The UN human rights office has launched a new initiative to promote judicial activism on gender issues in Central and South America, including abortion and the LGBT agenda.

The UN human rights office established an organization to promote strategic litigation, legal reforms, and legal education on gender issues in Central and South America, regions where laws remain highly protective of children in the womb. While the organization, called the Latin American Network for Gender-based Strategic Litigation, focuses mostly on violence against women, it also promotes abortion as an international right following the recommendations of the UN human rights bodies.

The UN report on which the organization’s work is based describes “access to safe and legal abortion” as a human right and calls on advocates across Latin America to promote the denial of abortion as a criminal act of “reproductive violence.”

The initiative of the UN human rights office is only the latest effort of the UN office and powerful western countries to train judges, lawyers, activists, and law-enforcement personnel in the region to promote abortion.

Several UN agencies have long promoted the notion that denial of abortion should be a crime under international law. Ongoing programs from the UN human rights office as well as other programs carried out in the region with money from western donors link gender-based violence with the enforcement of abortion laws.

Full story at C-fam.org.