Navi Pillay Speaks Out

Navi Pillay

After her memorable video calling on the world to respect LGBT rights last year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has written an article repeating this point.

Prejudice Fuels the Denial of Rights For LGBTI People Worldwide

RECENTLY, new laws have been adopted to punish, or silence, lesbians and gays in a number of countries. Such laws, and the resulting discrimination — which often affects transgender people too — violate universal human rights...

In reality, homosexuality is a fact of nature, observed in every human society throughout history. It has been tolerated for centuries in many societies, and has only recently surfaced as a political issue. There is no evidence whatsoever that homosexuals “target” children more often than heterosexuals do — paedophilia is a crime, whether the perpetrator is homosexual or heterosexual, and nobody wishes to change that. Calling for an end to the persecution of LGBT people is a call to end discrimination and violence, a basic premise of our universal human rights. It is unrelated to same-sex marriage, a topic that societies may choose to debate at the national level. Furthermore, religious freedom does not mean the freedom to persecute, or to act with prejudice and bigotry.

To counter these prejudices, my office last year launched Free and Equal — an unprecedented United Nations campaign to raise awareness of the rights of LGBT people. We did so because human rights are for all human beings. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is just as irrational, just as wrong, as discrimination on the basis of skin colour and just as clearly violates human rights.

Free & Equal is a United Nations campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender equality. We particularly like their slogan: Love is a Family Value.