Africans/Europeans Feud Over UN Strategic Plan

By: Stefano Gennarini, J.D., originally published August 29, 2025, C-Fam.org

UNITED NATIONS, August 29 (C-Fam) A war of words broke out during a UN meeting to approve the three-year strategic plan for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). It pitted Africans against Europeans and Nordics.

Africans complained that UNFPA’s uses “sexual and reproductive health” concepts to promote issues not agreed upon like abortion, sexual rights for children, and gender ideology. Europeans and Nordic countries insisted these issues are essential to the work of the agency.

A delegate from Cameroon criticized UNFPA for neglecting poverty, education, and development in order “to transform UNFPA into the sexual and reproductive health agency” and “promoting its most controversial aspects.”

She said that abortion was illegal in Cameroon and objected to the agency’s focus on “adolescents.” She said children are still under the protection of their parents and their family.

A delegate from Nigeria complained that “certain elements of the plan relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights are not fully consistent with our national laws, policies, and cultural values.”

Nordic countries, Europeans, and other progressive countries like Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand insisted that UNFPA’s work on “sexual and reproductive health and rights” was essential and had important normative value.

The exchange took place as UNFPA’s executive board adopted a new strategic plan for the next three years. At issue is whether UN agencies should promote these controversial issues. Western countries who fund the agencies say, yes. Traditional countries say no.

The General Assembly has repeatedly denied UN agencies a mandate to promote abortion or gender ideology. But rich and powerful UN agencies and the countries that back them get around this objection through UN agency strategic plans. The strategic plans contain language about sexual orientation and gender identity, sexual rights, including for children, as well as comprehensive sexuality education, that the UN General Assembly has consistently rejected. They are able to do this because they largely control the executive boards of the agencies.

The Africans won limited victories this week. The final decision distanced the board from the controversial language in the plan as “terms that have not been intergovernmentally endorsed in the United Nations system.” It requires UNFPA to implement the plan in line with General Assembly agreements and “in conformity with universally recognized international human rights,” which is understood to exclude abortion and LGBT rights. And it also requires UNFPA’s work to “be aligned with national priorities and needs, taking into account national legislation and context.”

Though the U.S. was absent in the negotiations of the strategic plan, a U.S. delegate at the UNFPA board meeting said that the U.S. would only work through the framework of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a joint statement of forty countries that says abortion is not an international right and that UN agencies must respect the family and sovereignty.

The recently appointed interim Executive Director of UNFPA, Diene Keita, acknowledged these concerns but she waived them off, responding that the agency already worked in a “balanced manner.” She also asked the U.S. to “pitch in” the work of the agency. The U.S. ceased funding UNFPA because of the agency’s work on population control in China.

Two other UN strategic plans will be discussed in the next two weeks. The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) will adopt its strategic plan next week, and the UN agency for women (UN Women) is slated to adopt its strategic plan during the second week of September. Both contain these controversial terms.

Stefano Gennarini is the Vice President for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights.

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