The Global Arc of Justice Conference, DAY 1

Joel Simpson and Latoya Lazarus are blogging from the Global Arc of Justice Conference, taking place March 11-15 in West Hollywood:

Joel Simpson

Before the opening plenary tonight, 35 by-invitation-only conference attendees and some guests spend the day in a working group on the Yogyakarta Principles. For those of us who have not been involved in the global process, it was really useful to hear about the background work that culminated in the writing and launch of the Yogyakarta Principles.

Sonia Correa from Brazil gave us the modern history crash course to the Principles in a short presentation. For her, the trajectory at the global level started at UN conferences during the 1990s in particular, which she described as "psycho-social" in nature. She also mentioned that the issues arose in a context of population and development, which she identified as important intersectionalities that the global movement may be leaving behind as we the advance the implementation of the Principles. She also shared that the Yogyakarta Principles were not the first set of guiding principles to achieve traction in the international human rights framework. The Paris Principles for establishing national human rights commissions and the UN guidelines on HIV and human rights were cited as similar examples of "principles" that have gained traction in the international circuits.

Professor Tamara Hernandez from Venezuela spoke about how very different the"LGB" issues are from the "TI" issues referencing her own experiences as a transexual lesbian for illustration, but stressed the need for us to work together. A Chilian TI activist and academic spoke about what she called "inverting the hiearchies" in LGBTI communities in terms of giving the gender indentity more prominence than the sexual orientation issues. She spoke about the limitations of TI communities, given their smallness in numbers, to be able to mobilise in like manner to LGB communities. It made me think about how a simple thing talking about how SASOD works on gender identity and sexual orientation issues (instead of vice versa) can enhance visibility of trans sub-communities issues, especially in a context where the more physical visibility of transgender identities (over homo/bi -sexual identities) exposes TI persons to the brunt of the discrimination faced by gender and sexual minorities as a stigmatised group.

Still within the human rights framework, we analised the tensions in sexuality and gender issues between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights as the former seem to be ascribed more prominence than the latter, especially by state actors.

German Perfetti, a human rights lawyer from Colombia, bashed us all for what he called the heteronormalisation of the global LGBTI movement, which he describes as our constant attempt to fit ourselves and our lives into the logic of heterosexuals. He chastised the quest for 'same-sex couples rights' and lamented the response of LGBTI leaders that it was not "politically correct" for us to speak about more-than-two-partners relationships and chided the global movement for its growing reluctance to 'take risks,' as he puts it, in our recently more conservative strategies.

At some point, many of us shared stories about using the Yogyakarta Principles at the local level. I spoke about our media/public advocacy launch of the Principles in response to the NAPS/GTU debate finals moot on whether homosexuals should allowed to be teachers and the recent Kaieteur News editorial which cited the Principles in reference to the cross-dressing debate in an instance where they were not mentioned in our press statement. This was heralded as a major success at national level. Later on, at the dessert reception, I learned from Scott Long at Human Rights Watch that SASOD was the very first local NGO to promote the Principles just about 3 days after the official launch in Geneva with our letter in the local press in response to the NAPS/GTU debate finals moot. Our press launch of the Principles will be highlighted in the soon-to-be-published Activist Guide to the Yogyakarta Principles which we in the working group should see a draft of soon. Julie Ford, chair of the working group, asked me to share that story again in the report out on the working group's deliberations to the wider 250-attendees conference.

We spent the after-lunch session in small groups coming up with recommendations around various aspects on the work of the Principles. Akim and I were in the "Country-Level Activism" small group where alot of the discussion focused on capacity-building/ training of activists to use the Principles. It seems as if IGLHRC would be the ideal partner to work with on rolling out a regional-level training on the Principles in the Caribbean. Activist training would need to trickle down to the local levels too.

The opening plenary took the special focus of the conference on Latin America. Presenters were Karen Atala Riffo, the lesbian Chilian judge who is fighting for adoption rights to her children in court; Tatiana Cordero, Ecuadorian human rights lawyer who is the Executive Director of a local, feminist NGO for lesbian and trans-women rights; Geman Perfetti, Colombian human rights lawyer who recently won a case at the Human Rights Committee on same-sex couples' rights to pension; and Jorge Saavdera, openly gay and HIV positive former director of the national AIDS programme in Mexico who is now the Cheif of Global Affairs at AIDS Healthcare Foundation in the Netherlands. Dr. Saavdera was presented with a suprise award by the UCLA AIDS Institue and the LA latino community AIDS organisation for his ground-breaking anti-homophobia campaigns and hiring of trans persons as Ministry of Health staff in Mexico. Apparently, the latino AIDS association here was able to adopt and run the Mexican radio infomercials as is in LA.

Latoya Lazarus

There were two workshops today, I went to one on Yogyakarta Principles. This was an interesting workshop with people from various academic, political and activist backgrounds. Key speakers included: Sonia Correa from Brazil, Mauro Corbral from Argentina, Kim Vance from Canada (Nova Scotia) and it was facilitated by Julie Dorf.

The participants raised some important issues that must be considered in regards to these principles that came into being into 2006. Specifically, there were several persons expressing their concerns about the limits for understanding and conceptualizing the concerns of certain groups, particular Trans. and Intersexed people. I must say, not having read these principles, the workshop turned out to be very informative, especially as the speakers provided a background of the Yogyakarta Principles, its purposes and the challenges. Moreover, the personal experiences and stories of how these principles are being used (whether they were effective or not) in various parts of the world was very informative. Guyana's Joel Simpson spoke about how principle 12, the right to work, was used in Guyana to first introduced the country to the principle during a time when the government and teacher's union were having a debate on whether non-heterosexual persons should be allowed to be teachers.

The workshop came to a close, for today, with a brainstorm for areas for further consideration. People were divided into small groups and I joined one about the role of academic research. They suggested some important areas for further in-depth research, areas that are largely unexplored in academia. Three such areas that I found particularly interesting was: 1) investigating how the language of the principles are being used by the "right" or those in opposition of gay rights. 2)investigating its uses and relevance in various countries, that is, strategies used, cultural variation , specific problems of application etc. and, 3) Exploring in-depth particular case studies, looking at whether these principles refer to individual or group rights?