Isabel Marler, Author at OURs - The Observatory of the Universality of Rights

Anti-Gay Activism Trumps Religious Freedom At UN ‘Family’ Event

Religious Right activists say they’re fighting to save religious liberty in America from the gay rights movement, but many of the same leaders are happy to partner with the most religiously repressive regimes in order to resist advances toward LGBT equality around the world.

Consider Monday’s “Uniting Nations for a Family Friendly World” event at the United Nations. It was sponsored by anti-gay and anti-choice groups like the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam, formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute) and Family Watch International, which work to keep LGBT-friendly language out of international documents and agreements. Their cosponsors included the 25 countries that make up the Group of Friends of the Family (GoFF), a coalition of UN member states created last year to “reaffirm that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Among the freedom-loving members of GoFF whose representatives spoke at Monday’s “high-level event” was Iran, which the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom has just accused of seeking to “eradicate” the country’s Baha’is.

In fact, there’s a lot of overlap between GoFF members and countries identified by the Commission, currently chaired* by social conservative strategist Robert George, as the worst in the world for religious freedom: Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Malaysia, Egypt, and Iraq. Also included in GoFF are countries where anti-LGBT religious and political leaders have been generating hostility and threatening the lives and freedoms of LGBT people, including Nigeria, Uganda, Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Read the rest of this article from Right Wing Watch

Rights Spotlight: IDAHOT

Yesterday and today – people around the world continue to be denied their basic and fundamental human rights, targeted on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression. And not only do violence, criminalization, discrimination, and impunity remain widespread, anti-rights actors frequently justify them at the national and international level in the name of culture, religion and tradition.

Over 70 countries continue to criminalize consensual same-sex relationships, and many people who are non-conforming in terms of their gender identity and expression and sexual orientation, including LGBTIQ people, undergo torture and ill-treatment in everyday life, in custody, and in clinics and hospitals. Across contexts, the law is employed to punish individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity and to restrict rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. Still today, region across region, entrenched discriminatory attitudes thrive in legal and policy vacuums and hate-motivated violence blights and ends the lives of many.

Yet states are legally bound by international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all persons, no matter their gender identity and expression and sexual orientation.

Human rights are for each and every one of us. To reserve rights for the powerful in society and to withhold them from the marginalized makes a mockery of our human rights system and of state obligations to their citizens, and to deny any group or individual their essential rights is nothing less than to try to define them as less than human.

Join OURs today in celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) and stand in solidarity with activists and individuals worldwide. Let us call for all states to uphold the universality of rights for everyone, everywhere – equally and without discrimination.

What is OURs?

OURs aims to monitor, analyze, and share information on anti-rights initiatives threatening our human rights systems. Our goal is to strengthen the work of activists facing direct challenges to rights, especially rights related to gender and sexuality.

Resources and further information

This IDAHOT, OURs highlights a selection of resources for activists working on rights related to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression worldwide.

Please share these with your networks, let us know of your key resources, and tweet using the hashtags #RightsAreUniversal and #IDAHOT

Resources:

Religious Right Leaders Head To Republic Of Georgia For ‘Pro-Family’ Attacks On West

The World Congress of Families, a global network of organizations that oppose LGBT equality and legal access to abortion, will hold its annual summit in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, beginning on Sunday, May 15.

Over the next several days, American Religious Right activists will meet with their counterparts from around the world to share and plan strategies for resisting and rolling back women’s and LGBT rights — often lumped together with opposition to sex education under the banner of fighting “gender ideology.”

This year’s summit is likely to feature a particular focus on siding with Putin’s Russia and the Orthodox Church as defenders of “Christian civilization” against a secular, decadent West. Georgia, which joined the Council of Europe in 1999, is front and center in what many of these activists see as a civilizational battle. Last October the EU and Council of Europe recommended policy changes to strengthen human rights protections in Georgia; the action plan to achieve them was launched this week. Back in 2014, with the encouragement of the EU, Georgia adopted a sweeping nondiscrimination law, which infuriated people like the WCF summit’s chair, businessman and philanthropist Levan Vasadze, who called the law part of “an international agenda” to “destroy the family.”

An anti-Western quote from Vasadze has been featured on the WCF home page this week:

The West is attacking our Christian culture with atheism, new forms of socialism and sexual radicalism — worse than what we saw during the last 25 years when we were part of the Soviet empire. This is why we need you to come to Tbilisi and work with us.

Read the full story from Right Wing Watch

Rights Spotlight: International Day of Families

This May 15th is the International Day of Families. So what’s this all about – and what do families, human rights and gender justice have to do with one another?

