Valerie Huber is a fighter for life and family. She was a senior policy official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the first Trump administration, where she worked on domestic and international health policy, particularly issues related to women’s health and family planning.

Also, she has been involved in international efforts connected to the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a multinational initiative affirming that there is no international right to abortion while promoting women’s health, family, and national sovereignty.

Huber is now the president and CEO of The Institute for Women’s Health (IWH), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on women’s health, maternal health, family strengthening, and international development programs.

But her next step in politics could change the imbalance against conservatives in multilateral organizations such as the United Nations. We talked about the creation of a pro-life and pro-family Core Group supported by several member states in this interview.

Why do you consider there to be a need to create a pro-life and pro-family Core Group at the United Nations (U.N.)?

The need for these nations to coordinate is real, and the time is ripe for it.

What form that coordination takes is less important than ensuring it takes place! A core group, a caucus, a standing consultation ahead of key negotiations — the mechanism matters far less than the intention behind it. It is most important to make sure that whatever mechanism is chosen, that it actually serves them.

What already exists is the substantive basis for it.

What are you referring to?

To the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD) that was initiated under President Donald Trump’s leadership and signed on October 22, 2020, alongside regional co-founders Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda.

Its signatories commit to four things: advancing better health for women and girls; affirming that there is no international right to abortion; strengthening the family as the fundamental group unit of society; and defending each nation’s sovereign right to set its own health policy.

The coalition now stands at 41 nations representing about two billion people, with the United States currently serving as secretariat.

Those 41 nations are Christian, Muslim, and secular, across five continents and every income level. Each orders those four commitments differently according to its own constitution, laws, and national priorities.

One government may lead with maternal health, another with family policy, others with the defense of life, and another with sovereignty. But every signatory affirms all four. That shared floor is what makes real coordination possible without asking any nation to subordinate its own priorities to someone else’s.

What would the Core Group bring to the table?

What has not yet been built is the intentional, sustained coordination that turns a shared commitment into shared strategy at the international negotiating table. That is the gap.

And the urgency is practical. Well-funded progressive ideologies are advanced in these venues with considerable discipline and also with considerable resources.

A nation that arrives at a negotiation alone is outmatched. A nation that arrives having strategized with 40 others is not.

How long do you estimate it would take to establish it?

Less time than people assume, because the hardest part is already done. The coalition exists. The shared commitments are on paper and have held through changes of government in multiple countries.

What remains is to give that consensus a working form in international group settings, and that is a matter of political will rather than years of construction. Nations that have already agreed on what they believe do not need years to agree on how to defend it together.

The longer work is the discipline that follows, and that discipline is not left to chance. It is precisely what the diplomacy pillar of Protego, our framework for putting GCD commitments into practice, is built to supply.

A nation may hold a clear position in its capital and still lose ground because its delegation in New York, its mission in Geneva, and its ministry at home are working from different instructions. The diplomacy pillar closes that gap, creating one consistent set of positions and instructions across every mission of the nation, so that a country speaks with a single voice wherever it is represented. It then equips those diplomats with the practical tools to negotiate alongside other GCD nations rather than in parallel to them, with shared preparation, coordinated language, and advance notice of what is coming.

The aim is not simply to hold the line but to stop losing rounds that were lost only for lack of preparation.

That capacity is built cycle by cycle, but it cannot begin until the coordination itself begins, which is why the moment matters. The coalition grew from its founding signatories to 41 nations under sustained opposition. I believe members are now ready.

The Institute for Women’s Health, as the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sustainer and coordinator of the GCD coalition, is eager to support that work through Protego and other means — at the request of members.

Once established, what urgent actions do you think the Core Group should take?

Whatever form this coordinated strategy ultimately takes, there are two tracks moving in tandem.

The first is coordinated multilateral engagement: consulting early rather than at the drafting table, aligning on defensive and affirmative language, delivering joint statements, and preparing members ahead of bilateral and multilateral negotiations so that no signatory faces pressure alone.

The second is Protego, our framework for translating GCD commitments into practice across four pillars: health, education, legal, and diplomacy. Two of those pillars are what make the first track possible in the first place.

Diplomacy gives a nation government-wide consistency on its values positions, so that every mission and every ministry is operating from the same instructions and gives its negotiators the preparation and the tools to work in tandem with other GCD countries, rather than each discovering the others’ positions in the room.

Legal builds durable frameworks for women’s health and thriving, family strengthening, and sovereignty at home, and keeps unchosen obligations out of national law. Health and education carry the commitments the rest of the way, through research-based maternal health and life skills programming, because a commitment defended in New York or Geneva still has to reach a girl in a rural district.

Neither track works alone. Implementation without diplomacy leaves nations exposed abroad. Diplomacy without implementation leaves commitments on paper. These nations have already agreed on what they believe.

The only question left is whether they will defend it together, deliberately and in advance, or keep meeting the same well-funded opposition one country at a time.