Bid to block spousal benefits for homosexual U.N. employees fails

A U.N. budget committee overwhelmingly rejected a Russia-sponsored resolution that sought to overturn Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s decision to extend spousal benefits to homosexual U.N. personnel who are legally married on the 24th of March, 2015.

Members of the U.N. General Assembly’s Fifth Committee voted against the resolution by an 80-43 vote margin. Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Botswana, Brunei, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, China, Comoros, North Korea, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe voted for the Russian proposal. Thirty-seven countries abstained from the vote on the resolution.

Speaking before the vote, Jānis Mažeiks (Latvia), speaking on behalf of the European Union, said the Secretary-General’s Bulletin in no way contravened Assembly resolution. The legal advice on that presented to the Secretary-General, and which was shared with the Committee, was crystal clear on the issue: the Bulletin did not amend the Staff Rules and Regulations in any way, did not seek to define nor redefine any terms within those Rules and Regulations, and was well within the purview of the Secretary-General. Resolution was the product of very careful and at times divisive negotiations 10 years ago. The language used in that resolution was agreed upon, by all Member States of the Committee, and was clear in noting the practice at that time of the Secretary-General in determining the personal status of United Nations staff. The Member States of the Union would vote against the draft decision and encouraged everyone to do the same.

“The secretary-general’s authority should not be undermined, this bulletin should not be politicized and this committee and the General Assembly should not be divided by a vote that almost none of us wanted,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power before she voted against the resolution. “As such, the United States will be voting no and we respectfully urge other countries to do the same.”

Charles Radcliffe, a senior human rights adviser for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner, welcomed the vote. “This is a vote of confidence in the secretary-general’s managerial authority,” Radcliffe told. “He has to be able to manage his own staff. In this case, he took a decision — a very welcome decision — that has had the effect of ending long-standing discrimination against staff with same sex spouses. Member states were always going to have differing views about the rightness of the policy but by this vote they’ve have confirmed that it’s the secretary-general’s decision to make.”

Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, also praised the vote’s outcome. “The failed effort engineered by Russia to undermine U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s authority deserved today’s fate,” she said in a statement. “The vote was taken completely without justification and based on a specious argument that the secretary-general had overstepped his authority. He did nothing of the kind.”

“The vote offered a new twist on the kind of homophobic scapegoating we see globally,” added Stern. “This was a disingenuous effort to shed the dignity of LGBT employees at the U.N., while clawing at the authority of the secretary general. Those who sided with Russia should be ashamed of such a craven vote.”

The national LGBT* rights organization LGL wishes to take an opportunity to congratulate and thank the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Latvia to the United Nations H.E. Mr. Jānis Mažeiks and the Members of the U.N. General Assembly’s Fifth Committee who voted against the proposed resolution and affirmed their strong support for equal rights and democratic values.