Rebecca Oas
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / Washington, 02.26.2024).- UN human rights experts recently called for “gender apartheid” to be considered a crime against humanity. The American Bar Association adopted a similar resolution, pledging to support international and national efforts to criminalize and oppose “gender apartheid.”
The term “gender apartheid” has been used by activists to criticize the Catholic Church and other religious institutions that have all-male clergy. To date the term has been used with regard to the situation of women in Afghanistan and Iran, which are governed by Islamic law. It is clear where the term is headed and that is to attack all faiths deemed “conservative” by the feminist international.
The impending danger is that the term is being promoted within the negotiation for a new hard law treaty on crimes against humanity.
Both the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Woman and Girls and the American Bar Association define “gender apartheid” as “inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one gender group over any other gender group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” This definition is based on the definition of “apartheid” from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and refers to oppression on the basis of race.
The term has also been taken up by other UN bodies, including UN Women, which describes the Taliban’s abuses as “rightly and widely considered gender apartheid.”
The development of the treaty on crimes against humanity is facing other controversies. There is an effort by Western countries and their allies to redefine “gender” from referring solely to men and women in a way that could make homophobia an alleged international crime. Meanwhile, activists are calling for the relatively narrow definition of “forced pregnancy” to be expanded to include restrictions on abortion.
UN human rights experts have already shown their willingness to attack the Catholic Church—and the Holy See, which has diplomatic status as an observer state at the UN—for its stance against abortion, homosexuality, and women’s ordination.
In 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief cited feminist scholars in a report claiming that “rules regulating the status of men and women, including in the appointment of clergy,” are not only religious, but political, and therefore “are a concern for the State and international human rights law.”
When the Holy See was reviewed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014, it was told to “review its position on abortion” and “amend Canon 1398 relating to abortion with a view to identifying circumstances under which access to abortion services may be permitted.” The Committee also told the Holy See to “support efforts at the international level for the decriminalization of homosexuality.”
None of these experts have binding authority over UN member governments, but their opinions carry persuasive weight with like-minded countries and within the UN’s bureaucratic system, which relies on them to help interpret hard-law treaties like the forthcoming instrument on crimes against humanity.
Dissident groups claiming to be Catholic, such as the pro-abortion Catholics for Choice, have also cited the Church’s stance on male-only ordination and opposition to abortion in calling for the Holy See to be stripped of its status as a UN observer state.
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