ILGA-Europe's 11th Annual Conference starts its work in Vilnius

Thank you Patricia and thanks to all of the staff

Christine, Max, Olimpia, Evelyne, Juris, Francoise, Aija and Silvan

that have worked very hard for the past year to make these achievements possible. Applause.

At this conference we will present you with a new strategic plan for 2008-2011 that is the result of a broad consultation with the membership. The process that has led us to this new strategic plan is in itself something new – we have done our best to have a really broad and participate consultation. Different drafts have been circulated several times and the process has included a meeting in Budapest for all those interested in discussing and moving forward the new Strategic Plan.

Such a wide and open consultation, that has developed through a whole year, is by itself an achievement. In fact it has enabled us to involve many more of you and this makes us, ILGA-Europe, much stronger and more capable of doing strong and effective actions.

It should not be surprising that our strategic objectives remain broadly similar to those of the past strategic plan. Even if we have seen some successes and very important achievements, there is still a long way to go before equality for all is reached.

Our strategic objectives are now more refined and they match better the needs and the expectations of our communities. They form the basis for us to move forward together with you at all levels.

We have seen the law being broken in many countries. Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech have been attacked throughout our continent. Even though the these rights are at the basis of the European Convention of Human Rights, member states of the Council of Europe have repeatedly ignored them. Pride marches have been forbidden, this year again! Pride marches have been attacked, in Budapest, in Zagreb, here in the Baltics, in Moscow and the governments have not been capable or willing to guarantee the safety of the marchers.

With the excuse of safety reason and that public happenings about LGBT rights may give rise to protests, several LGBT events have been forbidden. Such passive obstructionism by public authorities is not acceptable. It is an attack on the basic right of freedom of expression of everybody, not just LGBT people. Why do we have governments if they cannot guarantee the rights of everybody to speak freely, if they do not guarantee the safety and protection of those taking part in public events, if they do not enable people be present and visible in the public sphere? What are the governments there for if they do not guarantee our basic human rights? That’s their duty and their responsibility, that’s what they should do.

We are experiencing ourselves today exactly this. The local authorities have forbidden a public event, not a march, just a simple rainbow flag event, that Lithuanian Gay League was organizing during our conference. This is in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. In Poland, last year, they experienced the very same situation. Polish organizations went to courts and all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, that ruled that their human rights had been violated and that public authorities should not have forbidden their events.

Lithuanian Gay League also went to court in Lithuania and yesterday was answered by the court that still they cannot have the rainbow flag event. Given the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, this is just outrageous and LGL has appealed against this court decision and has all of our support.

In the coming year, we have certainly to work more on the level of the Council of Europe to exploit fully the opportunities that lay there for us and to strongly push for the member states of the Council of Europe to live up to their human rights commitments.

But we have now also two new human rights instruments to use.

The first one is the Yogyakarta principles. You have all received in your delegate pack a copy of the principles that have been put together by a very high level international panel of experts in international human rights law and sexual orientation and gender identity. These provide us with strong arguments for lobbying and advocacy on a wide range of issues from freedom of expression to family. These will be presented in a plenary and in workshops during the conference.

The second one is our newly achieved consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. We are very proud that, together with several other organizations, we are now able to make our voices heard, once again and in our own name, at the United Nations. Such work will also open us new opportunities to promote human rights for LGBT people in Europe and to support the worldwide struggle for equality.

There are some positive news coming also from the EU. There is a proposal, eventually, for a new antidiscrimination directive to go beyond employment and that would cover all grounds of discriminations. Later on at this conference, this proposal will be presented to you by Belinda Pike, Director of Equality in DG Employment. This is a very important step. Today, in EU law, there is hierarchy of rights – some grounds of discrimination have more protections, while others have less. We have always considered that a single comprehensive anti-discrimination directive, covering grounds of age, disability, religion and belief, race or ethnic origin, gender, as well as sexual orientation would be a more effective way of addressing multiple discrimination and ensuring that all grounds of discrimination are treated equally. We have found much opposition by our adversaries and sometimes also from our allies.

We are then very satisfied that the European Commission is now sharing our view that such a “hierarchy of rights” should be removed and that a horizontal approach should be taken and equal protection should be granted to all. We want also to thank the Social Platform that is a powerful ally and continues to support a position of equality for all.

The third institution we continue to develop our work on, is the OSCE. The OSCE in fact will offer us a number of opportunities, in particular to address hate crimes and hate speeches. We have to use to both the EU and the OSCE mechanisms to fight against hate crimes and hate speeches.

No country in fact is free from them. On the contrary, in this past year there has been a significant increase of violence and attacks, both verbal and physical, throughout Europe against LGBT people. Even countries and cities that were considered to be friendly and a good and safe place to live for LGBT people, have been the scene for such violent crimes. This reminds us not to fall victims of complacency – we should never think that we have achieved everything and that we can settled down and our rights are guaranteed. It is not only in some parts of Europe that LGBT people face discrimination and violence – it can effect every one of us, no matter where we live.

Many of us are concerned about the growing influence and the growing numbers of the religious right in Europe. We should be very mindful of that and we should support our brothers and sisters that suffer because they are members of a church or of a religion that does not recognize equal dignity to their identities.

But the integralist religious movements as well as the extreme right and neo-fascist movement are only the collector of a widespread social distress. Such a distress has it roots in the economic difficulties that are present in many countries and in many social classes. Furthermore our political leaders have been failing in giving a sense of perspective and an inspiring idea of the future. As a result, there is a wave of right wing extremism that is running through Europe, some of this uses instrumentally religious arguments, much of it, is just plain neo-fascism.

It is clear that European governments are today less capable of dealing with the extreme right. I remember very well when, just a few years ago, Jeorg Haider won the elections in Austria and the strong reaction by the governments of the European Unions. Just a few years afterwards, a much worst government took power in Poland and there was no reaction – there was a thunderous silence. Luckily for Poland and for all of Europe, we are today free from at least one of the Kazsjnsky brothers.

But where were the European institutions in all of this? Where were the Governments of Europe? There was and there still is a lack of courage in our leaders. Too many keep forgetting that the social and human rights dimension is a crucial part of economic development, too many keep forgetting that there are real lives of people beyond the numbers of the economy. Too many do not stand up for the values of Europe. And this makes those that do stand up all the more important. For example the Swedish, Dutch and Danish governments and the Nordic Council that have provided much significant support for this conference.

We have done a lot of work at the level of the European institutions. We have worked with the European Commission and the European Parliament, with the Council of Europe and the OSCE bodies. With all of them we have built good relationships and have been able to progress and work towards our objectives.

The obstacle now, both for the new European directives as well as for stronger positions by the OSCE and the Council of Europe, are the European governments. It is crucial that we, all together, are able to work in partnership and put a strong pressure on our national governments for them to stand up to the European values and commitments.

Europe is a very powerful instrument in the struggle for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people. In many countries, this is the only instrument for LGBT people. It is also up to us to make it work – we have to convince our governments to stand up to the challenge.

We have a very promising programme for our conference, that will offer us the opportunity to network and build partnerships. Most important it will give us an opportunity to strategize together and to build concerted actions.

We still have many challenges ahead of us, but we can make it. We already have a superb staff team and we will soon have a new Strategic plan and a new dedicated board that you will elect, to help in this. Crucially we also have our greatest assets, the involvement and active participation of all of us, the members of ILGA-Europe, working together in solidarity in ILGA-Europe. Together we can make it. We can make our dreams become true, and build a better world for ourselves, our families, our children and for everybody.