Will the new Government be saying anything about this?

The new Government's coalition agreement includes a very welcome section on equalities. Among the promises are several dealing with sexuality - a welcome change enabled by the Conservative Party's massive shift in stance on the issue over the past four or five years.

Two of the pledges are:

• We will stop the deportation of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution.
• We will use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights and for UK civil partnerships to be recognised internationally.

Today comes the news that two gay men in Malawi have been jailed for 14 years with hard labour for holding an engagement ceremony in private last year.

The laws under which they were tried were first introduced during the time of British rule of the country and have never been repealed.

I would hope the new Foreign Secretary, William Hague, will be pressing Malawi (a Commonwealth country), and other countries which persecute people on the basis of their sexuality, to change their stance.

It's time to re-start the Paddy for Afghanistan campaign

Gordon Brown has made a big speech this morning telling Afghanistan's President Karzai to take the issue of corruption seriously. It is widely accepted that the Afghan Government is a by-word for corruption and little progress can be made in the country until the issue is taken seriously by those who have the power to change it.

According to the BBC:

Gordon Brown has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai he will not put UK
troops "in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against
corruption".

There was considerable disquiet in the UK and elsewhere at the time of the Afghan elections that British and other troops are being sent to fight in the country - with significant casualties - to enable an election the result of which is doubted by just about everyone in the country and around the world. Put simply they say, why should British troops be dying to support a corrupt regime which rigs elections?

A year or so ago, it was seriously mooted that Paddy Ashdown would be asked to take over as the UN's chief representative in Afghanistan. He had performed a similar role in Bosnia and had made it his first task to root out corruption and establish the rule of law. Paddy's take on this is that the rule of law is a precursor to democracy. As he said at the time - what's the point in having elections if the system is corrupt. There's no point voting if you know that the election will be rigged and whoever gets in will be out to line their pockets in any case. Never was this thought more ably proved than in the case of the Afghan elections.

Paddy had the support of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, of the US Government and of our own Government. And he was willing, albeit reluctantly, to serve. So why wasn't he appointed to the role? Because President Karzai objected. The feeling was that Karzai knew that Paddy's first mission would be to stem the corrupt practices - just as he had in Bosnia. Perhaps Karzai feared that his own interests - and certainly those of his cronies - would be harmed by Ashdown.

If Brown and the International Community are really serious about tackling corruption in Afghanistan, isn't it time they re-started the movement to get Paddy Ashdown in charge in Afghanistan?