However, key UN Bodies continue to undermine gay rights.
UN Recognizes Gay Marriage for Staffers, yet key UN Bodies undermine gay rights
UN Watch, the Geneva-based rights group, welcomed UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s recognition of staffers’ same-sex marriages, but said the world body would only send a clear message on equal rights when its top human rights bodies “stop adopting anti-gay resolutions, and stop promoting those who kill, persecute and criminalize gays.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said: “We urge the Secretary-General to call out the UN Human Rights Council for its renewed spate of anti-gay measures, as well as all influential UN bodies that are electing and empowering abusers.”
Neuer also spoke out about the latest attack on gay rights by UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), saying: “In its latest June session, the UNHRC again refused, as it has done now for three years, to oppose violence against gays. Instead, on June 27th, it launched yet another thinly-veiled attack on gays by adopting a widely-condemned resolution entitled ‘Protection of the Family’ – co-sponsored by abuser states such as Qatar and Mauritania, both on the list of 10 countries where homosexuality is punishable by death.”
He continued: “When democracies sought to expand the definition of family, the UNHRC’s anti-gay majority shut down all debate through a ‘No Action’ motion, a draconian measure used only once before in the entire history of the Council’s 46 regular and special sessions.
“All of this comes as the Council continues to adopt similar resolutions invoking ‘traditional values’ — discourse which has been used by Russia, Nigeria and Uganda to justify anti-gay legislation.”
Neuer expressed alarm at recent UN decisions that, “elevate and empower notorious perpetrators of anti-gay discrimination,” saying such actions “send the worst message and only ensure the further undermining of fundamental human rights.”
Recently, in a move that elicited wide criticism, the UN General Assembly unanimously elected Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa, who supports his country’s infamously strict anti-gay laws, as President for the next year.
Of the 47 UNHRC member states Algeria, Botswana, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Namibia and Sierra Leone have laws making homosexuality illegal.
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