The fight against the signing of the new EU-ACP Agreement continues. With the support of a global group of influential MPs, government officials, CSOs, and religious leaders, CCI developed a strong advocacy campaign strategy in the 3rd quarter of 2022. Thereafter, CCI used the last quarter of 2022 to implement this campaign strategy which solely focused on raising awareness about the concerning provisions inside the EU-ACP Agreement among the ACP representatives who attended the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (ACP-EU JPA) and the ACP Heads of State Summit in order to encourage them to speak out on the record against the Agreement. Without exposing our campaign strategies, below you can find a short overview of our achievements:
Maputo - ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly
After 1.5 years of plowing, toiling, sweating and sowing, finally the bomb burst on day 9 of the ACP-EU JPA meeting.
The EU is constructing and guarding a rampart of divide-and-conquer strategy. By means of voting, they planned to stitch together the final details in the already ready-made "rules of procedures" (of the separate EU-Africa protocol, the EU-Caribbean protocol and the EU-Pacific protocol). They thus want to impose their controversial SOGI, SRHR, LGBT, CSE ideologies on the 79 ACP states for 20 years in a binding way, but this has been broken with successive explosive speeches by MPs from various ACP countries.
All of our work, analyses, travel and input to the country delegations and MPs seemed to come to fruit. On the final day, the behind-the-scenes negotiated proposed treaty was once again put on the table for debate and several MPs requested to have the Agreement text shared with their national parliaments for their consideration (due to required legislative changes on all sorts of ethical issues such as legalization of abortion). The main reason for this request was that these MPs wanted to avoid their leaders to sign an Agreement which has not been debated in parliament by the MPs who are representing the opinion of their citizens and should therefore know and agree with what this Agreement entails.
However, the Delegation of the European Council/Commission set his heels deep here and did (wrongly) very easy about (undefined) human rights paragraphs in the text. He also stated that all forms of discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion and sexualizing education, would be underlined by the new treaty. This means that all EU and ACP states should abide by this, regardless of what their national laws states. He further said that he did not want to change anything, falsely claiming that the text before us on human and social issues would be according to international law and thus should already be used as a benchmark by ACP countries. Because this came across as quite disrespectful and arrogant, MPs from several African and Caribbean countries strongly objected, which was ignored by the EU. Also ignored was a timely Malawian motion for a resolution to send the treaty for debate to national parliaments for unclear procedural reasons. This was a lesson in vivid teaching of practicing neocolonialism by the EU. To be continued...
These are worrying developments, as it concerns the fate of +1 billion people for the next 20 years, including their unborn lives. Fortunately, more and more ACP countries are standing up to speak out against this injustice.
Luanda, Angola - 10th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the OEACP
My lobbying message at the Luanda summit was summed up in 1 page:
URGENT BRIEFING: Serious Overlooked Problems with ACP-EU Agreement!
The ACP-EU Partnership Agreement is a binding 20-year treaty that intrudes into almost every area of public and private life of EU and ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries. From dictating abortion, to comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), to parental discipline, and social, sexual, gender and cultural norms and more, this treaty goes far beyond the Cotonou Agreement it is to replace, violating national sovereignty in the following ways:
- Divides OACP member states into three separate protocols (African, Caribbean, Pacific) and appoints the EU as a cochair of each thus weakening the OACPS’ collective bargaining power while strengthening the EU’s power.
- Bypasses national parliaments and cedes lawmaking powers to a Council of over 100 foreign government Ministers with authority to make binding decisions on parties.
- Deceptively requires the legalization of abortion, prostitution, same-sex marriage, the LGBT agenda, and child sexualization through its requirements to implement multiple innocuous-sounding documents and “sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
- Transforms multiple non-binding documents into legally binding treaties with the EU (i.e., ICPD, Beijing, and their controversial conference review outcome documents--past, present and future-- as well as regional agreements such as the contested Maputo Protocol and Maputo Plan of Action, and the radical Montevideo Consensus).
- Requires cooperation with the UN’s human rights mechanisms such as treaty bodies and UN experts, which now also mandate abortion, CSE, special LGBT “rights” and more.
- Supersedes all other treaties with a supremacy clause and cleverly establishes “human rights” (which conveniently are not defined) as an “essential element” of the treaty, making it impossible for countries to reserve on the treaty’s controversial provisions, many of which are positioned as “human rights.”
CALL TO ACTION
- Recognize that the treaty’s current text dividing ACP countries into three separate protocols is unacceptable.
- Insist on continuing with the Cotonou Agreement instead which keeps the OACPS united. Updates could be negotiated in consultation with national parliaments, the rightful law-making bodies for sensitive sexual, social, family and domestic issues.
- Support a motion by Malawi calling to delay Head of State signing until national parliaments have time to scrutinize the treaty and address the areas that conflict with national laws. (The motion was denied a hearing in Maputo at the ACP-EU JPA ).
Don’t accept the argument “it is too late to make changes as the text was already agreed.”
It is NEVER too late to protect your nation’s children, parental rights, family and cultural values, and especially national sovereignty!
For more information and documentation go to https://deviouseutreaty.org/
CCI has been able to reach many ACP delegations in both Maputo and Luanda and made them aware of the danger of this Agreement. CCI therefore looks back on a successful campaign year in Africa. In 2023, CCI will make every effort to halt the signing of this agreement until all countries covered by this agreement are able to maintain their national sovereignty and Christian values regarding life, family, and freedom of religion and education.”