Last Thursday, the United Nations (UN) officially launched the “International Year of Youth” (IYY) in the UN General Assembly Hall. The theme for the year is “Dialogue and Mutual Understanding,” with a focus on health and development, particularly the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But some observers fear that the IYY agenda has been taken over by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and its allies who are using it to promote new “rights” to sexual and reproductive health education and services for young people.
The UN has devoted considerable resources for the IYY, including for a new cutting-edge website, and has incorporated the youth agenda into the work of all of the major UN agencies. At the UN launch, the Joint Statement of the Heads of UN Entities was delivered by the head of UNFPA, Thoraya Obaid.
Obaid’s statement emphasized new rights for youth under a right to health. “We all agree that health is a human right and an integral part of youth development. … Investments in health care, including universal access to evidence-based sexual and reproductive health programmes are crucial to prevent unwanted pregnancies, maternal mortality, sexually transmitted infections and other threats to young people’s health.”
The blueprint for the IYY is the “World Program of Action for Youth” (WPAY), a document that was adopted by the UN General Assembly without debate in 1995. In the area of health, WPAY calls for the leadership of UNFPA (the only named agency in the section). “The United Nations Population Fund and other interested United Nations organizations are to be encouraged to continue assigning high priority to promoting adolescent reproductive health.” The term “adolescent reproductive health” is now used in dozens of programs and curriculums by UNFPA and other international organizations to promote sexual and reproductive rights, including access to contraception and abortion, for young people between the ages of 10-14.
According to WPAY, “The reproductive health needs of adolescents as a group have been largely ignored to date by existing reproductive health services. The response of societies to the reproductive health needs of adolescents should be based on information that helps them attain a level of maturity required to make responsible decisions.”
One of the major new initiatives of UNFPA on youth is Y-PEER, which focuses on peer education and whose membership includes “thousands of young people who work in the many areas surrounding adolescent sexual and reproductive health.” The primary Y-PEER “training” manual includes a “condom relay race,” a section on how to convince religious leaders to implement the reproductive health agenda, and several exercises to impress upon students the difference between gender and sex, with sex being biological, but gender being a social construct. According to its website, Y-PEER’s areas of focus are Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including many predominately Muslim countries.
According to one long time UN observer, “Much of this agenda is being driven by the deep fear that the global cohort of young people, which is a booming cohort, will reproduce. They have to catch them early, corrupt them and convince them they do not want any children.”