A special review
More everything means the opposite of everything news:
Britain’s human-rights watchdog could be downgraded and blocked from United Nations rights bodies over its recommended definition of sex. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is set to undergo a “special review” by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri). This process could mean the removal of the EHRC’s accreditation as an “A status” National Human Rights Institution, meaning it would not be able to sit on the UN Human Rights Council.
The review comes after 30 LGBTQ+ and human-rights organisations expressed concern to Ganhri about the EHRC.
Let me guess. It’s because they know men are not women, isn’t it.
The EHRC’s role is to provide guidance and enforce legislation to protect against discrimination. Ganhri’s accreditation of watchdogs such as the EHRC allows countries access to the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies.
In a statement, EHRC chairwoman Baroness Falkner said: “We take seriously our duty to protect and promote equality and human rights for everyone. That includes considering, carefully and impartially and on the basis of evidence, how the rights of one person, or group, might be affected by the rights of another.”
Well, sorry, but that’s not allowed. The “rights” of men who claim to be women are inherently and eternally more important than any rights women might claim to have.
In April this year, the EHRC advised the government that changing the legal definition of sex in the Equality Act to “biological sex” would make offering single-sex services more straightforward and provide clarity in a “polarised and contentious” area.
Well, if sex under the Equality Act is not “biological sex” then there is no way women can have rights under the Equality Act. They can just be defined out.
The advice was criticised by some campaigners at the time. UN independent expert Victor Madrigal-Borloz wrote in May that the EHRC’s advice around changing the legal definition of sex “was to offer the government a formula through which it could carry out discriminatory distinctions currently unlawful under UK law”.
Mr Madrigal-Borloz added that he was “of the opinion that this action of the EHRC is wholly unbecoming of an institution created to ‘stand up for those in need of protection and hold governments to account for their human-rights obligations’”.
Which just demonstrates exactly how indifferent to the rights of women he is.
LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall is one of the organisations that lodged the complaint with Ganhri against the EHRC.
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Other countries whose human-rights watchdogs have been stripped of “A status” by Ganhri include Madagascar, Hungary, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
So knowing that men are not women is comparable to Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Interesting.
From the letter sent to Ganhri by Stonewall et al in May:
1 https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/our-work/news/clarifying-definition-%e2%80%98sex%e2%80%99-equality-act
If I am not mistaken, the ‘rights’ that Stonewall claims that ‘trans people have held for many years’ apply solely to transsexual people who have gone through the process of acquiring a gender recognition certificate (GRC), under the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Only a small subset of the people who nowadays call themselves ‘trans’ have followed this procedure.
Forty years ago I thought the UN was a flawed, but fundamentally good organisation that did really good work in many areas, and provided a structured way for countries to thrash issues out. A degree of bureaucratic trough feeding and political trade-offs was bad, but a price to pay for the benefits. As time has gone by, and especially in the last decade, I think the balance has begun to tip. The UN is failing to take meaningful action to maintain international accord because it is trying to please all parties all the time – an impossible feat. Alongside that, much of the valuable and necessary work around health, development, human rights, etc, has become mired in that bureaucratic trough feeding and politics and has either become ineffective or subsumed by special interests. This is a case in point. The response to the current crisis in Gaza is another.
All political structures have a time and palce in which they work. I think the UN has had its and needs replacing. I don’t think there is political will, consensus and leadership to produce an alternative though. The UN will die a slow death over decades by becoming irrelevant, eventually being proposed up in some reduced form by whichever countries are still prepared to fund it because they get what they want.