Established principles of international human rights law uphold the rights of all individuals within families to be free of coercion, violence and discrimination; free to found families on an equal basis; and free to become a part of diverse forms of families around the world.

Yet today we stand witness to ongoing violations of these intrinsic rights across regions – including intimate partner violence and child abuse, harmful practices, stigmatization, and unequal family laws – and the failure of states to ensure these rights and to hold perpetrators accountable.

And at the same time, conservative actors are leading the charge at the United Nations and other human rights spaces to undermine and chip away at our rights protections themselves. Ironically, many of these actors use emerging discourses around ‘the family’ to defend violations committed against family members, to bolster and justify impunity, and to restrict equal rights within and to family life.

Today, join the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) in calling for our universal human rights: equality within families and respect for the human rights of all family members worldwide, without discrimination. Human rights are indivisible, universal, interdependent, and inalienable to every person in the world.

OURs aims to monitor, analyze, and share information on anti-rights initiatives threatening our human rights systems. We hope to strengthen the work of activists facing direct challenges to rights, especially rights related to gender and sexuality.

This International Day of Families, OURs highlights a selection of relevant resources. Please share these with your networks, let us know of your key resources, and tweet using the hashtags #RightsAreUniversal and #FamilyDay

Families are diverse

Counter to the claims of anti-rights actors, as the human rights framework has recognized time and time again, families are diverse and take many different forms around the world.

Conservative discourses undermining rights

We are increasingly seeing the spread of a conservative discourse in human rights spaces which seeks to employ the term “family” strategically – to reserve human rights for the few instead of for all, to promote inequality and to weaken our existing human rights protections.

Regressive actors are collaborating across borders and religions to attack human rights standards with appeals to a narrow and discriminatory conception of ‘the family’ and ‘family values,’ including the recent “Protection of the Family” resolutions at the United Nations.

Equality in family laws

From country to country, personal status or family laws discriminate against women and are employed to restrict their rights to family life and other fundamental freedoms.

Not only do these laws continue to grant unequal rights to custody; provide cover for coercion, abuse and sexual violence; and delimit women’s access to money – states continue to attempt to back out of their human rights commitments to change these laws and challenge discriminatory gender stereotypes by reference to national sovereignty, tradition, religion and culture.

Resources

Diversity of families

Love is a family value: Supporting all families and family members (UN LGBT Core Group – video/event)

Conservative discourses

Protection of the Family – A Human Rights Response (AWID/SRI – brief)

“Protection of the Family”- What it means for human rights (AWID/SRI – interview)

Report on Protection of the family – contribution of the family to the realization of the right to an adequate standard of living for its members (OHCHR – report)

Lobbying for Faith and Family (NORAD – report)

Everything You Need to Know about the Anti-LGBTQ WCF (SPLC, PRA and Ipas – article)

Family laws

Thematic Report on Discrimination in Family and Cultural Life (Working Group on Discrimination against Women – report)

CEDAW and Muslim Family Laws – In Search of Common Ground (Musawah – report)

Friday 13 May 2016 – A Good Day for Intersex Human Rights?

Friday 13 May: A sign of hope for intersex children everywhere – and yet another stern warning for IGM perpetrators and complicit states? Keep your fingers crossed!

UPR: Ireland critisised over Intersex Genital Mutilations

All UN Member States have to submit regularly to a “Universal Periodic Review (UPR)” of their human rights records, reported by a “troika” of their peers and considered by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), who then adopts recommendations.

Despite that human rights violations of intersex people have been reported to the HRC since at least 2012, so far the HRC never specifically discussed intersex human rights concerns, let alone issued recommendations to stop IGM practices.

Most welcome therefore the news (thx ILGA) from the ongoing 25th session of the UPR Working Group where Israel went on record addressing IGM practices in its Statement regarding Ireland (PDF):

“Israel is concerned by the cases of medically unnecessary surgeries and other procedures on intersex children before they were able to provide their informed consent;”

The Human Rights Council will adopt the recommendations for Ireland today Friday 13 May 16–18h.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has recently reprimanded Ireland over IGM practices, considering them a “harmful practice” (like FGM) and calling on Ireland to “adopt legal provisions in order to provide redress to the victims of such treatment, including adequate compensation.”

CAT to reprimand France over IGM Practices

Also today Friday 13 May concludes the 57th Session of the UN Committee against Torture (CAT), which knowledgeably questioned France over IGM practices and is hoped to issue strong binding recommendations for France. This will mark the 11th reprimand by a UN Treaty Body of a State complicit in the continuation of IGM.

