notably, Austin Ruse's Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) from New York and Sharon Slater's Family Watch International. The Commission's working group for this forum has reportedly been penetrated by a powerful and radical feminist group, the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), formerly the Association for Women in Development.

According to Ruse, the woman who runs the AWID was recently recorded on Zoom as saying, during a planning meeting for the forthcoming forum, that "pro-life groups must not only be barred from the Commission but kicked permanently out of the UN". Ruse added: "And this was done in a forum that was promoting 'inclusive' civil society engagement!"

This enforcement of left-wing cancel culture, directed specifically against pro-life groups, is unfortunately the official policy of the U.S. Biden administration, which has sought to undo many of the former Trump administration's pro-life initiatives.

Endeavour Forum supporters will doubtless recall Donald Trump's inspired appointment, in January 2017, of Nikki Haley as his ambassador to the UN. She is both a person of colour (both her parents are immigrants to the U.S. from the northern Indian state of Punjab) and a woman, who has served with distinction as a diplomat and as first female governor of South Carolina. During her UN posting, she valiantly defended the unborn, standing up to the European Union's "reproductive rights" agenda.

We could well do with her equivalent among Canberra's diplomatic appointments. But unfortunately, to date, no Australian Foreign Minister has ever instructed the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to promote pro-life policies internationally.

Concerning the UN Commission on the Status of Women's banning of pro-life organisations from its March forum, C-Fam's Austin Ruse has issued a call to arms. "We will not let them get away with this outrage. We will stop them." He envisages a long hard year and urges pro-life supporters to pray for this crisis to pass and also to sign and circulate the C-Fam petition to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

I look back with pride on Endeavour Forum's long history of involvement at the United Nations, and I am outraged at this assault on our rights and our legacy.

<< Back to newsletter