[GA, passed] - Prevention Of Hate Crime (2nd)

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Whereas hate crime is a malum in se which member nations have a duty to protect their citizens against; and

Whereas the repeal of "The Charter of Civil Rights" has left an ominous silence regarding protections against hate crime;

The World Assembly enacts as follows.

1. Any violent or non-violent criminal act against an individual motivated by that individual's real or perceived holding or lack of an arbitrary and reductive characteristic, including but not limited to ethnicity, gender, race, religion, culture, disability, social background or sexuality, shall be classified as a hate crime in every member nation.
   
   
2. Where it can be shown, to the same standard otherwise required to show guilt for the relevant act, that an otherwise-criminal act was of the nature criminalised by Section 1, that fact must be treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing or other enforcement of the criminalisation of said act. Member nations must prohibit advocacy of violence criminalised by Section 1. Nor may any criminal law in a member nation discriminate in its criminalisation of an act based on a real or perceived arbitrary, reductive characteristic of the victim of that act.

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Voting Instructions:

• Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
• Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
• Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
• Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.

Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!

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Overview
This resolution seeks to partly replace GA35. It defines hate crime in a very complete fashion, and imposes three mandates regarding hate crimes, namely regarding hate crimes as an aggregating factor, advocacy of violence and characteristics of the victim.

Recommendation
The first mandate of clause 2 requires that hate-crimes use the exact same evidential standard as all other crimes. Though admirable in intent, this mandate prevents member-nations from using rebuttable presumptions when defining the nature of these crimes. Such presumptions are commonly used in law where one set of facts implies another, and the prohibition of this practice is both unnecessary and harmful in convicting the perpetrators of these crimes. Additionally, the first mandate of Clause 2 requires that all hate-crimes be treated more seriously than other crimes. Due to the vast scope of the definition of hate-crime, this means that attacking a person based on the colour of that person’s eyes, for example, has to be treated more seriously than attacking a person based on blind aggression. In a world where eye colour is the focus of discrimination, this might be reasonable, but it is almost certainly not so across all member-nations.

For the above reasons, the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs recommends a vote Against the at-vote GA resolution, "Prevention of Hate Crime".

The first version, which had significant differences with the current text, is here.

Against

Predominantly national reasoning.

Against

Against.

Against

This is a well-written proposal. It criminalises hate-crime in an effective, comprehensive, and unambiguous manner. The first clause defines a hate-crime in a very complete fashion, insofar as there is nothing that is unjustifiably excluded, and the second clause contains three mandates, to aid in the prevention of hate-crime. Perhaps these ought to have been subclauses: 2a, 2b, and 2c. With 2b, I have no issue, for advocacy of violence motivated solely by a bigotry ought to be prohibited. With 2c, I am likewise entirely in agreement. An act should be neither criminalised nor decriminalised based on the charactieristics of the victim, where that characteristic is arbitrary. With 2a, however, I have two problems. My first problem is textual. The wording of the clause prohibits rebuttable presumptions in relation to hate-crimes. In the proposal’s forumside thread, I explain why this is a problem and what this means. I do not see why there is a need to do that. My second problem is substantial. If Alice kills Bob because Bob bumped into Alice on the pavement, then that is not a hate-crime. If Alice kills Bob because Bob had brown eyes, then that is a hate-crime according to this proposal. The law might decide to treat these alike cases as unlike for the purposes of enforcement, and there are good reasons to do so. However, I do not think that the General Assembly should mandate this, because those good reasons, specifically to treat the cases I mentioned differently, are not universalisable.

Therefore, I am very reluctantly against this proposal. It is reluctant because I am completely in favour of the majority of the proposal.

Simone:

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Against, reasoning is far too... broad.

Moderator edit: please note that Registered Users' votes do not count. Please consider becoming a WA resident in TNP.

Against

For

For

Present

Voted against.

Recent:

Prevention of Hate Crime was passed 6,864 votes to 6,637.