Saturday 26 January 2019

UN-HELPFUL: The UN's compromising on issues that matter


On the 17th December 2018, the UN adopted a resolution aimed at defeating Nazism and neo-Nazism titled ‘Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.’ 


The document revolves around these victims of discrimination and intolerance and clarifies who they might be throughout the report. 'Anti-Semitism', 'Islamophobia', 'Christianophobia', 'Arabophobic', 'Afrophobic', 'Roma' and 'ethnic' are the terms used, often on more than a few occasions. Sometimes the terminology is less specific, but the references are clear enough.


Is the UN forgetting the thousands of homosexuals, or the hundreds of thousands of disabled people, murdered by the Nazi regime? The omission would have been bad enough if the document was speaking about prejudice in general, but denying these groups a mention in the context of Nazism is outright obscene. Was it an oversight? Perhaps with regards to disabled people, who tend to become invisible when they, or their advocates, are not present, shouting their cause, but leaving any mention of the ongoing prejudice against LGBT is a clear symptom of the feeble UN that has to pander to the scores of homophobic countries within its midst. The LGBT community is an obvious butt of Nazism and neo-Nazism, but, as well as that, even today, the legislation of many countries actually enforces this persecution. This week Angola decriminalised homosexuality, but the fact remains that it is still illegal in about 70 countries (over 1/3 of UN recognised countries), with a few actually using the death penalty as a deterrent.

A new organisation called UNaligned is about to be launched that intends to show up the hypocrisies of the UN and offer a virtual alternative that people can feel an active part of. The launch should be within a few weeks and it will be announced in this blog... so watch this space!

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