If you want to see what having the First Amendment trashed by UN regulations looks like, you can look no further than Facebook and Silicon Valley.
Facebook created an ‘Oversight Board’ to whom bans can be appealed. The ‘Board’ judged the case of President Trump. And the outcome was predictable. But what was the Board’s metric?
The Board analyzed Facebook’s human rights responsibilities in this case by considering human rights standards including:
The right to freedom of expression: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ( ICCPR), Articles 19 and 20; as interpreted in General Comment No. 34, Human Rights Committee (2011) ( General Comment 34); the Rabat Plan of Action, OHCHR, (2012); UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression report A/HRC/38/35 (2018); Joint Statement of international freedom of expression monitors on COVID-19 (March, 2020).
The right to life: ICCPR Article 6.
The right to security of person: ICCPR Article 9, para. 1.
The right to non-discrimination: ICCPR Articles 2 and 26; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ( ICERD), Articles 1 and 4.
Participation in public affairs and the right to vote: ICCPR Article 25.
The right to remedy: ICCPR Article 2; General Comment No. 31, Human Rights Committee (2004) ( General Comment 31); UNGPs, Principle 22.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a UN treaty. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ( ICERD) is a UN convention. OHCHR refers to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. HRC is the Human Rights Council.
The Rabat Plan of Action is particularly bad news and it’s now being imposed on Americans.
We’re now living under the UN speech codes.
Leave a Reply