HL Deb 16 March 1982 vol 428 c641WA
Lord Brockway

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will support at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva the resolution submitted by the Soviet Union, India, Syria and six other nations (entitled "The Need for Further Efforts to Ensure the Inalienable Rights of Europe to Live").

Lord Trefgarne

With almost all other Western countries, we abstained on the Soviet draft resolution about the arms race and the right to life. In our view, the motive behind this was largely propagandistic. The resolution represented an attempt to divert attention from genuine human rights issues, in which area Soviet inadequacies are well known, to disarmament, which is a subject already under consideration in more appropriate United Nations fora.