Bosire&Saoyo: Lessons for Kenya from US actions on Geneva Consensus Declaration
President Biden’s government has now withdrawn from the Declaration and issued an immediate memorandum notifying Kenya and the rest of the 32 states of its disassociation with that text. PHOTO | JOSEPH PREZIOSO | AFP
What you need to know:
- As aptly described by Gillan Kane, the Geneva Consensus Declaration, in summary, was part of the larger sequenced attacks that the Trump administration had launched against the UN during his four-year reign in an attempt to cripple the system and redefine what constitutes internationally agreed principles.
- President Biden’s government has now withdrawn from the Declaration and issued an immediate memorandum notifying Kenya and the rest of the 32 states of its disassociation with that text. Closer to home, what does this mean for Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose signature remains appended and whose association with America remains integral in bilateral matters of trade, health, and other geopolitics?
US President Joseph Biden has been on a roll. In his first ten days in office, he signed more than seventeen presidential decrees on an array of issues, ranging from Covid-19 emergency response, climate change, immigrants, racial inequalities, and health. Biden also has been sending emissaries to repair relations with International bodies such as World Health Organization and UNFPA; actions that seem to deliberately target and undo former President Trump’s legacy (existent or otherwise).
As part of these efforts, Biden issued a Memorandum on protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad on January 28, 2021. The memo directed the US Secretary of State and Secretary of Health to withdraw co-sponsorship and US’s signature to the Geneva Consensus Declaration. The Kenyan government should withdraw its support, too.
This particular Declaration was launched in October 2020 by the then US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and US Secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar. The document was co-sponsored by Brazil, Egypt, Uganda, Indonesia and Hungary, and endorsed by twenty-seven other countries, many of whom already have questionable records on human rights including South Sudan, Sudan, The Gambia, and Libya. The Republic of Kenya was also among the governments that acceded to this atrocious Declaration. They never should have.
Three fronts
The Consensus document was problematic on three fronts. First, it claimed to advance women’s health. A closer examination of the text, however, revealed that the document did no such thing. In fact, this was a cunningly designed two-pager anti-abortion manifesto, using the language of international human rights to mask its real objectives. The document undermined women’s ability to make decisions on their own bodies, particularly insisting that access to safe abortion is not an international human right and that decisions on how and who should access safe abortion must be determined by national governments.
Second, the document was veiled in anti-LGBT sentiments by insisting on a narrow definition of “family” from a hetero-centric nuclear family angle, an ideological ideal that is deeply contested in many parts of the world including Africa where ‘family’ is an all-embracing term that includes polygamous families, single-parent families, extended family and children adopted and brought within our fold post the HIV pandemic, etc.
Regulating abortion
Third, by insisting that national states have the right to determine the best way to regulate abortion. This was a blatant attempt by the US to launch an offensive narrative that prioritises national sovereignty over global consensus and ultimately undermines the United Nations. As aptly described by Gillan Kane, the Geneva Consensus Declaration, in summary, was part of the larger sequenced attacks that the Trump administration had launched against the UN during his four-year reign in an attempt to cripple the system and redefine what constitutes internationally agreed principles.
President Biden’s government has now withdrawn from the Declaration and issued an immediate memorandum notifying Kenya and the rest of the 32 states of its disassociation with that text. Closer to home, what does this mean for Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose signature remains appended and whose association with America remains integral in bilateral matters of trade, health, and other geopolitics?
Kenya should withdraw its support too. Not only that, but this can be a learning moment for Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in steering off political trades offs that are laced with hate and whose existence is dependent on the American government in power. Acknowledging that an average of 465,000 Kenyan women and girls continue die annually from unsafe abortions, and that our very own Kenya AIDS Strategic Framework II recognizes the place of LGBT groups in our society, is a pivotal learning lesson.
Our government must refocus its solutions and avoid the importation of hate from the global north. Kenya must be caught up in neither the evangelical nor the Democrat-Republican ideological wars of the US in determining what is best for its women. It would be a celebratory moment here if Ambassador Macharia equally pulls out of this Declaration with heads still high as a commitment to saving lives locally.
Tabitha Saoyo is an Advocate of the High court and a Ph.D. candidate at Cardiff School of Law.
Dr Stellah Wairimu Bosire is a Human Rights Medical Doctor, a Student of the law, and an activist. She can be reached at [email protected]
