UN officials attack morality

Briefing: officials known as 'Special Rapporteurs' exist to look into specific areas of human rights, in the context of the UN Convention. These ones have clearly become obsessed with their own highly controversial agenda.

From C-Fam: At the recently concluded Human Rights Council (HRC) meetings in Geneva, several UN Special Rapporteurs presented annual reports that undercut religion as a defense against radical feminism, promote a radically expansive view of homosexual rights, and have the effect of discrediting national sovereignty.

Special Rapporteur Yakin Erturk who covers Violence Against Women said that in the coming year she would be placing special emphasis on sexual orientation. In this year's report Erturk calls for States Parties to the Convention on the Elimination Against Women to remove any reservation based on religion. Ertuk said any such reservation can only be viewed as "incompatible" with the Convention and contrary to the rights of women.

Erturk also told the Human Rights Council that abstinence-based programs for combating HIV/AIDS "reinforce ideologies of men’s control over women’s sexuality (however they may be culturally framed) and thereby contribute to the perpetuation of the root cause of many forms of violence against women.”

UN Special Rapporteur on Health Paul Hunt asked the HRC to call for the "right to health" a highly controversial and vague term into which is packed much of radical sexual policy. He said there are many ways to promote a right to health including "through the case law of bodies with responsibility for interpreting human rights.”

Hunt announced at a meeting during the Commission on the Status of Women in March that the majority of his reports “dealt with the sexual and reproductive health of girls.” He said one of the goals of his work as Rapporteur was to teach children about sex without talking about reproduction, asking, “If adults bury sexuality in the term ‘reproduction’, how will children understand? So I talk about sexual health rights.”

UN Special Rapporteur is a title given to individuals working on behalf of the United Nations who bear a specific mandate from the former UN Commission on Human Rights to investigate, monitor and recommend solutions to human rights problems. Special Rapporteurs are called to be "of high moral character” and act with “integrity, independence and impartiality.” They have three year mandates which are renewable for three years.

The position was a source of controversy at the HRC meeting. Conservatives at the HRC meetings told the Friday Fax that there was interest among delegations to terminate the mandates of Rapporteurs who overstep or abuse their mandates to push personal agendas, and there was interest in doing away with some of the positions all together. They noted that 9 of the 37 Rapporteurs authored the “Yogyakarta Principles” which promote homosexual rights as international human rights, and also noted that three special Rapporteurs, including Paul Hunt, are members of the pro-abortion NGO Center for Reproductive Rights’ (CRR) Expert Litigation Committee.