Countering ICPD25: Faith-Based, Civil Societies Fault Summit, Obsessed with Controversies

“Children be protected from highly controversial comprehensive sexuality education programmes being pushed in and out of school; and that governments establish policies requiring transparency of and parental consent for any sex education or for any so-called “sexual and reproductive health services,” the parties noted from the Cairo Conference. 

“Also, understanding that gender derives from biological sex and can only be male or female, and that unscientific gender ideologies (claiming that more than two genders exist or that gender is fluid) are harmful to children, therefore, such ideologies should be banned from being taught in schools,” the parties to the Nairobi Declaration observed. 

Their collective statement also noted, “Life of every person begins at conception and ends at natural death.”

They called for an end to abortion saying, “abortion is to be understood as the deliberate killing of a preborn person and thus to be prohibited.”

Appropriate steps should be taken to “help women avoid abortion, which in no case should be promoted as a method of family planning,” the parties noted, citing ICPD 1994. 

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On the agenda of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), which has been termed “euphemism” for abortion, the parties stated, “the concept of SRHR that was pushed throughout the ICPD+25 process has never been accepted in any of the United Nations consensus documents and has always been rejected by many countries due to its highly controversial and deceptive nature.”

The parties also called on the ICPD25 to “Respect Sovereignty and Religious and Cultural Values” and asked governments to take charge of implementing “all population and development programmes, with full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of each country’s people.”

In addition, the ICPD25 was called to “Protect and Strengthen the Family.”

This, the parties to the Nairobi Declaration stated, can be done by formulating “family-sensitive policies in the field of housing, work, health, social security and education in order to create an environment supportive of the family.”

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.