LGBTIQ activists together with friend, family, co-workers and allies recently celebrated the eleventh International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) in various parts of the country. The celebration organized with a theme “Voice for the Voiceless” to highlight the continuous struggle of activists to empower LGBTIQ persons and other marginalized sectors who are silenced due to discrimination and stigma.
Local activists have organized public workshops on health, poverty reduction and school bullying, public screenings of LGBTIQ documentaries, street clean-up events, radio programs, and free, fast, voluntary and confidential HIV and STI testing.
Makmon, member of Bandanh Chaktomuk, recognized the importance of IDAHOT: “It is the day that we all can come out and show who we are and what we are to the world, and the day makes us recognize the right to the universal enjoyment of human rights as well as the right to equality and non-discrimination.”
Srun Srorn, an LGBTIQ human rights defender, shared his vision about the goal of IDAHOT. “My dream is that all human beings are free to be themselves, regardless of sex, gender or sexual orientation. We all have to fight every day for any marginalized group facing stigma or human rights violations, including the LGBT community, in order to end to all forms of violence and discrimination,” according to him.
Homosexuality has never been illegal in Cambodia, but social pressures to conform remain very strong.
Meanwhile, there have been some developments concerning LGBTIQ rights in Cambodia that were perceived by activists as steps towards having official policy against discrimination.
The government recently made several commitments to address the needs of LGBTIQ persons such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs’ (“MoWA”) five-year Strategic Plan for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Cambodia 2014-2018, the National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan, and the second National Action Plan to Prevent Violence against Women (2015-2018). In 2014 the MoWA released a policy brief entitled ‘Rights: Vulnerable Groups of Women and Girls,’ which focused specifically on discrimination issues faced by lesbian and bisexual women and transgender people. These two steps are major landmarks in official policy tackling discrimination against LGBT people in Cambodia.
