On Thursday, December 18th, 2008, the UN General Assembly has adopted 52 GA Resolutions recommended by its Third Committee on wide range of human rights, social, humanitarian issues. In particular, UN member States by majority (i.e. 106) of votes "welcomed" the global trend towards the abolition of capital punishment. 46 other States voted against this moratorium, among them are China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand, United States. Belarus abstained.
During the discussion of GA Resolutions on Human Rights a representative of Argentina in the name of 66 UN member states has attracted the UN GA's attention to the necessity of protecting sexual minorities' rights and establishing universal decriminalisation of homosexuality. He expressed a deep concern and alarm at the ongoing exclusion, harassment, stigmatization and prejudice against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, said that LGBT people still intimidated and their rights are being violated. Continuing, he condemned all human rights violations based on sexual orientation or gender identity, whenever or wherever they might occur, especially when those violations involved the use of the death penalty or the use of torture or other cruel or inhuman treatment against the victims.
Mr. Grigory Lukiantsev, a Russian representative to the UN GA, commenting Argentina's statement said that, "no subject should be injected into the agenda that could lead to confrontation or divisiveness".
According to his words, the Russian Federation opposes discrimination, intolerance, repressions and violent actions towards LGBT people. However, the Russian high ranking diplomat stated that the approach to the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity should be constructed within the context of already existing international human rights instruments, since separating such discussion into discussions on an individual group could lead to a greater burden in the workload of the Assembly. "The artificial apportionment of LGBT people is fraught with overload of already extensive agenda of the United Nations General Assembly and shift of the key vector of the agenda away from the issue of overcoming of discrimination and xenophobia", stressed Mr. Lukiantsev.
At the same day in the UN headquarters was held a colloquium "Human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity", organised by permanent representatives of Argentina, Brasil, Gabon, the Netherlands, Norway, Croatia and France to the United Nations, reports the official UN site.
It is of high interest the fact that Mr.Lukiantsev's words completely and entirely repeat the words of the Republican Party's representatives in the US Senate, they used describing their refusal to vote for the proposal of amendment of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 so called "Matthew Shepard Act". The ammendment was aimed at expanding the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Republicans said that 'apportionment of gays and lesbians into a separate group was fraught with "overload"'. Id est it was possible to say about discrimination on the grounds of race, religion or ethnicity - it was good to say about xenophobia, how it is bad, to fight that evil, to punish those who commit crimes on the grounds of xenophobia... But to "separate gays and lesbians into another group" was groundless and it was "an overload"...
Translated by Yerdna Bananes