In distant Geneva, India treads Pakistani line of sexual control

The last two days of the six-week session saw sharp differences emerge on the subject among countries on regional and religious lines. While the West by and large backed the proposal on sexual orientation mooted by Brazil, most Asian and African countries opposed the idea of doing anything that could encourage homosexuality.

Pakistan led the charge as it contended that the sexual orientation proposal sought to impose on Islamic countries a value system that was totally unacceptable to their religion.

Interestingly, India quietly followed Pakistan’s lead on both days of the debate. On April 24, India voted in favour of Pakistan’s motion that the Commission should take no action on the Brazilian resolution. Even after the no-action motion was narrowly defeated, India stuck by Pakistan which made further efforts the next day to stall voting on the resolution.

Acting in concert, Pakistan and four other Islamic countries flooded the Commission with amendments which altered the whole idea of the resolution. Brazil and the EU countries objected to the ‘‘so-called amendments’’ which sought to delete all references to sexual orientation from the resolution.

Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Shaukat Umer, brushing aside their objection, said the amendments would improve the resolution because they talked about ‘‘human rights for all and not just for those who are sexually oriented or disoriented.’’

Libyan diplomat Najat Al-Hajjaji, Commission chairperson, ended the stalemate by introducing a compromise formula of putting off the consideration of the resolution and ‘‘the amendments there to’’ to the next annual session.

India voted along with Islamic countries in favour of the chairperson’s postponement motion.

In the event, the 53-member Commission adopted the postponement motion as 24 countries voted in favour of it, 17 against it and 10 abstained. There was a split in the western bloc: while the European countries wanted the resolution to be considered immediately, the United States chose to abstain from voting on the postponement motion.

In a sense, India and the US share a similar dilemma. The sexual orientation proposal came up before the Commission at a time when the sodomy law is being reviewed by the judiciary in the two countries.

The US Supreme Court began hearing the challenge to the sodomy law only last month and is expected to deliver its judgment this summer. The Delhi High Court, on the other hand, has been stuck with a Public Interest Litigation since 2001 challenging the statutory ban on sodomy, Section 377 IPC.

Despite repeated directions from the court, the Centre has been dithering on taking a stand whether it was discriminatory to forbid sex between two consenting adults of the same sex. This issue has been raised in India, as elsewhere in the world, as a hurdle in the efforts to combat AIDS.

NGOs have been arguing that homosexuals are more vulnerable to AIDS because the sodomy law forces them to stay underground. This is the first time the matter has been raised before the UN Commission as a growing threat to human rights. While Islamic countries have blocked the resolution in the name of religious sensitivity, it is significant that the main sponsor of the resolution, Brazil, is the largest Catholic country in the world.

Catholics are generally considered to be the more conservative sect of Christianity. And the irony doesn’t end there: the United States, the largest Protestant country, has taken an ambivalent position on sexual orientation.