News from the United Nations has emerged that’s frightening for more reasons than I can express. The UN Third Commitee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural issues has been debating a resolution protecting people from summary execution. Now, first of all, I would like to suggest that it’s obscene that there is even a debate on this. In a civilised world, summary execution should never, ever be acceptable under any circustances – but the Third Commitee disagrees. They’ve been debating specific reasons that should be excluded from the list of valid excuses to kill somebody out of hand – for example, it (in theory) protects journalists from the fear of being shot without trial.
As reported by the New Civil Rights Movement blog, the debate has been effectively highjacked by African and Arab nations in order to remove the protection of the resolution from a specific group: Homosexuals.
While this doesn’t mean that the UN has explicitly said that it’s okay to kill gay people, the implicit message in removing a specific group from the resolution is clear as a bell. Without wanting to make racial assumptions, it shouldn’t come as a shock that the Chairman of the Third Commitee is from Cameroon, an African nation known for persecuting homosexuals, or that the members who voted for the ammendment were chiefly the African and Arab nations, while the US, Australia, New Zealand and most of the European members voted against.

I have been unable to find details of the 17 abstaining voters or the 26 absentees, but I will name and shame them when I find out.

On a positive note, I want to say well done to the United States Mission to the United Nations for roundly condemning this amendment.