General Assembly - UN New York
By Peter Smith
Delegates need to understand what certain terms mean. “ Women in all their diversity” includes transgender people. When delegates know the hidden meaning behind words and phrases, then they need courage. Just seeing friendly NGOs in the building helps. Having students attending, under supervision, helps. Many activities are held in and out of UN buildings. Over the years these have attracted sometimes 100 delegates and ambassadors at a meeting. All this helps with education and building courage.
From 4 to 16 Nov. 2024 I monitored 25 resolutions of the 3rd Committee of the General Assembly. Some 9 of these were voted on. The UN hates voting, they like to pretend there is “consensus”. Most of these resolutions are repeated every two years. There is a pretence that if something is repeated enough times it becomes “customary international law”. The two worst resolutions I monitored are below.
Eliminate violence against women and girls in the digital environment
Doc. A/C.3/79/L.17/Rev1
There were 10 counter resolutions to the above resolution. Between 28 and 57 countries voted for these changes, but these failed. Then 23 countries gave excellent reservations against the term “ safe abortion” and the term gender. These were Nigeria, Niger, Nicaragua, Cameroon, Indonesia, Russia, Argentina, Qatar, Belarus, Malaysia, Yemen, Tanzania, Algeria, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Burkina Faso,, Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Syria, and the Holy See. The delegate from the Holy See said “ Abortion is never safe.” I agree the unborn child dies and the mother is injured each time.
Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Doc. A/C.3/79/L47/Rev.1
Since 1997 this resolution has been adopted every two years. It has been used since then to promote sexual orientation and gender identity ( SOGI ). There is no need to make a list of who should be executed without trial. All you need to say is , “ no extrajudicial summary nor arbitrary executions”, we all agree on this.
Egypt proposed an amendment to replace SOGI with the word sex. There was a vote , 47 for , 78 against and 26 abstentions. Then the resolution was voted on without the amendment. Result was 130 for , 0 against, 53 abstain.
The following countries made very good reservations against the SOGI term. They were Niger, Yemen, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Senegal, Uganda, Libya, Mali, Egypt, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Syria and the Holy See.
The delegate from Sweden gave an impassioned plea for countries to accept the SOGI wording. He said there was no desire to have countries to change their laws on this matter. I do not believe him.
In summary I can say that the battle still rages at the UN. There is excellent resistance to anti-family concepts and anti-life wording. After 30 years of concerted effort they are still no closer to making abortion a human right. It is a human wrong.
International decade for Africans and people of African descent
This decade closed last week and there was a “ High Level meeting “ to discuss this matter and push for another decade. This so called high level panel was made up mostly of African NGOs, with just a handful of country delegates. There was a lot of talk about the crimes of colonialism and slavery, and reparations.
You would think that this was all the fault of Europeans, inventing slavery for the first time. Europeans and especially the British were involved. However they just pulled into African ports and purchased people already enslaved by other African. Today there are an estimated seven million slaves in Africa. No mention of this in the debate.
There was no mention of my hero , William Wilberforce M.P. who led the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in the British empire. In 1834 some 800,000 slaves were freed and slave owners were compensated with £20 million. Then the Royal Navy worked to enforce an end to transporting slaves across the Atlantic. There was no talk of reparations for the families who lost loves ones doing this good work.
An excellent author Prof. Nigel Biggar, from Oxford University has written an great book called “ Colonialism – a moral reckoning”. An interview with Jordan Peterson can be viewed at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpwI0YYLh5M
A related topic to the above was a resolution called “A right to development”, Ref. A/C.3/79/ L28. There was a vote on this resolution, 129 for, 25 against , 30 abstaining. This is one of the most absurd resolutions I have witnessed at the UN. The US delegate mentioned that they had donated since 1945 some $3.8 trillion to poor countries. They wisely mentioned that only individuals have human rights not countries. In my opinion most of this money went to the private bank accounts of the leaders of poor countries and the poor people got next to nothing.
If countries wish to develop , they can copy South Korea who after 1955 decided to not beg for money for development. They are now a very successful developed country. Japan in the mid 19th century did a similar thing , going from a very poor backward country to a world power in 50 years. They got no handouts.
Peter Smith represents CCI at the UN in New York