Participation, Representation and Global Civil Society

This book focuses on religious fundamentalists' mobilization efforts against abortion in three United Nations Conferences. Using U.S. Christian and Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist groups as empirical cases, this account highlights these groups' efforts against the adoption of abortion in the 1984 Mexico Conference on Population, the 1994 Cairo conference on Population and the1995 Beijing Conference on Women. The account, which examines Northern (U.S. Christian) and Southern (Egyptian Islamists) anti-abortion networks' participation and representation within these forums, provides a unique glimpse into their engagement within international institutions. It also explores whether Northern and Southern groups' growing involvement in decision-making processes has lessened the inequality that historically characterized North-South relations in the international arena and compares the strategies and tactics used by these groups as they attempted to influence the debate on reproductive rights within the conferences' PrepComs, regional forums, NGO Forums and the state-dominated plenary sessions. It also assesses the extent to which these entities were effective in influencing outcomes in these arenas and comments on North-South relations in a contemporary context. Information on these groups was obtained from interviews with leaders of the U.S. Christian and Egyptian Islamic fundamentalist groups as well as secondary sources and official U.N. documents.