LifeSiteNews.com is reporting on the vote of 84-77 which narrowly gave LGBT activists the right to establish the new post. A group of 54 African nations had challenged the legality of the position and called for the suspension of the expert’s activities pending further review of the legal basis of the mandate.
The vote will now give Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand, who was appointed on September 30, the right to continue to investigate alleged violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to enforce special new rights granted to this group.
“The African Group is strongly concerned by the attempts to introduce and impose new notions and concepts that are not internationally agreed upon,” said the ambassador of Botswana, Charles Ntwaagae, on November 4 while presenting the position of the African Group.
“We are even more disturbed at the attempt to focus on certain persons on the grounds of their sexual interests and behaviors, while ignoring that intolerance and discrimination regrettably exists in various parts of the world, be it on the basis of color, race, sex or religion, to mention only a few,” said Ntwaagae.
Such attempts to add special LGBT rights in to human rights law “undermine the intent of the drafters and signatories to various human rights instruments,” he continued, and “also seriously jeopardize the entire international human rights framework as they create divisions.”
As LifeSite reports, a number of countries in the Middle East, along with China and Russia, joined the African Group in opposing the LGBT advance within the UN, but to no avail.
The measure will now go before the 193-member General Assembly for a final vote in December and is expected to pass.
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