UNDP's shameful lack of accountability on LGBT rights in South Asia!!
United Nations Development Program is the nodal agency within the UN system
tasked with protection and promotion of LGBT rights!!
THAT IS THE BIGGEST FARCE ONE CAN IMAGINE, at least in South Asia!!
In South Asia, the UNDP is receiving millions of dollars (without any
accountability, if one may add) from the GFATM, to do exactly that - protect
and promote LGBT rights! In international conferences like the recently held
the International AIDS conference, (MSM Pre Conference) the UNDP was asked
specifically about what they're doing with the money that they're receiving for
this.
The two people present, senior functionaries Mandeep Dhaliwal and Edmond
Settle, refused to answer the question, and said we can discuss it
bilaterally!! (incidentally this Gent Mr Settle is/has been responsible for
delivering on those S-Asia funds)!!
They do not talk to activists bilaterally, or even unilaterally, and especially
not if it's to account for their deeds, lack-of-deeds, or outright misdeeds (as
in this case)!!
Obfuscation to cover for the blatant waste of resources that should go to
communities for advocacy on rights is the modus operandii..!! The first phase
of the GFATM project is over and done with!! Other than one Jambouree in
Kathmandu, there is nothing that has happened that the community is aware of!
Their so called High Level advocacy is treated as state secret, and anyone
who asks questions is threatened outright that all their future findings will
be curtailed!
It's a noxious oligarchy of a few individuals who are so smitten by the power
that flows from their control of money, adequately supplied by the GFATM as
part of a proposal that was developed by the South Asian Community (I was part
of that development, incidentally) that the very community that they are
supposed to be serving have now become their playthings! It's a bloody shame!!
And to top it all, the GFATM has given a go by to all notions of either
accountability and/or past-performance of UNDP (one may even say propriety),
and saddle this same UNDP with managing the total funds of the South Asia
Project in the phase two, in spite of the fact that they wasted the whole money
that they received in phase one to do the limited job of advocacy!!
Now in some pervert twist of logic, an Thai NGO has been nominated to run the
South Asia Project!! Where are the South Asian Community in this whole scheme
of loot and pillage? No one knows, and no one is talking!! They are just
advocating bilateral ism to shut up questions!! The Thai boys are of course
clueless!! A few token and favoured South Asians will be hired and seated in
Bangkok to manage South Asian Community interests!! The actual South Asians
themselves can of course go to hell!!
And to hell they poor South Asian Community are headed, with the active support
and collaboration of the UNDP!! The UNDP has gone ahead and funded now, a
committee that is trying to re-criminalise homosexuality in Nepal with quantum
of punishment that is even more severe than what was present before their
Supreme Court Judgment more than 7 years ago!
That judgment was the result of actual community effort and mobilisation,
orchestrated by Blue Diamond Society under the leadership of Sunil Babu Pant.
And since then the 7 years of community work in securing the rights of LGBT in
Nepal will now go down the drain, thanks to UNDP!!
And a bunch of Thai boys sitting in Bangkok and dancing to the dictates of Mr
settle are supposed to set it right!! The community on the ground can of course
go to hell!!
But don't ask questions!! They will throw bilateral-ism at you (whatever that
means) and cut you from the funding!!
SHAME..!!
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The news article:
http://www.back2stonewall.com/2014/08/nepal-drafts-new-laws-to-re-criminalize-gay-sex-funded-by-the-u-n-developement-program.html
The country of Nepal whose Supreme Court ruled in 2007 to ensure broad
protections for LGBT people and whose government was revently looking into
legalizing same-sex marriage after a Supreme Court decision in 2008. Now 7 year
later Justice minister Narahari Acharya of the ruling Nepali Congress is
seeking to enact laws to re criminalize gay sex and make it punishable by 3
years in prison an even stricter punishment as the old law. And to make
matters even worse the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) actually
funded the original two committees that drafted the new anti-gay laws codes but
didn’t monuitor them!
Sunil Pant, the country’s first openly gay politician and former member of
parliament, told Gay Star News in an email:
‘We are really concerned about this attempt of taking Nepal back to draconian
era after so much progress we made. Unbelievable that the government is going
all against the Supreme Court decisions on LGBTI rights and other minority and
marginalized people’s rights in