France was also recently reprimanded over IGM practices by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

10 Verdicts by UN Treaty Bodies Condemning IGM – And Counting …

The Committee against Torture (CAT) has repeatedly considered Intersex Genital Mutilations as constituting at least inhuman treatment in breach of the Convention against Torture, and since 2011 reprimanded Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Hong Kong over IGM.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) considers IGM as violence and a harmful practice (like FGM) and since 2015 reprimanded Switzerland, Chile, France and Ireland over IGM.

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) also considers IGM asinhuman treatment and reprimanded Germany.

In all above 10 verdicts, the Committees issued binding recommendations to take legislative action to end the practice and/or to ensure access to redress and justice for IGM survivors.

In addition, the Human Rights Committee (HRCttee) as the governing body of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) is currently investigating IGM and called onSwitzerland to disclose statistics.

This news update is taken from a newsletter of the international intersex human rights NGO StopIGM.org

StopIGM.org demands the prohibition of forced genital surgeries on children and adolescents with Variations of Sex Anatomy and “Human Rights for Hermaphrodites too!”. Persons concerned shall later decide themselves, if they want surgeries or not, and if yes, which.

She Won a Seat in Iran’s Parliament, but Hard-Liners Had Other Plans

TEHRAN — Minoo Khaleghi easily won a seat in the Iranian Parliament in February, part of a wave of independents and reformists who now have the numbers to wrest authority from the hard-liners. On Wednesday, however, a powerful state committee demonstrated that the conservative forces would not relinquish power without a fight.

Citing “evidence” that had emerged against her, the Dispute Settlement Committee of Branches, a part of Iran’s generally conservative judiciary, ruled that Ms. Khaleghi could not be sworn in as a new member of Parliament, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. The evidence, it turned out, consisted of photographs of Ms. Khaleghi, “leaked” on social media last week, showing her in public in Europe and in China without the obligatory Islamic head scarf. Hard-liners immediately accused her of “betraying the nation.”

But opposition-aligned analysts and Ms. Khaleghi shot back that the case against her was politically motivated, more about curtailing and marginalizing prominent reformists — and a woman — than about her traveling abroad without a head scarf.

While acknowledging that all Iranian women are obliged to cover themselves in public, even when traveling abroad, they said there was a problem with the evidence. The photographs were, Ms. Khaleghi said in a statement to the official government newspaper Iran, malicious fakes.

Read the full article from the New York Times

Pakistani Girl Burned Alive for Helping Friend Elope

More than a dozen adult men have been arrested in rural Pakistan for drugging a 16-year-old girl and then setting her on fire for helping a friend elope.

The men drugged her before they burned her alive.

More than a dozen members of an “honor council” near the Pakistani towns of Makol and Dunga Gali, outside of Abbottabad, have been arrested for immolating a 16-year-old girl, according to a local police chief.

Her supposed crime: helping a friend elope, which the men allegedly said had done irreparable harm to their village’s reputation.

The group of men, described as a jirga or local tribal council by police, detained the girl, her mother, and her brother, according to police chief Saeed Wazir. The latter two allegedly consented to the punishment: burning the girl, named in some reports as Ambreen or Haleema, in the van used by the couple to elope.

“The jirga members… decided to punish the girl in a novel way so no one in future can dare to marry without consent of their parents and give a bad name to the village,” Wazirtold NBC. “They tied her hands with the seats and then poured [gasoline] on her and the vehicle and set it on fire.”

…

The term jirga, Khan told The Daily Beast, can just mean “a mediator, and that can be even one person” in that region. It doesn’t have to be a formal body, as suggested in many news reports.

Read the full story from The Daily Beast

UN CESCR Adopts General Comment on Right to Sexual and Reproductive Health

The Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI) welcomes the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights’ General Comment 22 on the Right to Sexual and Reproductive Health, adopted in March 2016. The SRI actively engaged in the development of the General Comment (See SRI submission to the General Day of Discussion) and believes that General Comment 22 makes a valuable contribution to the realization of sexual and reproduction health and rights for all.

Following trends in human rights jurisprudence, the Committee prepared the General Comment in response to continuing grave violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health across the world. It is designed to assist States in the fulfillment of their obligations under the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the Covenant).

The General Comment reaffirms the right to sexual and reproductive health as an integral part of the right to health enshrined in Article 12 of the Covenant and its indivisibility from and interdependence with the full range of human rights, inter alia, the right to education; to non-discrimination; to equality; to freedom from torture and other cruel, to inhuman or degrading treatment; to privacy and respect for family life; to life; and to liberty and security of person.

Through elaboration of the essential elements of the right to sexual and reproductive health, State obligations and options for effective remedies for violations, the General Comment sets out a clear and practical path for States to comply with their responsibilities under the Covenant.

