Conservative activists, Trump administration officials and right-wing politicians from several countries met in New York on 17 September to push for a pro-life, pro-family core group within the United Nations. This is according to a report by Hope Pisoni, published on 1 October 2026 by Uncloseted Media and republished by Global Voices. According to the report, the group has not yet been officially established.
The meeting in Manhattan
The gathering, called the Global Forum for Life, the Family and Freedoms, lasted two days and took place at the Millennium Hilton hotel, across from the UN headquarters, while the annual General Assembly was under way. It was sponsored by Well Versed, an evangelical NGO. It was co-led by Aarón Lara, a conservative activist based in Mexico and founder of the Ibero-American Congress for Life and the Family (CIVF), and Valerie Huber, an American activist who held senior positions at the Department of Health and Human Services during Trump's first term.
According to the report, three representatives of the US government attended: Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, Bethany Kozma of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Ellie Cohanim, an adviser at the US mission to the UN. Lawmakers from Peru, Uruguay and Guatemala also attended, along with leaders of organizations such as Turning Point USA Faith and C-Fam. The aim of the forum was to draw up a roadmap, and Lara and other backers of the project agreed there to prepare, over the coming months, the plans to get it started.
What a core group is
A core group is an informal grouping of member states, not an official UN body. The LGBTI group has existed since 2008 and brings together 42 states. The United States left it shortly after Trump began his second term, according to the text.
A report by Ipas, an NGO that defends access to safe abortion, cited by Uncloseted Media, argues that the new group would make it easier for governments hostile to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights to coordinate their votes to weaken, block or place conditions on language about sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The Geneva Consensus Declaration
Huber proposes the Geneva Consensus Declaration, signed by 46 countries, which opposes abortion and promotes the heteronormative nuclear family, as the basis for the work. In her view, the group would serve to turn the goals of that text into concrete actions; the declaration is non-binding and has no mechanisms to force signatories to comply. According to the report, the United States rejoined during the first week of Trump's second term and in June took over the main secretariat among the signatories.
Differing views on its reach
Huber told The Washington Stand that the coalition already exists and that creating the group will take less time than many people assume. The Ipas report, by contrast, notes that there is still a way to go and urges activists not to exaggerate the legitimacy or power of the project. Despite that caution, Maria Sjödin, executive director of Outright International, believes the plans and the risk they pose must be taken seriously, and warned that a leadership role for the United States would make the initiative harder to challenge.
