Amend the ACP-EU Treaty!
A Call to Leaders of
African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries
Printable version
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty has overstepped its economic, environmental and development objectives mandating compliance on domestic social, sexual and family issues including on abortion, controversial comprehensive sexuality education for children (CSE) and special LGBT rights;
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty requires ACP countries to implement “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR), a contested term that has never been adopted in an international binding treaty and has been rejected repeatedly by ACP countries in UN-negotiated agreements for good reasons;
- Whereas the EU conveniently neglected to clearly define SRHR in the deceptive ACP-EU treaty, yet soon after the treaty text was agreed upon (April 2021), the European Parliament in its Matić Report on the situation of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the EU officially defined SRHR to encompass abortion, gender identity and sexual orientation “rights” (June 2021);
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty requires ACP countries to provide “sexual and reproductive health” (SRH) “commodities” and “services,” SRH euphemisms used often by the EU and the UN to advance abortion and contested sexual rights in ACP countries;
- Whereas EU Member States under the deceptive banner of “sexual and reproductive health education” already are aggressively advancing programs that teach children about highly controversial and divisive topics including those recommended by UNESCO’s “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education” (ITGSE) (i.e., masturbation, sexual orientation, gender identity, homophobia, transphobia, that children have a right to sexual pleasure, etc.);
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty mandates teaching children “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education” (CSRHE) in the context of UNESCO’s radical “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education” (ITGSE);[1]
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty elevates soft law documents like ICPD and Beijing, which have some highly controversial provisions, to the status of treaty obligations and makes ACP governments accountable to the EU for their implementation;
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty commits governments to implement unspecified controversial outcome documents of review conferences of ICPD and Beijing (alarmingly, a number of these review outcome documents call for autonomous sexual rights for children, legalizing abortion, same-sex marriage and prostitution);[2]
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty, in each of its three regional protocols, requires ACP governments to implement regional agreements to which the EU is currently not a party—regional agreements that just happen to be the ones that most aggressively advance abortion, CSE and LGBT rights;[3]
- Whereas the ACP-EU treaty requires ACP governments to “fully support” the controversial and divisive “work of the UN Human Rights Council” and mandates cooperation with the human rights “mechanisms,” which encompass treaty body monitoring committees, special rapporteurs and independent experts that aggressively push the SRHR agenda including LGBT and abortion rights and autonomous sexual rights for children;
- Whereas the deceptive ACP-EU treaty requires ACP governments to uphold unspecified “international norms and agreements” and to “coordinate” positions and voting in international forums when it is well known that many of the positions aggressively pushed by the EU violate the religious and cultural values of the majority of ACP countries on life, family and sexual and reproductive issues;
- Whereas the ACP-EU treaty violates the national sovereignty of ACP nations, providing no mechanism for entering reservations or clarification of definitions for controversial terms and phrases;
Therefore, in light of the many serious aforementioned concerns with far-reaching consequences that will reverberate across 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, which will be legally bound to this deceptive agreement for 20 years, negatively impacting millions of children and families,
WE, AS CONCERNED CITIZENS, call upon ACP presidents, prime ministers, parliamentarians, ministers, senators, congressmen, attorneys general, and regional and UN ambassadors and URGE YOU IN THE STRONGEST TERMS POSSIBLE TO REFUSE TO RATIFY THIS TREATY unless all of the aforementioned harmful provisions are removed or the following protective clause is added:
“Nothing in this treaty shall be construed to promote or encourage abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, rights related to sexual orientation or gender identity or autonomous sexual rights for children of minor age. The implementation of this treaty must be effected with full respect for the national sovereignty, laws and religious and cultural values of ACP countries.”
[1] “Comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education” (CSRHE) is the new euphemism for comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).
[2] For example, the Montevideo Consensus on Population And Development calls for “adolescents and young people” (beginning at age 10) to “exercise their sexual rights” including “the exercise of their sexual orientation.” See https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/Montevideo%20Consensus-15Aug2013.pdf
[3] These regional agreements include ICPD +20 Health Review, ICPD +20 Human Rights Review, ICPD +20 Youth Review, UNFPA ICPD +20 Operational Review, ICPD +25 Nairobi Summit and the Beijing +25 Generation Equality Forum Reviews.