Dear Colleague,

Pro-life and pro-family organizations have been engaging at the UN for decades, working in coalitions and achieving a lot of success.  However, we face an opposition that increasingly wants to silence our voices and avoid having debates on these important and divisive issues.  One way they try to do this is by using labels like "anti-rights" to describe their political opponents.  They say that if you don't believe that abortion or changing your gender are human rights, you are against human rights in general.

This Definitions article examines the way radical "sexual rights" groups are trying to discredit their opposition, and why this matters.  When the "anti-rights" label starts appearing in speeches by UN officials—including the Secretary-General—and in policies coming from the U.S. Department of State, the threat of politicized gatekeeping and censorship looms large.  It's essential that we understand the tactics that are being used, and how to counteract them.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
Director of Research

In recent years, the label “anti-rights” has been used by UN officials, progressive countries, and organizations to denigrate individuals and organizations who defend traditional social values, including the protection of life in the womb and the family. This Definitions examines how the term emerged, how progressive governments and their surrogates use it, and how it fits into a larger campaign to label social conservatives as a danger to a progressive concept of human rights and to silence them. As this report will explain, the “anti-rights” label is not merely an exercise in political name-calling but rather part of a larger strategy to delegitimize social conservative voices in multilateral spaces and to redefine civil society to exclude such conservative organizations. This plan becomes particularly dangerous when its tactics are adopted by those with the power to act as gatekeepers.  Read more >>>