The United Nations has selected the director of the American Jewish Committee’s division of International Organizations to introduce a discussion on a proposed UN declaration against discrimination at a special international consultation this week in Bangkok, Thailand.
Sidney Liskofsky, an internationally recognized authority on human rights issues, who is also program consultant to the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, will open the discussion, which will be held through Dec.7. The international consultation, sponsored by UNESCO, will bring together some 20 experts on the subject from all parts of the world, as well as about 40 non-governmental organization observers.
The consultation was organized at the request of the UN’s Human Rights Commission. Several UN bodies have been working for about two decades on a “draft declaration on the elimination of all forms of intolerance based on religion or belief.” The Human Rights Commission asked UNESCO to organize the consultation “embracing various established schools of religious thought, on the cultural and religious basis of human rights in relation to the phenomenon of religious intolerance.” Its conclusions will be considered by the Human Rights Commission when it next takes up the draft declarations this February.
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