Beitrag (deutsch)
Einladung (deutsch)
What does the term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” – or SRHR for short – actually mean? What role do its topics play in international discussions of human rights? Where are these issues debated and negotiated, and who are the main actors? Katrin Erlingsen from the DSW — Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung explained the concept of SRHR in a web seminar from the Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundation.
This article covers a side event organised by GIN-SSOGIE at the UN Human Rights Council on “Using inclusive narratives around faith and tradition to support human rights advocacy on the continent”.
Key topics at a high-level online event held by the UN LGBTI Core Group during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly in late September 2020 were intersectionality, protecting the rights of LGBTI people, and lessons learned from the pandemic.
“While all LGBTI persons experience discrimination and exclusion, we do not experience discrimination and violence in the same way,” said Jessica Stern at the opening of the high-level event held by the UN LGBTI Core Group during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly in late September 2020. The UN LGBTI Core Group is an informal group of UN member states that was founded in 2008 with Germany involved from the start (see boxed info text).
The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In early October 2020 the anniversary was celebrated during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York with a high-level event and many speakers.
A key result of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 was its Platform for Action, in which 189 countries specified twelve strategic goals for gender equality. Although important progress has been made since 1995 such as a decrease in maternal mortality rates, the speakers at the high-level event at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly all agreed that not enough has been done.
“Yet no country can claim to have achieved gender parity, and the current crisis threatens to erode hard-earned gains,” said the president of the 75th General Assembly, Volkan Bozkir, at the event entitled “Accelerating the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” UN General Secretary António Guterres also warned of setbacks. “Covid-19 could wipe out a generation of fragile progress toward gender equality.”
How can different types of families be better protected during and after the Covid-19 pandemic? Who decides what a family is, and (how) is religion being instrumentalised for this purpose? What obligations do UN member states have regarding family diversity? These are just some of the questions that civil society organizations discussed at a side event for the UN Human Rights Council.
“Our goals are to make family diversity more visible and to highlight the experience and reality of rainbow families in different regional, cultural and religious contexts,” says Maria von Känel, co-founder and board member of International Family Equality Day (IFED), a global network for family diversity.
“Throughout human history there have always been different models of family and community life,” adds Simon Petitjean from the Global Interfaith Network. “The UN system and its states have a responsibility to respect the human rights of all family members without distinction of any kind, and this is of particular importance in times of crisis when inequalities are heightened and reinforced.”
As part of a project to raise the profile of international debates on human rights, Dr. Silke Voß-Kyeck discussed the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva – its work and history as well as current focuses – in an informative online talk with Sarah Kohrt from the Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundation on July 28. Voß-Kyeck earned a doctorate in political science and worked at Amnesty International Deutschland for many years before becoming the HRC reporter for our umbrella organization Forum Menschenrechte* in 2019, or simply “our woman in Geneva”.
Civil society plays an important role
The HRC was established in its current form in 2006, and has 47 member states. It meets for a total of ten weeks a year, but can also convene for special sessions on pressing issues and developments. Germany is one of the current members, coinciding with its membership in the UN Security Council. Since 2006, members have been elected for a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms in order to prevent long-term entrenched structures. More than 5,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world have consultative status at the HRC, which enables them to make brief presentations in the round assembly hall, submit statements, and organize side events in the complex of buildings that used to house the League of Nations in Geneva – events which right now may only be held online.
Invitation to an Online Talk of LSVD and Hirschfeld-Eddy-Foundation
When: Wednesday, 23. September, 5:00 — 6:00 PM CEST
Who:
Botho Maruatona, Botswana, Coalition of African Lesbians, Community and Campaigns Officer
Tash Dowell, Zimbabwe, Feminist Action Collective
Neo Kabi, Lesotho, Masakhane-Collective
Moderator: Cornelia Sperling, Masakhane project supporter for the LSVD and filia.
We’ll hear and discuss experiences from the South: The Masakhane Project “Promoting Human Rights in Southern Africa by strengthening Women NGO Activists – with a focus on Women’s Rights and SOGIE Rights” has been organized since 2014 by the Coalition of African Lesbians. Through strengthening feminist community building and advocacy work in six countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe — www.cal.org.za . Masakhane is supported by filia, the German Women’s Fund and and the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany LSVD and financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development — BMZ.
We will be in conversation with three activists from Southern Africa who are part of the Masakhane Project and learn about the critical perspective of the Coalition of African Lesbians on advocacy focusing on LGBTI rights in the broader context of the relationship between Global North and Global South. Competition, support, allyship, as well as the experiences of collective feminist movement building in the region will be topics of discussion.
Please register with name (and organization if applicable) before Sep 23 by email: c.sperling [at] reviera.de
The access link for the Zoom session will be sent to all registered users a few hours in advance by email.
Secretary Pompeo´s “Commission on Unalienable Rights”.Hirschfeld-Eddy-Foundation cordially invites you to a Web-talk with Mark Bromley, Chair of the Council for Global Equality (CGE) about the Trump adminstration´s attempt to redefine Human Rights.
When: Tuesday, 15 September, 17–18 CEST
Who: Mark Bromley, JD, Chair of the Council for Global Equality
Moderator: Sarah Kohrt, Hirschfeld-Eddy-Foundation
“Pompeo’s clear interest is to undermine the growing consensus that universally accepted human rights can be claimed by all vulnerable minorities, including LGBTI people and women who wish to control their own bodies.” Julie Dorf, Council for Global Equality
Until recently, clear progress had been made in the movement towards women´s rights and the human rights of LGBTI people. In the UN and other multilateral institutions the United States had a global leadership role regarding the rights of LGBTI people. Along with other states, the US always voted in favor of these rights. But now the U.S. appears to have changed sides.
In the web-talk “African Writers in Migration: Clementine E. Burnley and Tim B. Agaba about Queerness, Space and Human Rights” on July 21st 2020, Tim B. Agaba and Clementine E. Burnley had a conversation about queer realities, self-censorship, safe spaces, racism, decolonisation, and how class hierarchies impact access to human rights.
Tim B. Agaba and Clementine E. Burnley are both emerging writers. They met in a fairly random way. On the first day of Ms. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust (PHT) Creative Writing workshop (which has followed on from Farafina Workshop) they sat next to each other while Ms. Adichie battled through Lagos traffic.
When: Tuesday, July 21, 8–9 PM CEST
Who: Clementine E. Burnley (Germany/UK), writer and public speaker
Tim B. Agaba (Uganda), writer and human rights lawyer
This Web-event will take place in English.
Hirschfeld-Eddy-Foundation and InterKontinental cordially invite you to a Web-Talk about Queerness, Space and Human Rights with Clementine Burnley and Tim B. Agaba.
In a sense a writer is always on the move, between contexts, between perspectives and historical moments. Sometimes the writers movement takes them through different geographies and sometimes the writer stays in the same place, while the characters the writer creates travel in the writers’ place. During the online event Clementine E. Burnley and Tim B. Agaba will consider their own writing lives.