Day for Victims of Religious-Based Violence Hijacked by UN Human Rights Experts

By | August 26, 2021

NEW YORK, August 27 (C-Fam) UN human rights experts want to shift the focus of the international day to commemorate the victims of religious intolerance to people who identify as LGBTQ.

A group of UN experts issued a statement for the international day to commemorate victims of violence motivated by religious extremism or perpetrated against religious minorities. In it they denounced “misogynistic and homophobic laws, policies or discourses.”

“Since the adoption of the 2019 UN General Assembly’s resolution … the world has faced an alarming escalation of hate, both online and offline, targeting religion or belief minorities as well as members of lesbian, gay, transexual and intersex communities,” they write.

The atrocities that inspired the commemoration continue to mount. The plight of religious minorities such as those in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and Uyghur Muslims in China remain alarming, as does the continued threat of violence by terrorist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Middle-East-based Al-Qaeda.

The statement highlighting LGBT issues stands in contrast to the resolution of the General Assembly establishing the day to remember the victims of violence motivated by religious extremism or perpetrated against religious minorities. The resolution, initiated by the government of Poland, established the observance directly after the International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism on August 21.

Adopted by consensus in the General Assembly, the resolution recognizes that people can be targeted for violence on the basis of their own religious belief, and religious extremism can lead people to perpetrate violence against others. Neither the resolution nor the UN page explaining the observance mentions sex or gender, much less sexual orientation or gender identity, which remain controversial concepts in the General Assembly.

Immediately after the day was designated, experts operating under the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a joint statement welcoming the observance and noting that “Such violence threatens the hard-fought progress in securing women’s equality and the rights of LGBTI persons.”  The emphasis on LGBT-identified people was reiterated in the expert group’s 2020 statement as well.

These statements are evidence of a widening divide between the UN’s human rights special procedures and expert groups, who operate independently and without direct accountability, and the General Assembly, which strives to work on the basis of international consensus.

For years, and without a mandate from the global community, the OHCHR and its experts have worked to promote sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights nondiscrimination categories.  While freedom of religion or belief are also a key area for human rights protection, UN experts have characterized teachings on traditional sexual morality as extreme, outside the mainstream, or even tantamount to violence.  These experts have also faced criticism for being beholden to wealthy donors promoting controversial social agendas.

When not resorting to denunciation of widespread religious beliefs on issues of sex and gender, the OHCHR has spread confusion and disinformation.  In 2014, the OHCHR’s pro-LGBT “Free & Equal” campaign used an image of Mother Teresa, then a candidate for Catholic sainthood, to imply her endorsement of their goals.

In addition to controversially creating a special procedure on sexual orientation and gender identity within the OHCHR, the special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief issued a report calling for the outlawing of religious beliefs to justify “rights violations,” which he interpreted to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and the criminalization of abortion.

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