The Russian LGBT Network has prepared the alternative report ‘Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in health care, education, employment and social security in the Russian Federation.’ The report is presented for the 46th session of the UN Committee on economic, social and cultural right, which will be held in May 2011 in Geneva.

The report raises problems related to the lack of any norm explicitly guaranteeing non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in the Russian legislation, as well as problems of the uncertainty of the procedure for change of transsexual persons’ civil gender, which leads to further discrimination in employment, education and health care. Discriminative treatment in the field of employment and cases of violation of the employees’ rights to respect for private life by employers are also highlighted by the paper. In social security sphere an emphasis is laid on non-covering of most medical expenses associated with transsexuality by the state funds, and on de facto exclusion of LGBT families members from most programmes of pension and benefits related to family status. The problem of special insecurity of LGBT persons subjected to domestic violence is actualised in the report. An extremely low regional availability of high-quality medical services which are necessary for transsexual people is marked. It is also pointed out that in education and academy sexual orientation and gender identity issues are either absolutely absent or receive inadequate representation. Lastly, the report emphasises unceasing attempts to justify restrictions of LGBT people’s rights to access to cultural values, to freedom of expression, as well as to freedom of assembly and association by an appeal to the Russian cultural and religious peculiarities.

The appendixes contain statistical data, information on legislation, as well as description of seven cases related to change of documents reviewed by the Russian courts, and data on administrative practice of civil registry offices in number of the Russian regions.

The UN Committees had already formulated specific recommendations on LGBT issues for the Russian Federation: the Human Rights Committee in 2009, and the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2010.

The report is available on the CESCR Committee web-site: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/cescrs46.htm (full versions in English and Russian, as well as annotation in Spanish, French and Chinese).