IHEU at the UN, New York<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

IHEU has Specialist Consultative NGO Status with ECOSOC at the UN. In January 2002 the IHEU's UN NGO delegation at New York was relaunched at a meeting organised by IHEU Vice President Jan Loeb Eisler who is also the EC Representative in the delegation. Margaretha Jones and Dr. Sylvain Ehrenfeld are the joint-protem leaders. Former US Ambassador Carlton Coon and Matt Cherry, Executive Director of the Institute for Humanist Studies, are also members of the delegation.

 

Human Rights

On April 11 we witnessed a historic ceremony when the UN established a permanent international criminal court. The inclusion of 66 countries, 6 more than needed, many with painful histories, such as Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, served as final ratification. This court will try individuals charged with horrendous crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Such a court has been on the UN agenda since 1948 and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II. In recent years world response to the appalling massacres in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have served to speed the process.

 

The ICC will be independent of the UN and accountable to the countries that ratify the treaty. The ICC will act only when ratifying nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute individuals committing such crimes. This court is being actively opposed by the U.S. For information contact the website of the NGO Coalition for the ICC which IHEU too supports. (www.iccnow.org)

 

Global Poverty

Development and global poverty was the focus of a recent conference in Monterey, Mexico. The many world leaders attending were rethinking strategies on the persistent problem of poverty. Some progress has been made with respect to literacy, population growth, clean water, sanitation and some health conditions. Yet half of the world still lives on less than US $2 a day, and a fifth on less than $1.

 

The amount of foreign aid, especially from the US has fallen over the years. Often aid is distributed through incompetent and sometimes corrupt regimes. When loans cannot be repaid, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) imposes harsh measures resulting in much suffering from decreases in social spending. Sometimes aid is used for political purposes. For example, European governments subsidize former colonies to retain influence. Subsidies to farmers in rich Western countries ruin third world markets: corn from Iowa floods Mexico's markets and onions from France swamp Senegal. According to a World Bank report, subsidies within wealthy nations run about 1 billion a day, about 6 times the sums spent on aid.

 

Dr Sylvain Ehrenfeld

 

 

Matt Cherry, member of the IHEU UN NGO delegation at New York has been elected Secretary to the UN NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief, at New York.

 

 

The IHEU’s status as an NGO eligible to file collective complaints to the Council of Europe on violation of the European Social Charter has been approved for a further period of four years up to 2006 by an inter-Ministerial Committee at Strasbourg.

 

 

8-10 May 2002

The UN General Assembly Special Session on Children

 

The IHEU was invited to participate in the NGO events related to the UN GA's Special Session (UNGASS) on Children. IHEU organised a special Humanist delegation led by IHEU's New York UN NGO delegation leader Margaretha Jones and IHEU Vice President Jan Loeb Eisler. Two students from Summerhill School, UK: Journey Roberts ((American, 14) and James Friis Lawrence (UK, 18) were also nominated as members of the IHEU delegation. The IHEU delegation's brief was to promote the rights and autonomy of children and young persons, to highlight the incursions of religion into school curricula including science classes as well as express their disgust at the scandalous Paedophilia cases within the Catholic Church

 

At the UNGASS there was widespread consternation about the attempts of the Bush administration and its allies from the Vatican and Islamic countries to promote policies denying abortion services to teenagers. The US also tried to undermine the importance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it is not willing to ratify. After Somalia's recent ratification, the US is the only country on the planet which has not ratified this landmark 1989 treaty which prohibits the judicial execution of persons below 18 years of age: nearly half of the US states allow judicial execution of minors.

 

James Friss-Lawrence reports on the work he did on behalf of Humanism:

 

In New York, I made myself as visible as possible as an IHEU delegate with the help of Margaretha Jones, the leader of my delegation. We attended numerous NGO events, asked questions from the floor and networked. I was also able to brief my fellow delegate Journey Roberts, who was able to confront gender inequalities caused by religion, at a major UNICEF event on girls rights ' Girls Speak Out!'

 

At the final US briefing in the UN, Michael Newman Humanist and Summerhill teacher confronted the US negotiator with his view that the US government was bullying the UN, and asked him whether they were setting a good example to children about democracy! The Negotiator answered by saying that the US had better child protection laws than the UK. This made apparent the US's, 'our country's better than yours' attitude. When pushed, he refused to answer any further on the subject. As the US negotiator was leaving a protest broke out, and men and woman wearing reproductive rights tshirts, held up posters bearing the word 'SHAME', followed by the chant, 'shame on the US delegation.' The protest moved out of the Church and into the street, where it was quickly dispersed by the police. I was involved in the protest. Upon entering the UN building, myself, and a small group of other students were detained, because the police feared that we would protest in the UN building. Our passes were not returned to us for almost an hour, and only at the insistence of the UN NGO office.

 

Back in the UK after the New York conference, on Thursday 30th May, I sat in a meeting organised by two government departments that would, hopefully, reveal the full damage inflicted by the U.S on the outcome document from the U.N General Assembly's Special Session on The Rights Of The Child. There I questioned how much of the damage had been caused by the Islamic fundamentalists and right wing Christian groups, as their presence was disguised but not invisible. The straight forward, yet, not unrewarding answer was that, the power of the right wing Christian government of the U.S, adding the influence of fundamentalist Islamic countries and that of the Vatican, meant that reproductive rights and the education of those rights, had been diluted to a much less potent version of their former selves. The U.S also wanted to continue condemning children to death. Yet again in world history, the U.S is using its financial power to influence young governments and their economic policies. This is not a word that holds much hope for me, after a conference that has had over three years of planning, and has weakened its own foundations because of a bully nation, that cannot acknowledge global democracy.

 

At this briefing I also questioned the UK's policies towards religion in education. I asked the panel what their position was towards state-run education having a Christian bias, and schools based on differing faiths, ignoring the multicultural society and the growing needs of refugees and immigrants. I explained that I thought the UK's school system helped racism and prejudice, by narrowing chil dren's view of the global community. I also said that, more further a field, on a more international level, religion was used as an excuse to send young girls into prostitution to pay for the boys' education. The government official responded with a weak defence of the government's policy of creating faith schools.

 

This was what I was able to achieve as an IHEU delegate at the UN Special Session On The Rights Of the Child. Our work would not have been possible without the support given to us by the New York humanists and Ethical Society members. Our thanks go to Curt Collier, leader of the Riverdale and Yonkers Ethical Cultural Society and Christine Tuaillon from the NY Ethical Society of Queens. Thanks also go to Jerry Mintz, from AERO, and Leonard Tutton, a democratic teacher, who funded our trip.

 

James Friis-Lawrence, 18 years old, is a Summerhill student. He was the only child to speak at the UNESCO conference of Education Ministers at Geneva last September addressing them on the importance of schools based on children's rights. He is a children's rights activist.