GENITAL mutilation and other barbaric traditions already inflicted on over 100 million women have been rejected in a last-ditch deal sealed at the World Summit.
Over 190 countries have agreed that healthcare services must conform to 鈥渂asic human rights and fundamental freedoms鈥�, a provision designed to prevent female circumcision. The custom is still common in many cultures, where it鈥檚 considered an essential rite of passage to womanhood.
The practice, where young girls have part or all of their clitorises cut out to reduce their sexual desire, can cause severe pain, ulcers, urinary problems and infections, as well as psychological scars. According to the World Health Organization, this prospect still faces 2 million girls a year in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
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The new agreement was reached at the eleventh hour in Johannesburg last week, after fraught late-night negotiations. Women鈥檚 rights campaigners say it will also discourage other traditions like 鈥渉onour killings鈥�, in which women can be legally murdered for betraying their husbands.
European and Canadian ministers were unhappy about the wording of a draft agreement which said only that health services should be delivered 鈥渃onsistent with national laws and cultural and religious values鈥�. Without a counterbalancing reference to human rights, they argued, this sanctioned genital mutilation.
So the ministers pushed to insert a clause insisting that health services also conformed with human rights and fundamental freedoms. They were backed by women鈥檚 groups around the globe, including the Women鈥檚 Environment and Development Organization in New York.
Negotiations over the amendment shed an interesting light on the murky world of international diplomacy. The US opposed the amendment along with the Vatican and Islamic nations, an unusual alliance of countries critics have dubbed the 鈥渁xis of medieval鈥�. They say the US and the Vatican were concerned that mentioning human rights could be seen as an endorsement of abortion and contraception.
According to British officials, the US was persuaded this would not be the case at a key meeting with the European Union and Canada. After opposition by the US to the human rights clause crumbled, other countries gave way and agreement followed.
The US government, however, insisted that it had not objected to the clause itself, but to the principle of reopening a contentious issue at the last minute. If this had happened in other cases, a State Department source told 快猫短视频, 鈥淛ohannesburg would have gone up in flames.鈥�
The US said it only accepted the amendment because the South African government, which chaired the summit, proposed a special procedure which enabled the reopening of previously agreed text for a single change.
But British officials maintained that the underlying concern of the Americans was abortion. This interpretation is borne out by the formal 鈥渆xplanation of position鈥� which the US issued at the end of the Johannesburg Summit. It said that any references to health rights and freedoms in the final action plan could not 鈥渋n any way be interpreted as including or promoting abortion鈥�. It鈥檚 not the first time the US had formed unlikely strategic alliances, officials pointed out. At a United Nations special session on children in New York in May, the US sided with Iraq and Somalia in defence of the death penalty for children. On that occasion they succeeded in weakening the session鈥檚 final declaration.