States are required to respect, protect and fulfill the right to sexual and reproductive health without discrimination and on an equal basis, paying particular attention to individuals belonging to groups that face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.[1]

States are under obligation to:

Ensure adolescents and youth have access to comprehensive sexuality education and services, regardless of marital status or parental consent
Ensure sexual and reproductive health services are available, accessible, acceptable and of good quality
Undertake preventative, promotional and remedial action to shield individuals from gender-based violence and discriminatory practices and norms such as female genital mutilation, child, early and forced marriage and marital rape, among others
Develop and enforce evidence-based standards and guidelines for the provision and delivery of sexual and reproductive health services
Provide access to effective remedies for violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health.

As a consolidation and elaboration of the broad array of standards that firmly establish the right to sexual and reproductive health, General Comment 22 will be helpful for States to understand and act on their obligations, for civil society to hold their governments accountable through the treaty body review processes and the Universal Periodic Review, and for States to engage in constructive dialogue with each other on these issues.

The SRI encourages Member States, UN agencies, civil society, the UN Human Rights Council and its mechanisms and all other stakeholders to integrate the General Comment into their respective approaches to promoting, protecting and respecting the full range of human rights for all persons.

[1] The respect, protection and fulfillment of sexual and reproductive rights is achieved in part by repealing or reforming laws and policies that nullify or impair individuals’ ability to realize their right to sexual and reproductive health. Highlighted examples include laws that criminalize abortion, consensual same-sex relationships, particular sexual and reproductive health services and information, transgender identity or expression, and HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission. Practical or procedural barriers to sexual and reproductive health care, services and information imposed by the State or third parties must also be removed, including parental, spousal or judicial authorization requirements, mandatory HIV testing, waiting periods for abortion or divorce, and the exclusion of particular sexual and reproductive health services from public funding or foreign assistance funds.

Originally posted on the Sexual Rights Initiative website

Time to Ban Child Marriage in Malaysia

This month, Malaysia’s lower house amended the country’s Child Act 2001 without banning all marriage by girls and boys under the age of 18, as called for by several members of parliament and rights groups.

Absent from the debate was any appreciation of the core problem with child marriage – the real and lasting damage that early marriage causes to girls.

Around the world, there is overwhelming evidence that child marriage has devastating consequences for girls.

…

Permitting early marriage

While Malaysian civil law sets the minimum age of marriage at 18, the law is riddled with exceptions.

Girls 16 and older can marry with permission of their state’s chief minister.

For Muslims, Islamic law sets a 16-year minimum age for girls and permits even earlier marriages, with no apparent minimum, with the permission of a syariah court.

Statistics on the rate of child marriage in Malaysia are hard to pin down, but in 2010, the

women, family and community development deputy minister reported that 16,000 girls aged below 15 in the country were married.

After a country visit to Malaysia in 2014, a United Nations special expert expressed concern about the prevalence of child marriage, noting that he was “very worried about information received indicating that, in an attempt to reduce the incidence of premarital sex, children born out of wedlock, and child abandonment, certain authorities are encouraging underage marriage.”

Read the full comment article from MalaysiaKini

Rights of rural women finally addressed in CEDAW General Recommendation No.34

Welcoming the adoption of the first international instrument to address the rights of rural women holistically, FIAN International examines the core elements related to the human right to food and nutrition contained in the General Recommendation No. 34.

In March 2016, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted its General Recommendation No. 34 on the Rights of Rural Women. Its adoption is nothing less than the outcome of over three years of work by the Committee with support from civil society and social movements.

The General Recommendation is particularly significant because it is the first international instrument that specifically addresses the rights of rural women. Furthermore, it is the first that explicitly recognizes the human right to adequate food and nutrition of rural women within the framework of food sovereignty.

The adoption of this General Recommendation will continue helping raise the visibility of rural women’s human rights on the checklist of issues that the State parties must pay attention to when reporting to the Committee. In turn, it will enable civil society to hold their respective governments accountable for the human rights violations of rural women. This General Recommendation can also play a key role in informing and serving as a basis for upcoming and developing processes at the national, regional and global level.

On this note, FIAN International issues an analytical note that examines the elements related to the human right to food and nutrition that are contained in the General Recommendation. More specifically, the note focuses on: (1) the explicit recognition of the right to food and nutrition within the food sovereignty framework; (2) the recognition of the right to access, control, manage and own all natural and productive resources on which rural women depend; (3) the guarantee of decent work for all rural women workers, including access to social protection; (4) the recognition of the “intertwined subjectivities” of woman and child during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding and their framing through the lens of women’s rights throughout their lifespan; and (5) the protection of rural women’s roles in the production, processing, distribution, market access, trade, and investment related to the food systems from private actors.

You can find the analytical note here.