Fact Check

Is 'UN Agenda 21/2030' Proposing 'End of Family Unit' and 'Government Raised Children' Real?

Conspiracy theories about a purported "UN Agenda 21/2030" have been on the internet for years.

Published April 27, 2023

 (Lynn Grieveson - Newsroom/Newsroom via Getty Images)
Image courtesy of Lynn Grieveson - Newsroom/Newsroom via Getty Images
Claim:
UN Agenda 21/2030, titled "New World Order," is an official document produced by the United Nations listing goals for the year 2030, including the items "end of the family unit" and "government raised children."

Since as early as 2020, a document titled UN Agenda 21/2030 has been shared as evidence of the United Nations' desire to strip humans of their autonomy and privacy. In April 2023, the Twitter account @IluminatiBot tweeted it, receiving over two million views at the time of this reporting.

The alleged document lists myriad so-called "anti-globalist" narratives or conspiracy theories rooted in the notion that international institutions like the U.N. and WHO seek control over the global order:

NEW WORLD ORDER UN Agenda 21/2030 Mission Goals

One World Government

One World Cashless Currency

One World Central Bank

One World Military

The End of National Sovereignty

The End of ALL Privately Owned Property

The End of the Family Unit

Depopulation: Control of Population Growth and Population Density

Mandatory Multiple V

Universal Basic Income (Austerity)

Microchipped Society for Tracking and Controlling Purchasing and Travel

Implementation of a World Social Credit System (like China has) 

Trillions of Appliances Hooked into the 5G Monitor System (Internet of Things)

Government Raised Children

Government Owned and Controlled Schools, Colleges and Universities

The End of Private Transportation, Owning Cars etc.

All Businesses Owned by Government Corporations

The Restriction of Nonessential Air Travel

Human Beings Concentrated into Human Settlement Zones - Cities

The End of Immigration

The End of Private Farms and Grazing Livestock

The End of Single Family Homes

Restricted Land Use that Serves Human Needs

This, in effect, is a long list of old conspiracy theories (or references to them) that have been debunked. 

Claims of "depopulation," for instance, come from the distortion of a statement made by Bill Gates in 2009 that conspiracy theorists falsely assert betray his desire to kill humans with vaccines to prevent overpopulation. Snopes interprets "mandatory multiple v" as a reference to mandatory vaccines, but we note that this is not the terminology the U.N. itself typically uses to describe vaccinations. 

Claims of a "microchipped society" are also related — in part — to Gates and vaccines. Snopes broke apart these baseless conspiracy theories in April 2020. Snopes discussed meritless conspiracies surrounding a "China-like" social credit system implemented on a global scale in December 2022

The assertion that the U.N wants to put an end to privately owned property (including farms, single family homes, businesses, transportation, etc) stems from misreading an opinion piece theorizing about what the future might look like. This controversy, Snopes explained in April 2023, concerns the World Economic Forum, not the U.N. 

None of the previously debunked conspiracy theories have any factual basis and are often rooted in overt misreadings or fabrications of documents, shedding considerable doubt on the veracity of this purported U.N. "Agenda." Further, no document on the U.N. website includes the phrase "UN Agenda 21/2030" or even "21/2030."  

The document title appears to be a conflation of two U.N. initiatives that include the word "agenda." — Agenda 21 and The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

The former is part of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The latter is a resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2015 that is focused around achieving 17 goals within 15 years. Neither document includes any of the items on the "New World Order" list.

Because the document at issue here includes several exhaustively debunked conspiracy theories and is not referenced in any official U.N. materials, the claim that it is an authentic U.N. statement of goals is "False."

Sources

AGENDA 21 . United Nations Conference on Environment & Development Rio de Janerio, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf.

Cox, Chelsey. "Fact Check: U.N. Agenda 21/2030 'New World Order' Is Not a Real Document." USA TODAY, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/23/fact-check-uns-agenda-21-2030-agenda-wont-create-new-world-order/5474884002/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

THE 2030 AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. United Nations, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf.

Alex Kasprak is an investigative journalist and science writer reporting on scientific misinformation, online fraud, and financial crime.