Israel Signs UN Antidiscrimination Declaration
Photo: Haifa Pride Parade 2007
By YuvalY on Wikimedia Commons. Used under Creative Commons License.
Last week, Israel signed on to a United Nations declaration last week that calls for the decriminalization of homosexuality. This momentous statement came on the heels of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, held earlier this month. To date, 66 countries have signed on to the declaration, sponsored by France and the Netherlands.
Below, we’ve posted our translation of an article from Haaretz that appeared last week:
Equal Rights for Gays—Not at the UN
66 countries signed a declaration for equal rights for gays and lesbians—60 countries signed on to the opposing Syrian-sponsored declaration. The United States abstained.
By Shlomo Shamir, New York
The first initiative of its kind brought up at the United Nations in order to assure the homosexual community of equal rights led to a split among the 192 member countries of the worldwide body. The split came after a unique declaration on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity” initiated and led by France and Holland as an addendum to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations is currently marking 60 years since the adoption of the Declaration.
The organizing countries preferred to pursue a declaration rather than a full resolution that would have required a vote. 66 countries signed the declaration, and an Argentine delegate read the contents at a special General Assembly session last Thursday. 60 countries joined the opposing declaration, distributed by Syria. Member countries may still sign either declaration.
The State of Israel joined the countries supporting the declaration. However, the United States, Russia, and China, abstained and did not support the measure. “For the first time in history a large group of member states speaks out in the General Assembly against discrimination based on sexual orientation,” said Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen. “With today’s statement, this is no longer a taboo.”
The political advisor at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations, Meirav Eilon-Shahar, who signed the declaration on Israel’s behalf, told Haaretz in a conversation that “Israel respects the human rights of all her citizens irrespective of their sexual orientation or identity. We therefore deemed it appropriate and correct to support the declaration to support the declaration dealing with the principles of equality in human rights and nof on-discrimination.”
The declaration strongly condemns “all forms of stereotyping, exclusion, stigmatization, prejudice, intolerance and discrimination and violence directed against peoples, communities and individuals on any ground whatsoever, wherever they occur, and especially use of the death penalty and the practice of torture and other forms of cruelty for reasons of sexual identity.”
Likewise, the declaration urges member nations “to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative, to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention.” According to sources at the United Nations involved in preparing the declaration, 77 countries have and implement laws against homosexuals. Seven countries impose the death penalty.
Countries that stand out among the signatories to the declaration include those of the European Union and Central America. An American official explained that the United States did not support the declaration because its sweeping language contradicts some laws in some American states. The countries that rejected the Dutch-French declaration and joined the opposing declaration included primarily Muslim and Arab countries and most African nations.
The explanation given by Muslim representatives was that the declaration for equal rights for homosexuals would encourage deviants and increase cases of pedophilia. The Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations, Bashir Jafari, told reporters at the United Nations that supporters of the French-Dutch declaration “took special coercive measures” against delegates and persuaded them to sign their declaration.
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