Proposed UN Reforms Do Not Go Far Enough

Secretary General Guterres calls his proposed reforms the UN80 Initiative

Secretary General Guterres calls his proposed reforms the UN80 Initiative, which will be an important topic of discussion during the upcoming 80th UN General Assembly High-Level Week in late September.

The UN80 Initiative proposals are a good start. Downsizing, structural reforms that consolidate separate silos, and relocating some offices to cheaper locations are long overdue.

However, Secretary General Guterres’ reforms do nothing to curb gross overreach by entrenched UN senior and mid-level management progressives who, with leftwing non-governmental organizations’ vocal support, have launched many expensive globalist programs that the UN has no business undertaking. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and identity politics permeate the UN system, culture, and programs.

Even so, UN bureaucrats and their strident civil society advocates are still complaining about the Secretary General’s modest reforms.

One of those reforms may involve the consolidation of several siloed UN human rights related protection entities such as Children and Armed Conflict, Sexual Violence in Conflict, and Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse into a single body. It would be called the Office for the Protection of Vulnerable Populations.

Louis Charbonneau, the UN director at the virulently anti-Israel Human Rights Watch, was aghast. “We can’t just throw these people all in together under one roof,” he said. “The message that it’s sending; downgrade, reduce, merge is very worrying, and I think it potentially could have a destructive impact on the ability of the UN to monitor, investigate and deter human rights abuses.”

Mr. Charbonneau provided no credible evidence to support this bald assertion. Nor can he provide a well-reasoned explanation of why eliminating overlaps and fostering efficiency-enhancing synergies within a single integrated entity performing related functions is a bad idea.

Marxism, critical race theory, radical “intersectional” feminism, and other leftwing causes are all wrapped up in one jargon-filled sentence! 

UN Women is a classic example of a UN entity driven by a leftwing, progressive ideology. Their leaders do not want to give up their fiefdom and all the money they can use to fund DEI-driven programs. UN Women has even established its own dedicated LGBTIQ+ Rights Specialist post despite the fact that fourteen UN entities already have LGBTIQ+ focal points, including three entities that have multiple people devoted to this work full-time.

One of UN Women’s documents shows its true ideological colors. It speaks about “countering patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, colonialism, ableism, classism, and other systems of oppression.”

Marxism, critical race theory, radical “intersectional” feminism, and other leftwing causes are all wrapped up in one jargon-filled sentence!

UN Women demonstrated its anti-Israel bias by its slowness to condemn the Palestinian terrorists’ rapes and slaughter of Israeli girls and women on October 7, 2023. And a UN Women Deputy Chief “endorsed 153 tweets accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ and other crimes,” according to the Coalition to End Domestic Violence.

Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s Geneva director, claimed that “any funding cuts to UN Women affect our ability to reach women and girls in need.”

In UN Women’s world, “women and girls in need” include biological men and boys who self-identify as women and girls. Shockingly, for example, UN Women UK even chose a biological male who underwent major transition surgery and identified as a transgender woman as its first “champion.”

UN Women is denying basic biological science and twisting the common meaning of words in favor of an extreme transgenderism ideology

UN Women’s LGBTIQ+ Equality and Rights Internal Resource Guide advises against using terms such as “biological sex” and “person born as male or female.” The Resource Guide claims that “A series of misconceptions underpin the notion of a binary biological sex and norms related to it, from which some gender identities depart. This must be challenged in efforts to conceptualize and communicate on ‘gender equality’ comprehensively.”

The “the notion of a binary biological sex” is not a misconception. It is based on long-established science, and the “norms related to it” are intended to protect biological women’s and girls’ rights.

As a matter of fundamental fairness, for example, biological females should not be forced to compete in sports, in the name of so-called comprehensive “gender equality,” with biological males who have inherent physiological and anatomical advantages. Nor should biological girls have to share school bathrooms and locker rooms with biological boys in violation of their right to privacy and to protection from potential sexual predators.

In short, UN Women is denying basic biological science and twisting the common meaning of words in favor of an extreme transgenderism ideology that undermines the rights and safety of genuine women. Eliminating this misguided UN entity would be a good idea.

UN Women epitomizes what is wrong with the United Nations - a bloated globalist bureaucracy, a leftwing culture, and an agenda built on a foundation of DEI and identity politics. It will take a lot more than some trimming around the edges to save the UN from becoming even less relevant in helping to solve today’s global challenges than it already is.