Freedom of Speech and LGBT Rights: Many Traditions Don’t Agree With Homosexuality
In recent years same-sex marriage proponents and groups claiming a host of new international LGBT rights have been able to make even international law somewhat interesting. It is no secret that International law is not terribly exciting – reading the minutes of a meeting of the UN International Law Commission or an international human rights body is [...]
Christian employees in the UK: a second class category
For the European Court of Human Rights, it is proportionate to dismiss an employee because of his religious and conscientious objection to homosexuality. Grégor Puppinck, PhD, Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice. The ECLJ is deeply concerned by the today ruling of the majority of the Fourth Section of the European Court of [...]
Pope Benedict Criticizes Efforts to Legalize Abortion
In his annual address to the Members of the Diplomatic Corp accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict expressed concern over ongoing efforts to expand legalized abortion and destroy innocent life. Pope Benedict also criticized the recent Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision that struck down a Costa Rican law that prohibited in vitro fertilization by redefining [...]
The Culture of Death, the Dictatorship of Relativism and the Inter-American Court
Late yesterday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released a lengthy opinion (Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica, dated November 28, 2012) holding that Costa Rica’s law which protects life at its earliest stages by prohibiting in vitro fertilization violates the American Convention on Human Rights. In so doing, the Court turned the Convention, which protects [...]
ICPD Global Youth Forum
Today marks the first day of the ICPD Global Youth Forum taking place from Dec 3rd to Dec 6th. Taking place in Bali, the forum is aimed at promoting global dialogue among youth. Youth (under 25) are encouraged to write recommendations and to vote on five core issues (1. STAYING HEALTHY. 2. COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION. 3. TRANSITIONS TO DECENT EMPLOYMENT [...]
URGENT: Sign up for UNFPA’s Global Youth Forum!
CALL FOR YOUTH TO SIGN UP! Are you between the ages of 14-25? Do you know someone that age? Then you must register, and tell other to do the same, as a delegate at the UNFPA’s Global Youth Forum that will take next week in Bali, between December 3-6. The Forum is being sponsored by [...]
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Still Divide UN General Assembly
Yesterday afternoon the United Nations General Assembly adopted its biannual resolution on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. Once again, the third committee proceedings at which the resolution was adopted, by 108 votes to 1, with 65 abstentions, were mired in controversy over “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI). An attempt by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [...]
US wins seat on HRC
Just elected or re-elected to the 47-member Human Rights Council are the US, Germany, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Montenegro, Pakistan, South Korea, Sierra Leone, the United Arab Emirates, and Estonia. The US received 131 votes from the 193 UN member states for its second 3-year term on the body. During its last [...]
A lousy procedure, a messy judgment: The European Human Rights Court’s newest attempt to fabricate a „Right to Abortion“
While for many years the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has simply failed to protect unborn children against being murdered (the lead case here is the ignominious Vo v. France decision of 2004, where the Court explicitly recognised that the embryo “belongs to the human race”, but at the same expressed doubts as to [...]
Conscience Rights in 15 Seconds
How would you explain the right to follow one’s conscience? It’s become a huge issue in the U.S. with the Obama administration requiring employers to pay for insurance that covers abortion and contraception. Even more directly, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has told governments that “laws and policies that impede access [...]
Human Rights Official Riles Up UN Delegates, Fire Alarm Goes Off
Yesterday was UN Day. A day to celebrate the accomplishments of the world’s only universal international organization, and the progress of the world’s nations towards a brighter more peaceful future. But UN delegates at the third committee meeting of the 67th plenary session of the General Assembly were more concerned with highlighting overreaching by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. [...]
Latvia: A remarkable Pro-Life campaign followed by an official conference in the Parliament on the “right to life”
Between August and October 2012 the small Baltic country of Latvia has been the place of a creative and effective Pro-Life campaign aimed at reopening the public debate over abortion, in a country with a very high level of abortion and a law demographic rate. A specific aim of the campaign is also to introduce [...]
Top human rights office trying to criminalize pro-life groups?
A reporter just asked me to comment on a story suggesting that 2012 OHCHR technical guidance on maternal mortality seeks to criminalize pro-life organizations. While the OHCHR may well approve such an outcome, this aim is not clear in the text of the document. Here are the pertinent paragraphs of the technical guidance: 22. States should protect against interference with [...]
Incredible: “Pussy Riot” nominated for the Sakharov Peace Prize
Yet another confirmation for the deplorable confusion of mind of certain EU politicians: the Russian punk band “Pussy Riot”, whose three female musicians were sentenced to two years in prison after staging an obscene protest in a Moscow cathedral, are among the candidates for the European Parliament’s annual Sakharov Peace Prize. Pussy Riot was nominated [...]
Involuntary sterilization of the disabled
One positive outcome of the latest gathering of states parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is that it highlighted the abuses of government population programs, namely, forced sterilization. In 1996, Maria Mamerita Mestanza Chavez, a 33-year-old Peruvian mother of seven, was threatened with imprisonment if she did not comply with [...]
The frivolity of the European Human Rights Court
In a previous post, we have been informed about a case currently pending before the European Court of Human Rights in which the petitioners, a lesbian couple from Austria, claim to have been victims of “discrimination” because the Austrian legislation does not allow homosexual adoption. As the post explains in more detail, one of the [...]
Homosexual adoption before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights
The case of X and others v. Austria Grégor Puppinck[1] Strasbourg, 12 September 2012. On 3rd October 2012, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will hear a case of “homosexual adoption” concerning the impossibility for a woman to adopt the son of her female partner (X and others v. Austria, no. [...]
No Need to Ratify New UN Treaty
Yesterday Wendy Wright and I spent our lunch hour at the new state of the art US Mission to the UN at 45th St and 1st Ave. We attended a side event hosted by the US delegation to the UN on Disability Rights. The side event was held because of the ongoing Conference of States Parties [...]
The Hidden Cost of a UN Interpretation of New UN Treaty
Will ratifying the newest UN human rights treaty place additional financial burdens on the U.S., international institutions and others? Advocates are heavily lobbying the U.S. to ratify the newest UN human rights treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. Some promise U.S. decision-makers that ratification will not change anything domestically, but will [...]
Prohibition of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis: the ECHR Censors the Italian Law
On 28 August 2012, the second section of the European Court of Human Rights issued its first judgment concerning access to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This technique of screening and selection of embryos conceived in vitro aims at giving birth to a child who is not suffering from a genetic disease. It stems from this [...]