NationStates Jolt Archive

Honored Ambassador,

The United Nations Association -- Mikitivity would like to conduct a survey to feel out the NS UN forum’s interest in various UN resolution categories. Previous surveys were conducted and have been analyzed in the UNA White Paper 2005-01 (http://pweb.netcom.com/~mierzwa10k/una/una-200501.pdf). This survey is designed to test to see if the opinion of nations has changed since the past survey and to extend the work of the previous surveys. These results will be archived and shared with UN members and non-members in order to facilitate better proposal writing.

Since national opinions are subject to change, this survey is limited for 30-days and will be conducted again at a future date.

As your schedule permits, please respond to the poll included with this survey. These responses are general, but comments (in the form of a post) are most welcomed and will be reviewed and shared along side the poll results. I think you’ll be pleased with the graphics we plan to share based on these survey results!

Background
(taken from the official UN description of Human Rights and Moral Decency resolutions):


Human Rights
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.

Moral Decency
A resolution to restrict civil freedoms in the interest of moral decency.

These are exactly opposed types of resolutions and affect Civil Freedoms. "Human Rights" increases these freedoms while "Moral Decency" reduces them. Remember that these freedoms primarily discuss the domestic Civil policies of UN member nations; Shall the UN require its members to exert more or less control over the personal aspects of the lives of their citizens/subjects? If it's an issue about how you choose to live your life (or if you have a choice), then it's Civil Freedoms. Total Personal/Civil Freedoms are one of the components of Anarchy. Zero Civil Freedoms are Totalitarian regimes.

"Mild" versions of either category will push nations in a particular direction, but only as far as the center. Stronger versions will push nations towards a more extreme end of the spectrum.

A printer friendly copy of all 42 UN Human Rights resolutions (passed, repealed, and failed) is available at the UNA Human Rights archive (http://pweb.netcom.com/~mierzwa10k/una/HR.pdf).

Here is a chronological list of the 42 Human Rights resolutions that have been brought to the UN floor to date:

End Slavery (#6)
Sexual Freedom (#7)
Keep the World Disease-Free! (#9)
Stop Privacy Intrusion (#10)
Gay Rights (#12)
Child Labor (#14)
Religious Tolerance (#19)
Fair Trial (#21)
The Child Protection Act (#25)
The Universal Bill of Rights (#26)
Free Education (#28)
The IRCO (#29)
Common Sense Act II (#30)
Wolfish Convention on POW (#31)
No Embargoes on Medicine (#33)
Freedom of Humor (#36)
End Barbaric Punishments (#41)
Increased Access to Medicine (#42)
Internet Advertising Pop-ups (failed)
Legalise Euthanasia (#43)
Fair Treatment of Mentally-Ill (#44)
Legalize Prostitution (#46)
Children in War (#51)
Universal Freedom of Choice (#53)
UN Educational Committee (#54)
Bio Rights Declaration (#56)
Abortion Rights (#61)
Female Genital Mutilation (#62)
Freedom of Press (#63)
Ban of Death Penalty (failed)
Ban Trafficking in Persons (#68)
Habeas Corpus (#73)
Rights of Minorities and Women (#80)
Definition of Marriage (#81)
Stem Cell Research Funding (#82)
The Eon Convention on Genocide (#83)
Equality and Fairness (#88)
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (#89)
Humanitarian Intervention (#92)
Right to Self-Protection (#94)
International Court of Justice (failed)
Eradicate Smallpox (#98)

The question:
How likely are you to support a UN Human Rights Resolution?

Always (We supported all of them)
Very Likely (We supported 75% to 100% of them)
Likely (We supported 50% to 75% of them)
Unlikely (We supported 25% to 50% of them)
Very Unlikely (We supported 0% to 25% of them)
Never (We supported none of them)
other – please explain

After answering this survey, please consider also answering the Social Justice, Free Trade, Moral Decency surveys which is designed to work along side this survey.
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=409257
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=409457
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=409886

Thank you,
Janet Van Dyne
Chairwoman, United Nations Association -- Mikitivity

As with 'Social Justice': sounds good, but let's see what the meat of the text has to offer.

Unlike Social Justice, Krioval likes these types of proposals. Perhaps we're fast becoming libertarian. It's tough to argue against more civil rights, though.

Very Likely (We supported 75% to 100% of them)

Our goverment let's his people to have many rights, as long as they do not interfere directly to goverment's policy. We know what is best for them, and ultimately, it's up to protect the citizens against themselves.

The Confedreated City States of Mikitivity supported 29 of the 42 Human Rights resolutions. While passing along civil freedoms to our citizens is nice, there are some of the Human Rights resolutions that we felt could be better written and others that we felt did not recognize the golden rule: "Local solutions are best equipped to solve local problems."

The Confederated City States is a great supporter of basic, fundamental Human Rights (as our vocal protests over what happened in Joccian and Belem serve as two examples where we've joined a minority of UN nations that actually care enough about civil rights outside their borders to make a stand). But for the purpose of this particular survey we've only voted as being "likely" to vote in favour.

Our official record to date: Y-N-A // 29-7-6

The stand out issues that we feel do not have international standing (and are poorly written) are issues that tend to take away local approaches to problems: Keep the World Disease-Free!, Stop Privacy Intrusion, Legalise Euthanasia, Universal Freedom of Choice, and Internet Adversting Pop-ups. (Of course though we voted in favour of the Definition of Marriage, upon reading the draft repeal for that resolution, we actually would now change our vote. And we originally voted against the UN Educational Committee, but now would vote in favour of the committee, as our hindsight has proven to us that the UNEC is a valuable body and we approve of what it is currently doing.)