Human Rights and Democracy - Official Documents

priorities ahead of the 2011 reviews of Sierra Leone and Nepal. Our High
Commission in Luanda met representatives of the Angolan government after its
review in March to discuss its recommendations. We are paying for a visit of
Angolan government officials to the UK in 2011.
At the 65th session of the UN General Assembly in 2010 we were pleased that so
many member states joined in condemning human rights abuses in Burma, Iran and
DPRK. We hope that the countries concerned will take heed of this strong message
from the UN membership. The General Assembly is the UN’s only universal
membership human rights body and allows the world’s smaller nations which do not
have the capacity to run for a seat on the Human Rights Council to express their
views. We were pleased that Iran’s attempt to prevent voting on the resolution
dealing with its human rights record was soundly defeated.
We welcomed the opportunity to engage the Organisation of the Islamic Conference
on their resolution “Combating defamation of religions”. We hope to continue this
exchange in 2011. We believe that the concept of “defamation of religions” is
incompatible with international human rights law. We oppose discrimination against
individuals on the grounds of religion or belief. But we believe that intolerant and
xenophobic views should be challenged in open debate and tackled in law only when
they restrict the right to freedom of religion or constitute incitement to religious or
racial hatred. We were pleased that an increasing number of member states moved
away from supporting this resolution in the General Assembly in November.
We worked hard to secure increased support for the resolution promoting a global
moratorium on the use of the death penalty presented at the General Assembly by a
cross-regional group of member states, including the EU. EU resolutions on the
elimination of all forms of religious intolerance and on child rights, the latter tabled
jointly with the group of Latin American countries, were passed by consensus,
showing again a unity of purpose. We were very disappointed that the language
condemning killings on the basis of sexual orientation was initially voted out of a
resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, and we joined successful
US-led efforts to have it restored to the text.
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