Argentina Stands Alone at the UN/Hungary Stands with the Left

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | November 15, 2024

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY, November 15 (C-Fam) Argentina stood alone against censorship in the General Assembly this week. Close to sixty countries opposed transgenderism. And the Hungarian government of Victor Orbán gaslit everyone on behalf of the European Union.

Argentina voted against a resolution on violence against women in digital spaces because it included “broad and undefined terms such as hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation, which are easily abused to restrict free speech.”

“The women’s agenda should not be used to restrict the rights of women or freedom of expression,” said a delegate of Argentina, the lone dissenting vote when countries adopted the resolution in the General Assembly’s third committee.

The resolution, sponsored by France and the Netherlands, calls for censorship of all forms of discrimination on the basis of gender. It supports national and international censorship programs to tackle what is sometimes called “technology facilitated gender based violence.” Such programs are backed by the U.S. State Department. Censorship programs include direct content moderation as well as the design of algorithms that automatically exclude any views deemed discriminatory or demeaning to women based on gender ideology.

Argentina stood alone in voting against the resolution.

However, several countries opposed other elements of the resolution, including controversial language on abortion, sexual and reproductive health, and transgender issues.

Close to sixty traditional countries asked to delete language calling for recognition of women “in all their diversity” and “intersectional forms of discrimination.” These are terms that Western countries and UN agencies use in their programs and policies to promote transgender rights. The amendments failed, but countries maintained their objections.

The delegate from the government of Hungary, speaking on behalf of the entire European Union, scolded Argentina and the traditional countries for objecting to the resolution. She defended the resolution’s importance to global censorship initiatives and downplayed any other concerns about the resolution.

She said the resolution would “strengthen the efforts of all relevant stakeholders, including digital platforms, to better moderate harmful, discriminatory and violent content” as well as help to “tackle the bias in technology that can lead to gender-based and racial discrimination.”

She also said content deemed to be misinformation and hate speech must be censored to facilitate women and girls “accessing health.” UN rights mechanisms often claim, in this vein, that public opposition to abortion and transgender issues must be censored because it stops women and transgenders from accessing health care, and therefore, is a form of “gender-based violence.”

The Hungarian delegate downplayed the concerns about transgenderism by derisively referring to the countries who asked for the changes as “a small group of countries.” She also implied that concerns of delegations with objections regarding transgender issues and abortion were misplaced or in bad faith. All this angered the delegations of traditional countries who felt slighted by her remarks.

The Argentine positions at the ongoing seventy-ninth session of the General Assembly has taken UN delegations by surprise. Argentina’s is now an absolutist position on free speech. Delegates have raised concerns about language on misinformation and hate speech in several resolutions. This non-compromising position has long been understood to be the one espoused in the U.S. constitution. The U.S. State Department opposed “hate speech” and other such terms in UN resolutions until the Obama administration. In recent years, the U.S. government has backed down from an absolute position.

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