(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Political Network for Values: Extremists and hate groups meet at UN to ‘reclaim’ human rights declaration [1] [] Date: 2024-02 Far-right politicians, extremists and hate groups that reject abortion, equal marriage and comprehensive sexual education gathered at the UN this month to celebrate the 75 anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Political Network for Values (PNfV), an ultra-conservative platform that connects far-right politicians and activists from Europe, Latin America, US and Africa, met at the UN’s New York headquarters on 16 and 17 November for its fifth biennial Transatlantic Summit. The UN didn’t answer openDemocracy repeated requests for comments about the reasons for hosting this meeting. Speaking at the event, the leader of Chile’s far-right Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, who chairs PNfV, said the current political moment is much like the period of persecution and intolerance of the two world wars that predated the universal declaration. “Today something similar is happening,” said Kast, whose father was reportedly a Nazi who served Hitler, and who is himself a member of a rich and powerful Chilean family and a fervent fan of the Pinochet dictatorship. Kast blamed “those who dare to proclaim that life is prior to freedom are persecuted, ridiculed and cancelled”. What do you think? Win a £10 book voucher for sharing your views about openDemocracy. Tell us Other speakers made clear that they believe the summit’s stated goal of “rescuing the original meaning” of the Universal Declaration requires actively fighting ‘false’ or ‘non-universal rights’. These, they suggested, include women's reproductive rights – especially abortion, which panellists agreed should be banned worldwide – and equal rights to healthcare, education, marriage, family and adoption for LGBTIQ people, particularly trans people. A third of the 12 groups that sponsored the meeting have been designated as anti-LGBTIQ hate groups by the US Southern Poverty Law Center, according to an analysis by Ipas, an international organisation on sexual and reproductive rights. Among the hate groups are Family Watch International, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), The Center for Family and Human Rights and the International Organisation for the Family, which organises the World Congress of Families. Sharon Slater, the head of Family Watch International and a PNfV board member, was one of the speakers at the New York meeting, which was also broadcast by the UN Web TV. Earlier this year, openDemocracy revealed that Slater was deeply involved in the political organising behind the infamous Uganda law that criminalised LGBTIQ people. Other sponsors were The Heritage Foundation, a US think tank that is close to the Republican Party and gives air to islamophobia, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric and policies, and the Center for Fundamental Rights, which is closely linked to the far-right Hungarian government. Speakers included a member of Moms for Liberty, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated extremist organisation which foments moral panic. ‘High-level contacts’ PNfV was launched by Spanish and Mexican ultra-conservatives at another UN summit in 2014. Several of its leading officers or affiliates have been identified as members of the secret anti-communist paramilitary group El Yunque (The Anvil), which was founded in Mexico in the 1950s. These include its executive director, Lola Velarde and secretary general and vice-president, Rodrigo Iván Cortés. The organisation is registered as a non-profit corporation in the US – where it lacks tax-exempt status, so has no obligation to disclose financial information – and also operates in Spain. Most of its funding comes from the American, Mexican and Spanish organisations that co-sponsor its activities, including the ADF, Madrid-based anti-rights group CitizenGo, and Red de Acción Ética Política (Political Ethical Action Network), a Mexican group that promotes legislation against equal marriage and abortion. There has also been at least one donation from the Hungarian government, occurring in 2019. PNfV has close links to Hungarian politics, having previously been chaired by a former minister and member of the country’s parliament, Katalin Novák, who left her position with the organisation to be sworn in as Hungary’s president last year. In August 2021, it was revealed by WikiLeaks’ ‘Intolerance Network’ that PNfV had a budget of $68,000 in 2014, its first year of operating, most of which was spent in that year’s summit in New York. Its next summit, held in 2017 at the European Parliament in Brussels, had a budget of €110,550, which European parties and co-sponsoring groups contributed to, according to the Ipas report. This year’s summit was sponsored by Guatemala’s conservative government, which was voted out in this year’s election and will be leaving office in January. It brought together more than 200 attendees from 40 countries, many of whom are incumbent politicians with influence over decision-making processes and public budgets. “PNfV is of concern to the