Hidden in Plain Sight
Nov 20
Sri Lanka’s Cardinal Speaks Out, Cash for Controversial Classes and the Urgent Case for UN80 Reform
Cardinal Raises Alarm Over UN-backed Sex Education in Sri Lanka
Source: Catholic World Report
Around the world, people of faith are raising serious concerns about harmful ideologies and programs promoted by UN agencies in their countries. Yet their voices and perspectives, despite representing the deeply held beliefs of millions of people, rarely receive adequate attention in the media or at the UN.
One such example comes from Sri Lanka. The leader of the Catholic church in Sri Lanka, Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, has strongly condemned a new comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) curriculum expected to be introduced in schools starting in January 2026.
In his remarks, the Cardinal accused the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) of leading a complex campaign in favor of CSE, targeting the Sri Lankan government and its education ministry.
“They have given money to the government and the Education Ministry, printed books, and are now implementing a plan that misleads our children,” the Cardinal said.
Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a matter of great concern for many religious communities around the world.
UN-backed CSE “encourages children to question their sexuality, embrace a non-binary understanding of gender, and expose[s] them to information on sexual pleasure, including masturbation, foreplay, and sexual fantasies.”
C-Fam has documented this trend in detail. In a recent explainer, C-Fam showed just how radical UNICEF has become in its promotion of gender ideology through CSE.
“This is an attempt to destroy our children. They are trying to bring the values of a decayed Western world that has lost religion and morality into our country,” the Cardinal continued.
In the Philippines, Project Dalisay has mobilized grassroots Christian organizations to sound the alarm about a ministerial memo mentioning “the rolling out of sexual education based on the UNESCO/WHO Document International technical guidance on sexuality education.” It claimed that the memo “contains guidelines that diminish the sanctity of the Filipino family and the role of parents in sex education, as well as exposing our children to inappropriate and premature content.”
“This is both unconstitutional and incongruent with our own culture and values as a nation,” Project Dalisay said.
Many of these groups are not opposed to sex-ed per se. On the contrary, they expressed support for sexuality education “that respects the divine institution of marriage, upholds the family as the fundamental unit of society, and ensures that our youth are seen as not only physical beings.”
Far from maintaining the neutrality and objectivity expected from a UN agency, UN-backed CSE advances progressive norms and ideas on human sexuality, gender, and even abortion, presenting them as settled science and universal norms.
UNFPA Admits to Paying Adolescents to Attend Controversial Lessons on Sexuality
Source: USA for UNFPA
In a recent publication, UNFPA admitted it is paying adolescents to attend lessons on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Let me quickly unpack why SRHR is problematic.
SRHR as understood by UN agencies:
Frames abortion access as a right (despite the fact that this has never been agreed to by UN member governments);
Endorses a non-binary understanding of gender
While going through UNFPA’s guidelines on cash and voucher transfer (CVT) in emergency situations, I came across a particularly striking section. Among the many urgent interventions that CVTs could help with, many of which are already mentioned in the guidelines, there lies a small section that mentions UNFPA is paying adolescents, including transgender-identified people, to attend lessons about SRHR. Again, this is supposedly taking place during public emergencies. The excerpt from the guidelines is below:
“In the Phillipines, “UNFPA launched a programme to engage vulnerable adolescent girls and adolescent transgender individuals from urban poor communities in SRH education and services such as HIV, STI and family planning services [...]Participants in out-of-school learning sessions on adolescent SRH received a small conditional cash transfer after attending the sessions, where they learned about how to make informed choices for their SRH.”
This is just one example of UN agencies taking advantage of crises to introduce controversial ideas and programs that a large number of countries consistently object to.
🇺🇳 Bang for the Buck at the UN?
Driven primarily by the UN's liquidity crisis, the UN Reform initiative, also known as UN80, is an opportunity for member states and the Secretariat to work on a series of reforms that would make the UN more efficient and accountable. Having attended several of their meetings on this process, I can confirm that many delegations agree that the UN costs us a lot of money, perhaps a little too much.
At a previous meeting, the UN80 working group disclosed the high operational costs at the UN:
💰 Producing a single UN report (editing, translation, and issuance only — excluding drafting) costs $24,500
💰Convening one additional day of meetings (two sessions, excluding webcasting) costs $15,900
💰 1 in every 10 dollars is spent on direct costs associated with meetings and reports.
Given that, over 27,000 meetings were held in NY, Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and with over 40,000 resolutions and decisions on the books, these costs are indeed a big concern.
UN80 should not stop at operational reform. In many ways, the UN has expanded its focus on issues that are not of priority for many member states. The US and Argentina said they want UN80 to bring the UN “back to basics.”
During the latest UN80 exchange, Viet Nam complained that some issues tend to be prioritized by the UN at the expense of the real needs of people around the world. The diplomat said,
“When I ask for funding for certain activities when it comes to gender equality, women peace and security, there’s plenty of that, but if I ask for funding for child rights events or an agricultural event, it is very hard to find the funding so it is not meeting the needs of the country where the UN is operating and it is because of the funding fragmentation.”
