LEO MCKINSTRY: It’s frankly Orwellian that Britain could face censure by the UN for daring to state that biological sex matters

What terrible crimes might it take for a country to be blacklisted by the UN on human rights grounds?

Detention without trial? Summary executions? Torture, public floggings and the persecution of racial minorities?

Maybe. But in the case of Britain, the answer may be even more surprising. Merely stating that biological sex issues may be enough to cause this shame.

Yesterday it was reported that Britain could soon be expelled from the UN’s ‘Human Rights Council’, as our own Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) previously recommended that same-sex spaces should be protected on the basis of a person’s physical gender rather than based on his or her gender. vague ‘gender identity’.

Simply put, this means that a male-bodied man who wants to use a female-only locker room may do so simply because he or she “identifies” as a woman. Anything else could be a violation of their human rights.

Earlier this month, the British government received a lecture of unimaginable significance when the ‘UN rapporteur on climate change and human rights’, Ian Fry, took us to task over the jailing of two Just Stop Oil eco-enthusiasts.

Following complaints against the EHRC from trans rights groups – including Stonewall – a process has begun that could see the EHRC’s UN ranking below that of comparable organizations in such bastions of freedom as Palestine and Zimbabwe which puts us on par with Libya. and Venezuela. In short, we would be pariahs.

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, an independent body that grants accreditation to the UN, will decide the fate of the EHRC next spring.

Now it goes without saying that Britain, like other Western countries, has helped shape human rights as the world understands them. It is, frankly, Orwellian that we face censorship on such grounds.

But the truth is, no one should be surprised by this ridiculous turn of events. For this is just the latest in a series of increasingly bizarre battles involving Britain and the UN.

Earlier this month, the British government received a lecture of unimaginable significance when Ian Fry, the ‘UN rapporteur on climate change and human rights’, took us to task over the jailing of two Just Stop Oil eco-enthusiasts.

Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland were convicted last year of holding up traffic on the M25 by dangling from a bridge at the Dartford Crossing, and were jailed for two and three years respectively in April.

Cue Fry’s anguished cries about the ‘severity’ of these prison sentences – which seem lenient to me – and the restriction of activists’ rights to organize ‘peaceful protests’.

Fry, an Australian-born environmental lawyer, even asked ministers to explain how the pair’s treatment is “compatible with international norms and standards”, as if Britain were a rogue state and not the pioneer of parliamentary democracy.

Yet Fry’s employer, the UN, itself has a terrible record of supporting truly oppressive regimes, barbaric terrorist movements and corrupt despots.

The ‘Human Rights Council’, which is so willing to censor Britain over whether trans women can enter women’s changing rooms, has members drawn mainly from the liberal regimes of China, Cuba and Pakistan.

Just a few weeks ago it appointed Iranian diplomat Ali Bahreini as chairman of the ‘Social Forum’ in Geneva.

Bahrain is the representative of a savage theocracy that hangs homosexuals, executes protesters and deploys its squads of moral guardians to beat up women who refuse to wear the burqa.

Fry’s absurd bleating about the Just Stop Oil bridge climbers, combined with the UN’s ugly embrace of Iran, is emblematic of the body’s abhorrent double standards.

This bloated bureaucracy extols its role as a global peacekeeper, but is accused of helping finance Hamas through its misdirected aid programs and collusion with Iran.

She loves to shout about the injustices of racism, but is plagued by anti-Semitism. It is fierce in denouncing oppression, but its recent track record is littered with sex scandals in which its own employees have oppressed women.

The organization is bloated and more ineffective than ever under its current leader, Portuguese socialist Antonio Guterres

Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the UN, estimates that since Joe Biden took office, US subsidies to Hamas through the UN have amounted to £305 million.

The Security Council has not made the world safer; its Food Program has not fed the world; and the African Development Program has failed to develop Africa.

The UN’s disarmament efforts have brought Tehran’s mullahs to the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons.

In fact, the UN General Assembly appointed Iran rapporteur of its Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Committee, despite the regime’s refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its promise to “wipe Israel off the map.” .

And there is particular joy in lecturing the West about perceived shortcomings.

Just last month, the ‘UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’, Belgian Olivier De Schutter, said poverty levels in Britain were ‘simply not acceptable’.

De Schutter follows a procession of other UN assessors whose negative assessment of Britain appeared to be based on what they were told during a pair of meetings with left-wing campaigners and academics.

In 2019, Philip Alston – another ‘UN rapporteur on extreme poverty’ – produced a report hysterically comparing the Tories’ economic policies to ‘Victorian workhouses’.

Just as exaggerated was the 2013 analysis of British housing policy by Brazilian academic Raquel Rolnik, another UN rapporteur.

Rolnik, a former Marxist, declared with bleak predictability that the coalition government’s restrictions on housing subsidies were “a violation of human rights.”

Fortunately for the UN, it does not appear to suffer the inconvenience of such financial constraints. The organization is bloated and more ineffective than ever under its current leader, Portuguese socialist Antonio Guterres. The annual expenditure of £60 billion is a monument to waste; the 41,000-strong secretariat is an arena for self-indulgence. One employee said: ‘If the UN were a company it would be bankrupt.’

Its abysmal record and ruthless left-wing groupthink have seriously undermined the UN’s credibility. But nothing does more damage to the organization than its partisan approach to the Middle East conflict.

Since the founding of the Jewish State in 1948, the UN has instinctively sided with Israel’s enemies, mocking their rhetoric about seeking harmony.

In May this year, the UN organized an event to commemorate “the catastrophe” of 1948, during which Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas railed at length against Tel Aviv and, with cruel insult, even invoked a parallel with Nazism: “They lie and they lie, just like Goebbels.’

Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly had fifteen resolutions on Israel in 2022 and only thirteen on all other countries combined.

The organization also deepens the conflict in Gaza by failing to designate Hamas and Hezbollah (in Lebanon) as terrorist organizations.

This means that the aid money can flow into the coffers of both groups, allowing them to maintain their ability to wage war against Israel.

Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the UN, estimates that since Joe Biden took office, US subsidies to Hamas through the UN have amounted to £305 million.

That the UN could channel money in such a way is a bitter irony, given that the organization was founded at the end of World War II to promote peace and justice around the world.

But from the beginning it was a vehicle for extortion, a watering hole for freeloaders, and a plaything for tyrants.

Given the UN’s obvious shortcomings, it is particularly poignant that the West – and Britain in particular – appears to be so consistently the target of its criticism. Any possible sanction from the ECHR would be clearly absurd.

Many in Britain will wonder how much longer we can tolerate the UN’s pious lectures and hypocrisy.