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Nepal: HPI Note: This report is from a Christian website. Christians and Muslims in Nepal are criticizing the draft version of a new constitution that bans religious conversion. Spurred to action by the recent earthquake, Nepal's government introduced the draft for public comment on June 30, Reuters reported. The draft states that "any act which may be contrary to public health, public decency or morality or incitement to breach public peace or act to convert another person from one religion to another or any act or behavior to undermine or jeopardize the religion of each other is not allowed and...

The United Nations has found the greatest violator of women’s rights in the world—and it’s Israel for “violating the rights of Palestinian women.” That view is expressed in a report released by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the UN’s top women’s rights body, and was detailed in an article on the website of Fox News written by Professor Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Bayefsky notes in her article that CSW ends its annual meeting on Friday by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women’s...

The two-week long exercise in futility known as the United Nations’ 57th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is over. The harangues, the excesses, and the disconnect between the needs of the third world versus the wants of the first world are now a not-too-distant memory. However, the document produced by the commission is still with us and those who promote and profit from abortion are spinning it is a “tremendous victory.” And it really is just spin – the reality is that pro-abortion extremists did not succeed in advancing their agenda or their goal of establishing abortion...

Today, in an act of unprecedented hypocrisy the misogynistic Islamic regime of Iran will be seated on the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW), which convenes it's 55th session. The purported purpose of the UN CSW is to to play: "catalytic role in promoting gender mainstreaming at national level." How the Islamic regime of Iran whose so-called constitution codifies discrimination against women at all levels, including jobs they can hold and all areas of family law, not to mention the horrific crimes committed against women who are demanding democratic rights, is qualified to participate is hard...

Climate scientists are refuting claims that raw data used in critical climate change reports has been destroyed, rendering the reports and policies based on those reports unreliable. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group, is arguing that U.S. EPA's climate policies rely on raw data that have been destroyed and are therefore unreliable. The nonprofit group -- a staunch critic of U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases -- petitioned the agency last week to reopen the public comment period on its proposed "endangerment finding" because the data set had been lost (E&ENews PM, Oct. 9). But climate scientists...

(CNSNews.com) - Notwithstanding inaccurate reports in major media, the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting in New York has not dropped a contentious proposal to make clear that a key document on women's equality does not uphold a "right" to abortion. Spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the U.N., Richard Grenell, told CNSNews.com mid-afternoon Thursday New York time that the reports were wrong. "The situation is we have not decided what to do, and we are in discussions at the moment," Grenell said. The U.S. delegation earlier called for the draft of a...

At a moment when the United States should be leading the world on advancing women's equality, the Bush administration chose instead to alienate government ministers and 6,000 other delegates at an important United Nations conference on that issue with a burst of anti-abortion zealotry this week. The two-week session is being held to reinvigorate efforts to improve women's lives a decade after a landmark U.N. conference in Beijing. The organizers had hoped to keep a tight focus on urgent challenges like sexual trafficking, educational inequities and the spread of AIDS. The first order of business was to be quick approval...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Jeers and catcalls greeted the top U.S. delegate to a global women's conference on Friday as she stressed Washington's opposition to abortion and support for sexual abstinence and fidelity. After withdrawing an unpopular anti-abortion amendment from a key U.N. document, the United States joined in approving the declaration that reaffirmed a 150-page platform agreed 10 years ago at a landmark U.N. women's conference in Beijing. The final approval prompted cheers, applause and a standing ovation by some participants. However, top U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey drew boos from the audience, which included some of the 6,000 activists...

UNITED NATIONS - Jeers and catcalls greeted the top U.S. delegate to a global women's conference on Friday as she stressed Washington's opposition to abortion and support for sexual abstinence and fidelity. After withdrawing an unpopular anti-abortion amendment from a key U.N. document, the United States joined in approving the declaration that reaffirmed a 150-page platform agreed 10 years ago at a landmark U.N. women's conference in Beijing. However, top U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey drew boos from the audience, which included some of the 6,000 activists who came from around the world, when she commented on Washington's interpretation of the...

A group is distributing labels to stick on notebooks and backpacks at the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations in New York. The CSW is commemorating the 10th anniversary of the historic conference on women held in Beijing in 1995, and the name of the labels' sponsor - Beijing and Beyond - indicates a continued passion for the documents that came out of that conference. The labels feature a huge eye in the left corner underscored by this slogan: "The Women of the World are Watching." The center of the labels features...

