(NEW YORK -- C-FAM) Overturning a prior decision by the NGO accrediting committee, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to grant official consultative status to the Coalition Gaie et Lesbienne du Quebec (CGLQ) and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL) in Geneva last week.
The voting process was mired in confusion over unclear language. Several delegate requests for clarification interrupted the roll-call vote and led Pakistan to call for a point of order and ask for a re-vote. No re-vote was taken. The motion to grant ECOSOC status passed with 22 countries voting in favor, 13 against, 13 abstaining and 6 absent.
An attorney for one NGO at the Geneva meeting told the Friday Fax, "Increasingly in the past several months, at meetings such as the CSW [Commission on the Status of Women], the Human Rights Council and now the ECOSOC council, there have been serious issues regarding transparency in the voting process. After witnessing several of these types of incidents, one has to wonder whether voting at the UN really matters or if the result is preordained."
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and ARC International launched intense lobbying campaigns preceding the ECOSOC vote to ensure that both groups' applications would be approved.
In January, the 19-member NGO accrediting committee, a subcommittee of the ECOSOC, rejected CGLQ's application and deferred RFSL's request. Despite the fact that there had been a thorough examination of the evidence, the representative of the United Kingdom charged that the rejection of the homosexual rights groups was "straightforward discrimination."
Debates within the NGO accrediting committee meetings over applications from homosexual rights groups have become increasingly heated in the last few years. While the ECOSOC council almost always accepts subcommittee recommendations, it has made exceptions twice in the last year in order to accredit radical homosexual groups.
The International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), an NGO that was stripped of its ECOSOC status because of ties to pedophilia and whose repeated attempts to regain ECOSOC status have been denied, launched an international campaign in 2006 to encourage all of its 550 affiliate organizations to submit NGO applications for UN consultative status. Many have applied and been accepted.
ECOSOC members voting in favor of granting status to CGQL and RFSL included the United States, the United Kingdom, Albania, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal and Romania.
Voting against were Algeria, Belarus, Benin, China, Guinea, Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Sudan.
Speaking to the press after the ECOSOC vote, CGLQ's executive director and ILGA North America representative, Yvan Lapointe, said that his group now plans to use the UN as a platform for spreading "homosexual rights" to many of the same countries that voted against it.
