The Clinton administration in a move to head off a Republican attack on United Nations' funding has called for the "streamlining" UN agencies and a moratorium on world conferences like the recent Beijing Conference on Women. The Democrats obviously don't want to waste political capital defending the indefensible. The UN is an out-of-control bureaucracy under the influence of left wing ideologues and feminists extremists who are using UN agencies and international funds to undermine the religious, moral, and family values in developing countries.

Symptomatic of the problem is the fact that Bella Abzug's Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) has maneuvered itself into a position of such power within the UN system, that Bella could claim that she wrote the draft for last year's Cairo Conference on Population and controlled this year's Beijing Conference on Women. Last December in Glen Cove NY WEDO hosted a Women's Global Strategies Meeting where 146 participants - 12% of which listed themselves as UN staff - plotted how they would impose their agenda, which includes abortion rights, sexual freedom for adolescents, homosexual rights, and universal 50/50 gender quotas, on the world. The report, issued after the meeting, specifically called for opposition to the "Vatican", "fundamentalism", and the "internationalization of the anti-abortion movement".

Activist groups such as WEDO are, of course, perfectly free to lobby for whatever agenda they wish, but it constitutes a serious conflict of interest for members of the UN staff including Gertrude Mongella, who was in charge of the Beijing Conference and Kristen Timothy, who had the responsibility for accrediting non-governmental organization delegates, to take part, even as observers, in such strategizing against the interests of member nations, . The UN's own Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for respect for freedom of religion, the family, marriage, and motherhood. The UN staff has no business collaborating with those who wish to undermine these principles.

The effects of this plotting were observable during the recent conference in Beijing and the meetings leading up to it. UN funding and other international aid was used to pay the expenses of sympathetic delegates from Third World countries. When other delegates, particularly from the poorer countries in Latin America , spoke up to defend their countries pro-family and pro-life laws and constitutions, their presidents received threatening calls from the UN staff, implying that these delegates should be silenced or recalled. In several cases the national leaders complied rather than risk the loss of funding.

During the debates various anti-democratic maneuvers were used to silence dissenting delegates from the Third World. Translation was not supplied in the small groups were the actual wording was hammered out. Hand-picked chairwomen changed the meeting times and places, so that delegates were forced to chase from room to room to find the meeting, only to be told it was over. One delegate complained that the wording reported back from the group he attended was the opposite of that to which he had agreed. Dissenting delegations were not recognized during the main meetings. The translations of the texts from English, the official language, to French, Spanish and Arabic, was distorted to disguise the radical ideology being promoted. When delegates called for a definition of controversial terms, like gender and sexual orientation, they were stonewalled. The attitude of the leadership of this conference appeared to be: bludgeon the Third World into "consensus" and then tell them later exactly what they have agreed to.

Two examples suffice to demonstrate the abusive nature of the process in Beijing. The conference was sharply divided between those who supported religious and family values and those who wanted to promote a liberal sexual agenda including abortion, sexual freedom for adolescents, and homosexual rights. When Third World delegates called for protection of parental rights and opposed inclusion of protection for "sexual rights" and "sexual orientation", the promoters of the liberal sexual agenda appeared to give in, but, in fact, manipulated the wording in both sections.

The section on parental rights is now anti-parental rights, putting the rights of the parent after the rights of the child to "privacy, confidentiality, respect and informed consent" in access to "counseling" and "information". The words "sexual orientation" and "sexual rights" were dropped, but replaced with far more dangerous wording which states the "human rights of women" include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence."

The lesbians, who were visible and active presence in Beijing, were jubilant, insisting that this wording guaranteed their rights. The head of the UN's World Health Organization insisted that even though the words "sexual rights" weren't included the concept was, stating: "I can assure you that all the components of sexual rights, as we had envisioned them are there". One might ask why the WHO is interested in imposing the unhealthy sexual lifestyles of the developed countries, on relatively innocent developing countries who already have enough health problems.

Given the large number of countries which made reservations to the final text, the Beijing document can hardly claim consensus. The most telling reservation came from the African country of Niger, which expressed the hope that compliance with the controversial sections of the text would not be used as a precondition for aid.

Having spent the last year observing the UN at work, I have become less of an isolationist and passionately anti-UN. The poor countries of the world need to be protected from the ideologues and feminist extremists who are using the UN to forward their agendas. The colonialism of the past, which merely sought to impose western political and economic control on the rest of the world, has been replaced by a far more malevolent cultural imperialism which seeks to undermine the families of the developing countries. I see no way to separate the good programs from the bad. UN money is being used to fund radical feminist centers in Eastern Europe, and UN programs have created a situation where medical clinics in Africa have no antibiotics, but closets full of condoms and I.U.D.'s.

Defunding the UN will help, but it will not be enough. American isolationism could leave the families of the developing countries at the mercy of powerful anti-family, anti-religious forces in Western Europe, rich international foundations and powerful international agencies like the World Bank. American conservatives need to lend their support and protection to pro-family people around the world.