Dear David

I'm sitting in the middle of room XXIV at Palais des Nations, excited and thrilled over what's about to happen. Andrew McLeod, a famous AFL footy player from Australia, joins fellow colleagues at a high level panel discussion on how sports can combat racism. They start out with a few clips from the awesome game...

...and then get on to the more serious topics. Anyone with the slighest interest in the Asia-Pacific reason (or just a big fan of Nicole Kidman and her films) knows there is a tense relationship between indigenous Australians and those Australians who arrived after 1776. And sports has unfortunately not been excempt of this tension. One man who for real started to combat the racial challenges many aborignals faced and still face is Nicky Winmar, a St Kilda football player.

Towards the end of a game against Collingwood in 1989 he got sick and tired of the racist comments from the opponents' crowd, so he lifted his footy jumper pointed as his skin, and assured them that aboriginals sure could play footy too. It resulted in some very strict rules with an absolute zero-tolerance for racist remarks either from footy players or the crowd.

Over the years players have been expelled or been given severe penalties for racials comments during or after games, and Collingwood owner Eddie McGuire told Collingwood supporters that he didn't want them if they couldn't respect these rules. Good on, Eddie!

But despite the fact that Aussie Rules Football might have come one step in the right direction does not mean there is not far, far to go. Racism is one thing, and although Norwegian children songs like with "Hottentotts" and "Vesle Sambo" are getting rewritten to fit the new era, there are others who still struggle greatly with just being accepted.

David Kato was one of them. Being a Ugandan teacher and gay rights activist, 42 year old David was killed in his home last week. He and a couple of other men had sued the Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stones for publishing their photos and addresses and asked for any gay person to be hanged. The editors note after the discovery of David's murder is so grotesque it makes me sick "When we called for hanging of gay people, we meant... after they have gone through the legal process... I did not call for them to be killed in cold blood like he was."

Those kind of statements are not easy to swallow, and I cringe every time similar intolerance is outed in the Human Rights Council. Not everyone has to agree, but as Ban Ki-Moon told us on Tuesday, "I understand that sexual orientation and gender identity raise sensitive cultural issues, but cultural practice can not justify any violation of human rights."

So all I can say is that Norway is going to keep raising these important issues whenever applicable in the Human Rights Council. We will continue to urge states to legalize and recognize same-sex marriages, to call on the abolition of criminalisation of same sex relationships between consenting couples, and for human rights for black and white, gay or straight - it's about diversity, mate!