South Africa has shamefully chosen to support the dropping of gay rights from a UN conference on racism and xenophobia.
The move came at the Durban Review Conference which has been taking place in Geneva, Switzerland.
It aims to finalise a draft document for the full conference, dubbed Durban II, that is set to take place in April in the European city.
The last such conference on racism and xenophobia took place in Durban in 2001.
The draft document had included a condemnation of “all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on sexual orientation”.
However, due to a lack of support from mainly non-Western countries, this was removed from the draft. South Africa, representing other African nations, was one of the countries that chose to vote against the sexual orientation clause.
According to UN Watch, South Africa, a key organiser of the Durban II conference, said: “Sexual orientation and discrimination… we feel it goes beyond the framework of the (2001) Durban Declaration.”
South Africa has been slammed for repeatedly not supporting human rights causes internationally. In December last year South Africa, along with the US, chose to not sign on to a symbolic UN declaration which called for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
In a reversal of its position last year, the US, now under the Obama administration, gave its support to the inclusion of sexual orientation at Durban II.
Other countries that voted to remove the line from the draft document included China, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Botswana, Iran, Algeria, and Syria. The move was also supported by the Vatican.
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It makes one proud to see South Africa vote in line with such shining beacons of democracy and equality.
mmmmmmmm. ever considered that the Un wasnt paying a big enuf bribe.?
lol
What the hell does that even mean? Why would the UN pay a bribe to a member country to pass a clause in it’s own document?
Why am I not surprised? We support the despots around the world, so we might as well vote with them too.
Replace Fag with k*ffir or jew and then you’ll see them jump – i still cannot understand how people seem to be unable to see that this is the same issue we faced all those years ago…
Just goes to show how homophobic our government actualy is. rather support fraudsters,rapists and black racists.
while we are at it…. what about white racists?I do not agree with SA not taking a stand on the issue, its uncalled for for you to mention black racists and conveniently forget to mention white ones – that form a larger group of racists.Lets not even go there…we should keep our focus on the issue at hand-discrimination on the base of sexual orientation.
I totally agraa with you. All this talk of “Typical African decisions” and “black racists” is off topic at best, obfuscating at worst. 8 of the 11 countries (excluding the Vatican) who voted to remove the line aren’t Sub-Saharan.
Our country is the best
Typical African decision. When is Africa going to admit that being Homosexual is a REALITY not some kind of European disease.
And then we still have people here asking saying where are the gay black people?
Well maybe they should make their voice heard more, especially when they vote. Don’t vote for people that do not RESPECT GAY RIGHTS!
Let’s forget about the past. I’m really touched about what had happened. We are still facing difficulties of hatred. What can we do? Sometimes if we concentrate in such past and existing hatred issues, we will end up being traumatised. That might lead us on loosing focus in everything.