The shadows of children allegedly raped by United Nations peacekeepers in the Congo and the women allegedly molested by a top U.N. official fall across the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. From this past Monday to March 11, the U.N. will meet in New York City to review global progress on the "women’s human rights agreement" known as the Beijing Platform (1995). Over 6,000 advocates of women’s rights will attend. How can a self-respecting woman, let alone a feminist, legitimize the U.N. through her presence? The CSW should be in the forefront of those crying...

U.S. Drops Anti-Abortion Demand at Forum By THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: March 3, 2005 UNITED NATIONS, March 2 - The United States on Wednesday dropped its contentious demand for a change in a centerpiece document of a United Nations conference on equality that had plunged the gathering of 6,000 women and government ministers into conflict. The meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women was called to review progress since its world conference 10 years ago in Beijing. The document was a one-page statement that delegates had prepared to reaffirm the closing declaration of the 1995...

UNITED NATIONS - Ten years after a landmark U.N. conference adopted a platform aimed at global equality for women, the United States is demanding that a declaration issued by a follow-up meeting make clear that women are not guaranteed a right to abortion. Starting Monday, a high-level U.N. meeting attended by over 100 countries and 6,000 advocates for women's causes will be taking stock of what countries have done to implement the 150-page landmark platform of action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing to achieve equality of the sexes. But even before the two-week meeting began, delegates...

Abortion has dominated the meeting on women's rights The US has insisted abortion should not be recognised as a human right, at a review of progress 10 years after a major conference on women's rights. The issue has dominated the opening proceedings of the UN session organised to re-affirm the world's commitment to the Beijing declaration. The US has submitted amendments insisting that any new declaration did not create "the right to abortion". The conference is also discussing Aids, sex trafficking and women's education. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the conference: "Over this decade, we have seen tangible progress...

Thank God John F. Kerry never got into the Oval Office or we’d have a nation endorsing abortion at the present-tense UN female conclave. For sure. Back in the Bill Clinton days, even with a former Southern Baptist boy in the White House, we had a President who supported abortion without a non-biblical blink of the backslidden eye. Nothing wrong with a Bible-carrying Billy youngster going off to Sunday school while mama worked in the local nursing home. But when Billy boy became a man, he put away childish things. However, today Billy boy no longer resides in the Oval...

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- Contrary to media reports, the United States is not planning to drop its insistence that a document summarizing the progress made in advancing women's rights include language saying it does not advocate abortion. Nations from around the world are meeting this week to ratify a declaration that states what progress has been made in helping women since a 1995 women's conference in Beijing. The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which organized the conference, hopes to produce a document which articulates the progress made and goals left to fulfill in helping women in areas...

United States Presses Ahead with Anti-Abortion Amendment at UNMedia reports that US is backing down are not correct UNITED NATIONS, March 3, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Contrary to reports by the New York Times, Reuters and countless other news agencies, the United States is not backing down from its amendment to clarify that the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action do not call for the right to abortion. At a press briefing this morning, Antonia Kirkland from the pro-abortion NGO Equality Now asked U.S. Ambassador Ellen Sauerbrey, head of the U.S. delegation, if the US was withdrawing its amendment as...

US backing down in abortion row The US has strongly hinted that it will drop its controversial demand to add anti-abortion language to a UN declaration on women's rights. The issue has dominated a UN conference reviewing the declaration adopted at the 1995 women's conference in Beijing. The US has been criticised by European and other delegates over its demand for an amendment stating specifically that abortion was not a human right. But a US delegate has now suggested the change may not be necessary. "Our original goal was to make sure that everyone involved knew what the original intent...

Ever notice how radical feminism has become a parody of itself? Case in point: For years, feminists scolded us for the mere mention that some women might be too emotional to handle top leadership posts. Ironically, those same women forgot to tell us that leading feminists thinkers were actually discouraging women from thinking logically. The reason: gender feminists have long regarded logic and rationality as patriarchal tools for the baleful oppression of women. No, this is not a joke. Feminist Elizabeth Minnich scornfully traces the source of rationality to a “few privileged males…who are usually called ‘The Greeks.’” Historian Gerda...

America urges UN to renounce abortion rights Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Tuesday March 1, 2005 Guardian The Bush administration was accused yesterday of trying to roll back efforts to improve the status of the world's women by demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights. America's demand overshadowed the opening yesterday of a conference intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing conference on the status of women, an event seen as a landmark in efforts to promote global cooperation on women's equality. The US stand was also widely seen as further evidence of the sweeping policy change in...