ASEAN SOGIE Caucus today releases its most recent publication, “Fact Sheet: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) and the UN Human Rights Mechanisms in Southeast Asia (2017-2020)”. It provides updated information on engagements by LGBTIQ activists to raise issues related to SOGIESC within UN human rights mechanisms, and offers analysis on trends, themes, and gaps in how LGBTIQ people’s human rights issues have so far been tackled within these mechanisms.

Social and cultural prejudices exist which uniquely disempower and oppress sexual and gender diversity, and these experiences are familiar to broader ASEAN civil society actors engaged in their respective human rights battles. LGBTIQ activists likewise share with broader civil society the experiences of censorship, harassment, misinformation, and state-led propaganda that form the core of governments’ assaults on all human rights advocacy. But because there is no clear interface between ASEAN mechanisms and UN mechanisms, especially when dealing with LGBTIQ people’s human rights, LGBTIQ advocates have the strategic role to create or hold spaces in these platforms through dialogues, submissions, and other advocacy engagements. This fact sheet is intended to help civil society actors, human rights defenders, and other stakeholders by providing updated information which can serve as a baseline for monitoring the actions of ASEAN member-states and ASEAN mechanisms.

You may access the fact sheet here.

A similar publication entitled “Civil society engagement with the UN human rights mechanisms on sexual orientation, gender identity & expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) in Southeast Asia” reviewed such engagements until 2016. This can be found here.