The opening speech by Deborah Lambillotte and Martin Christensen, Co-Chairs of ILGA-Europe's Executive Board at the opening plenary
During this speech the Co-Chairs provide a report to members about their work as well as highlights regarding the advance of LGBT rights in Europe during the last year.
When we started to write these words, we took a look at the internet to see if there had been any developments on the rights of LGBT-people. And there have. But not only positive developments have taken place.
Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights are still a hard business to fight for.
Many people all over Europe - and all over the world - still suffer due to their diversity in sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, because they cannot lie about who they are, and because they are unable to conform to an imposed pseudo mainstreaming hetero-normativity.
We have seen the law being broken in many countries. Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech have been attacked throughout our continent. And even though 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 again this year!
Let us give a few examples of the violence of hate crimes we faced this year:
• At the opening of Sarajevo's first LGBT festival on 24th September protestors attacked visitors to the festival and the organizators had to fear for their lives;
• During the Belgrade Queer Festival on 19th September a group of perpetrators attacked and hurt four participants;
• During the gay pride march in Budapest on 5th July extremists brutally attacked policemen who were trying to protect the marchers at the pride.
• After the Zagreb Pride on 28th June four participants were attacked while leaving the manifestation.
• The bus bringing the Pride participants to the Moldavian Pride in May in Chisinau was taken hostage by a hostile crowd for more than 40 minutes and the present police forces looked to the other side and did not intervene.
Unfortunately there were other incidents in other parts in Europe as well.
We not only have to face ignorance, but also State homophobia and transphobia. For instance there are still two countries of the OSCE who consider homosexuality as a criminal offence.
And even though the right of peaceful assembly is one of the fundamental human rights, authorities still use the excuse of safety reasons to ban public manifestations about LGBT rights.
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. What are the governments there for if they do not guarantee our basic human rights? That’s their duty and their responsibility - that is what they should do.
Why was there such poor reaction - or no reaction at all - when the Lithuanian Minister of foreign affairs, Petras Vaitiekunas, admitted in the national parliament - I quote: “Lithuania is indeed one of the most homophobic countries of the European Union” and added “this is a fact - and the political class cannot change this”.
Our communities fight back in an adult and mature way, using the legal instruments we have in the council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union and the Human Rights Council and with court procedures before European Court of Human Rights.
And luckily we have got strong allies. And we have worked closely with the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Fundamental Rights Agency, 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. For Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, families rights and human rights.
Among those in the frontline to defend and keep LGBT rights on the agenda of the Council of Europe is Thomas Hammarberg, the Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights. He will be at the panel “Thinking Globally” just after our speech.
Also the commitment of the European Parliament and the Fundamental Rights Agency are paving the way in raising awareness of violations of rights of LGBT people. Therefore we are also very pleased to have the new Director of FRA, Morten Kjærum, at the first panel today.
Throughout the year a strong political emphasis on the campaign for an EU-wide Anti-Discrimination Directive that covers all grounds (A so-called horizontal directive). This proved a challenging task. But we are proud of the role of ILGA-Europe’s board, staff and members, and the collective work with allies in the field of equality and antidiscrimination, which has ensured that the proposed new Directive is inclusive and addresses the current unequal protections provided to different grounds of discrimination.
ILGA-Europe is very satisfied that the European Commission is now sharing our view that there should be no “hierarchy of rights”. And we are glad to have Belinda Pyke, Director in the EU Directorate General of Employment and Social Affairs, here today. She will also speak at the panel just after this.
But the work is not finished. The European Parliament has only consultative status in the procedure. An European directive has to be approved unanimously by all member states in the Council of Ministers to come into effect, so this is the start of the hard work we all have to do on national level. 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.
The influence of the religious right is growing in Europe. This worries us.And we support our brothers and sisters who suffer because they are members of a church or of a religion that does not recognize equal dignity to their identities.
The Yogyakarta Principles from 2006 affirm binding international human rights legal standards with which all States must comply in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The principles are supported by a lot of countries, but it is a pity that is still not universally accepted. But some counties the already use them in their politics on human rights and sexual orientation.
ILGA-Europe will initiate a 3 year project in Russia with partners in 3 cities, developing each organisation and facilitating the development of networking between them. This challenging project is co-funded by the European Institute Democracy and Human Rights of the EU. An additional staff member will be recruited to support this project.
ILGA-Europe will also continue to develop the partnerships it has with European and International as well as national organisations, so that together we are working from different angles to bring the equality for LGBT people closer to a daily reality.
Also within ILGA-Europe itself we have seen a lot of development during the last year. A month ago, the office moved to new premises in the heart of the 'EU quarter' in Brussels. The move was necessary because there simply wasn’t enough room for the present staff - let alone enough office space for expected expansion in the next few months and the potential expansion in 3-5 years.
The new office is located within walking distance of the two main EU institutions that ILGA-Europe works closely with - the European Commission and the European Parliament - as well as to the offices of allies within the NGO community. ILGA-Europe’s previous premises are now shared by ILGA and IGLYO, providing them with space for potential growth – and it is still within walking distance so it will not be a problem to keep up the close co-operation between our organizations
Also, the ILGA-Europe board has begun a process of learning as part of a formative evaluation which will guide the organisation towards the development of the next Strategic Plan. Instead of just checking if we did what we said we would do, we will take a closer look to check if the things we do are the right things and if what we are doing has got the desired effect.
And this whole procedure will contribute significantly to the development of the next Strategic Plan 2012-2015.
Also as part of the continued investment in the organisational development of ILGA-Europe, a diversity audit has been started. This builds on our previous work on diversity within the LGBT community, and will result in a diversity strategy which we anticipate will take us further in our commitment to being inclusive of the diversity within the LGBT community and also support the planning of actions with members that will enrich the knowledge and practice of LGBT organisations throughout Europe.
This year we also continued our very fruitful partnerships that have been developed to advance the rights of trans people with TGEU, and we are exploring the issues to do with youth and older age and LGBT people with IGYLO. We se this model of partnership as a very good way of exchanging ideas and experiences.
We have got a very promising program for our conference, which 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 within ILGA-Europe, and a new dedicated board that you will elect, to help in this. And very importantly we also have our greatest assets, the involvement and active participation of all of us, the members of ILGA-Europe, working together in solidarity. 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.
For us two as co-chairs it has been a great pleasure and privilege to work together with the board of ILGA-Europe,---- therefore we will ask the board members to come up here... Ruth Baldacchino, Linda Freimane, Lisette Kampus, Christine Le Doaré, Renato Sabbadini, Pierre Serne, Nataša Sukic and Tomasz Szypula.
Now you have seen the board. We are of course all available for all of you if you have comments or feedback to us during the conference.
Now the board is back at their seats, we’ll give the floor to Patricia for a short presentation of the work done by staff the last year. But first we want to thank you Patricia and all of the staff: Christine, Max, Olimpia, Juris, Evelyne, Silvan, Camille, Beth and Lilith, that have worked very hard for the past year to make the achievements mentioned in the annual report possible.
A final thank will have to go to our funders. The European Commission, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, The Tides Foundation for its core funding of our work, OSI, COC, The Dutch Government, The Anonymous donor and finally all those who contributed to the Scholarships Angel Scheme.
