Apr 09, 2004  |  By: ADRIAN BRUNE  | COMMENTS     

Sumil Pant was on a mission to get to Geneva and nothing was going to stop him.

The founder of the Blue Diamond Society, Nepal’s sole gay and lesbian advocacy group, had stories to tell from his country, stories about gay men blackmailed by police, and lesbians tortured into marriage.

So he boarded a plane in Kathmandu on April 3 bound for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to push for passage of the “United Nations Resolution on Sexual Orientation,” which would provide his society with legal grounds to fight open discrimination by the Nepalese government.

After a two-day journey through the airports of four cities on four airlines, Pant arrived without his luggage to some disappointing news: Brazil, the resolution’s lead sponsor, had petitioned to have its consideration postponed until the 2005 session, fearful it would be killed for lack of support. But instead of returning to Nepal, Pant bought new clothes and vowed to stay with a new mandate: lobbying for the consensus Brazil says it needs.

“The resolution spreads hope around the world, especially in countries like ours,” Pant said from the echoing halls of U.N. headquarters in Geneva. “It’s a matter of justice, and every country should step forward to support it.”

Brazil initially introduced the historic — and unexpected — resolution during the 11th hour of the 2003 U.N. Commission on Human Rights, but acquiesced to the Commission’s vote on postponing debate until the current session. But on March 29, despite broad European and Canadian backing, the country decided it would not wait for the commission to decide the resolution’s fate.

“Brazil considers that the treatment of any issue in the commission should not lend itself to exploitation of a political nature,” the country said in a statement issued from its mission in Geneva. “Since November last year, we have been consulting with delegations of several countries on the text.

“We have not yet been able, however, to arrive at a necessary consensus. By its very nature, a subject such as nondiscrimination and sexual orientation presupposes the search for consensus.”

Activists blame Islamic nations
Human rights advocates contend Brazil had all the backing it needed, and caved to the Organization of Islamic Conference’s surreptitious threats to jeopardize the country’s fall 2004 summit of Arab and Latin American leaders. The OIC, especially member nations Egypt and Pakistan, also threatened to jeopardize trade relations with Brazil if it pursued the resolution’s passage, according to Scott Long, a consultant to Human Rights Watch.

Long and representatives from Amnesty International said they would now direct their efforts toward finding another sponsor for the resolution.

“We saw a group of countries stand up and actually use economic pressure to crush a progressive move on sexual orientation. But it’s not defeated, just deferred,” Long said. “We have this incredible convergence here, and we’re going to continue to create as much visibility as we can to stand up to the OIC. It cannot silence these voices.”

The United States also opposed the measure.

The disputes over the proposed resolution, which instructed governments to promote and protect human rights of people “regardless of their sexual orientation,” began almost immediately.

Supporters of the measure claimed the specification of protections for gays augmented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N.’s 1948 edict that recognizes the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of humanity. They also said the resolution’s objectives do not differentiate from U.N. conventions on safeguards for women and children, or other minorities.

But its adversaries, specifically the OIC, asserted the wording of Brazil’s resolution directly affronted the tenets of Islam and other religions. In forcing these countries to adhere to a U.N. order acknowledging the rights of gay men and lesbians, the U.N. would threaten their religious freedom and end public discourse about the morality of same-sex relationships, they said.

“The Organization of the Islamic Conference has amongst its consecrated traditions, the respect of the cultural specificities of every human community, and it feels in return that the cultural and faith-related specificities of the Islamic communities should also meet with due respect,” said Dr. Abdelouahed Belkeziz, the secretary-general of the OIC, in a speech before the U.N. commission.

“Proceeding from this, we feel that the idea of imposing upon the Islamic peoples laws that are incompatible with their morals and values, should be eschewed for the sake of preserving the units and solidarity of the international community at a time when we are facing so many challenges of greater dimension and which constitute a threat to us all.”

Approximately one-third of the U.N.’s 191 member countries prohibit homosexuality, and gay people within those countries face persecution and, in drastic cases, execution.