On October 22, 2020, 34 countries signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), stating that abortion is not an “international human right,” nations have the right to set their own health and family life policies, and women’s health deserves governmental promotion.  The fifth anniversary of the GCD was marked by a seminar luncheon Wednesday in Washington, sponsored by the Institute of Women’s Health and the Hungarian Embassy. 

Launched under then–U.S. secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and Health and Human Services Alex Azar, the GCD was an initiative spearheaded by the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda.  The GCD is aimed at countering international pressure to designate legalized abortion as an “international human right,” an effort being driven in United Nations bodies, especially after the 1995 Beijing International Women’s Conference.  It challenges the narrative that concern for women’s health (under the rubric “sexual and reproductive health”) demands legal abortion and internationally supported population control, which many third-world countries identify as ideological neocolonialism.  The GCD also recasts the discussion of women’s health into a more holistic view, examining its global state and causes for its decline, without viewing those questions primarily through a pro-abortion and pro–population control lens.  Finally, the GCD defines the family as the foundational cell of society and pledged member-states to its protection.

Forty countries currently subscribe to the GCD.  The Biden administration withdrew the United States from the GCD within the first eight days of its tenure, allying the U.S. with the European Union and Canada, staunch advocates of “abortion access” and international population control initiatives.  United States membership in the GCD resumed on January 24, 2025 under the new Trump administration. 

Efforts to use international “human rights” mechanisms to ensconce liberal views of sex and gender have long been several countries’ priorities.  Although legally binding requirements are difficult to enact, the formulation of “international consensus” on such questions is often used as a cudgel to pressure holdout governments into falling into line, usually by enacting liberalized abortion regimes or marginalizing or sidelining definitions of the “family” as something other than a father and mother biologically related to each other within some form of union.  Pressure against recalcitrant governments often takes two forms: threats of “naming and shaming” for not meeting “international human rights standards” and withholding foreign aid from such countries.  As many of the largest foreign assistance donors are also countries ideologically committed to abortion and population control, their financial influence can be substantial.

GCD was intended to counterbalance such pressures, first of all by stipulating that there actually is no international consensus on abortion.  Abortion-as-human-rights discussions are often formulated under claims of “consensus” (i.e., not a vote, but a claimed shared vision or agreement), about which poorer countries sometimes chose to remain silent in recognition of their place among the “haves” and “have nots.”  By denying that the “international community” had any common standard on abortion or family policy, the GCD seeks to protect the sovereignty of individual nations to deal with this issues according to their values, traditions, religions, and choices.  By refuting the claim of “consensus,” the GCD also limits the ability of some states to manipulate claims of “human rights violations” against those countries that do not fall into line with pro-abortion and pro–gender ideology views.  These concerns are not limited to the Third World; in the post-Dobbs era, there have been attempts to criticize individual U.S. states for enacting protective pro-life legislation as violating “human rights.”

Organizers of the 2025 observance in Washington hope to get other countries to sign on to the GCD.  They believe that restoring the GCD early in the second Trump administration opens the door to three things: reasserting state rather than global authority over national health matters; removing abortion and gender ideology from international health and human rights criteria; and changing the focus on women’s health issues, particularly in poorer countries, to align with broader medical issues and the social impact of poverty rather than Western sexual ideologies.

Current GCD members are Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Rep), Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eswatini, The Gambia, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Libya, Nauru, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States, and Zambia.  Brazil and Poland, original GCD members, have been removed from the Consensus by their current governments.

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