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The U.S. mission to the United Nations has been moving to remove references to “gender” from U.N. human-rights documents, according to a Thursday report from The Guardian. In recent meetings, The Guardian notes, the mission has attempted to rewrite policy statements that the Trump administration believes are using the “ideology” of gender instead of relying on immutable “biological fact.” In one draft paper, for example, the U.S. has worked to replace phrases like “gender-based violence” with “violence against women.” “We are seeing this more and more coming up on the Third Committee, and this is going to be a battle in the coming weeks,” one diplomat said, while conceding that the U.S. has campaigned for the word “gender” to be included in at least one instance.
Other diplomats agreed: “If you only say violence against women, it doesn’t really tell the whole story,” a senior diplomat at the U.N. told The Guardian. “We shouldn’t be going along with encouraging their society to be regressive. And if that means a blazing row in the Third Committee, I would have a blazing row in committee because I think some things are worth cherishing and worth hanging on to.” This report comes only three days after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had drawn up a policy paper to establish the legal definition of gender as determined by genitalia at birth.