Abstract

In the mid-1990s, a group of UN officials and nongovernmental organizations gathered to formulate a strategy to promote a controversial international social policy agenda by reinterpreting existing human rights treaties to give them new meanings. At the heart of this strategy was a four-step process to use the six UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies and an interlocking network of UN agencies, UN officials, and NGOs to create an international right to abortion. In the decade that has followed, UN member nations have allowed the strategy to develop to an extensive degree, despite the fact that it undermines their own laws. This study examines the reasons why the process has been able to advance, and analyzes the way the strategy has undermined the treaty monitoring system andchallenged the credibility of the international human rights regime.