human rights community because their work is aimed at both degrading multilateral human rights systems,” Gillian Kane, senior technical lead for policy and advocacy at Ipas, told openDemocracy. “It is not a well-known entity, and given their high-level contacts, both at the UN and at the national level, it is important to shed light on how this network came about, who influences it, and what impact it is having on eroding human rights globally,” added Kane, one of the co-authors of the report ‘The Political Network for Values: Global Far- Right at the United Nations’. ‘Victimhood tropes’ One of PNfV’s ambitions is to promote the traditional model of family in UN documents, including the Sustainable Development Goals. Ipas’ report states: “Unlike the UN, which takes a broad view of the family, PNfV and its member organisations promote a narrow, heterocentric definition that cleaves to conservative religious standards unaligned with how families today are configured and how they live their lives.” This aim was clear at the summit, which called on the international community to “establish an environment conducive to family formation and stability for men and women to fully realize their fundamental human right to marry and found a family”. It also expressed a need “to protect children, both before and after birth [and] to respect the liberty of parents and legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions”. “The concept of the ‘natural family’ is under attack,” said Ghanaian parliament member Samuel George, speaking on a panel at the event. “There is a distinct difference between sex and gender or gender identity [...] Sex is a biological construct that transcends race, ethnicity, religion and jurisdictional jurisprudence. Sex is binary. You are either male or female.” Brett Schaefer of The Heritage Foundation agreed, saying: “Pursuing new, increasingly esoteric rights claims while ignoring the fact that much of the world's population has yet to enjoy the rights laid out in the universal declaration does a huge disservice to the billions of people who are too fearful to speak their opinions, to protest their government, or to practice their religion.” Lines repeated to exhaustion included the need to protect life from conception to natural death – euthanasia has become a big issue for the far right – and guard the children of cisgender men and women from supposed Marxist indoctrination in schools by vetoing sex education that discusses ‘gender’, as well as overturning or blocking abortion rights and fighting against inclusive language. One panellist, American activist Lila Rosa, compared the number of abortions carried out each year to the number of deaths in World War Two, and praised bills introduced in several jurisdictions that would grant rights and citizenship to foetuses, as well as bills that seek to ban gender-inclusive language. “Having to call a person ‘they’, ‘them’, or using the gender-neutral words ‘parent 1 and parent 2’ to protect someone's personal identity, for us Hungarians, it's just as ruthless as imposing calling others ‘comrades’ in the communist system,” said Ádám Kavecsánszki, the president of the Foundation for a Civic Hungary. The group was established in 2003 by Fidesz, prime minister Viktor Orbán’s far-right party, to promote ‘Christian values’. Kavecsánszki added: “The mother shall be a woman, the father shall be a man. We never thought we would need to discuss this universal and simple truth.” “What was notable this time at the summit was how every speaker repeated the same victimhood tropes, portraying themselves as the true and correct interpreters and defenders of the UN human rights system, who are coming under attack from progressive forces who want to impose new rights,” Kane said. Training youths is another pillar of PNfV networking. Brazilian deputy Nikolas Ferreira, who is close to the family of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, spoke on behalf of young people, some of whom had taken part in a six-month online course moderated by PNfV called ‘Political leadership in times of change’. This training, which started in April, provided students, influencers and right-wing religious activists from around the world with tools, resources and connections for the “defence of life, family and freedom”. Ferreira was recently fined for harassing and misgendering deputy Duda Salabert, a trans woman who won a seat in Congress as the most-voted woman in her state. He faces another court case for transphobia, having been accused of filming a trans teenager in a bathroom, which he denies, and earlier this year the Supreme Court ordered social platforms to suspend his accounts “to stop the spread of criminal manifestations”. Kane of Ipas said: “The PNfV is driven to promote and impose a retrograde and false interpretation of human rights that in fact is discriminatory and contravenes the very universality of human rights that are enshrined in the universal declaration.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/political-network-for-values-human-rights-meeting-un-extremists-hate-groups-abortion-gender-family/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/