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International Catholic Entity Protests UN Women’s Campaign for Gender-Neutral Language

The Official Logo of CitizenGo. Credit: CitizenGo

The leadership of CitizenGo, a Catholic organization spearheading family issues, has petitioned officials of The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), protesting against campaigns for gender neutrality that advocate for “scrapping the words ‘feminine’ and ‘woman’”. 

In February last year, UN Women published educational materials that were against the use of binary words including man and woman saying the nouns do not promote equality.

“Kindly stop all the gender ideology campaigns you are carrying out and represent the women in the grassroots who are really depending on you,” officials of CitizenGo tell UN Women in their Wednesday, September 15 petition.

In the online petition addressed to UN Women's Board Chair, the leadership of CitizenGo says the move to classify binary nouns as “taboo words” has “angered many women who believe that UN Women is overstepping its mandate while focusing more on transgenderism and radical gender ideology campaigns.”

“This goes contrary to what many would think would be the mandate of the UN agency, which also bears the word ‘Women’ in its name,” officials of the ultra-conservative advocacy group founded in Spain say.

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"Your name is UN Women, which means you are protecting the women who you now want to be renamed," CitizenGo officials tell members of the UN Agency founded in 2010.

CitizenGo is the international arm of Hazte Oir, the ultra-conservative Spanish Catholic organization that was founded in 2013 in Madrid, Spain as an advocacy foundation.

The Catholic entity promotes online petitions in some 50 countries across the globe, defending Christian values including opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.

In the September 15 petition, CitizenGo leadership bemoan UN Women's claims that "sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression exist independently of each other, referencing the 'Genderbread Person.'” 

Illustrated by Sam Killerman, the Genderbread person is a model used to simplify the various components of gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and biological sex.

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In the petition, CitizenGo officials say the leadership of their organization "has spoken at the United Nations before and insisted that the UN has no grasp of what ails women in the grassroots." 

"While women require better education, better health care, better infrastructure and even better maternal care to improve themselves, the absurd body that represents them is pushing for transgenderism," they lament in the petition. 

"It is a shame what this agency has reduced itself to and thus we need to call them out," CitizenGO officials say in the September 15 online petition. 

UN Women was established in response to a resolution by the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) with the purpose of promoting women empowerment and gender equality.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.