This is a blog is related to my academic work in the International Academic Forum on SOGIESC Law but meant to serve anyone who wants to contribute to improve the protection of human rights worldwide. It is intended to keep interested readers informed about legal developments relating to sexual orientation, gender expression and identity and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Hopefully, it will make it easier to find correct legal information about the developments in all regions of the world and, in particular, with regard to international law.
Switzerland to allow simple gender identity change next year
Beginning in the new year, people in Switzerland will be able to legally change their gender with only a visit to the civil registry office.
The Swiss parliament passed amendments in 2020 to the civil code and the civil status ordinance that would allow people to change their first name and their gender quickly and without heavy bureaucratic burdens. The change can be made by anyone who is firmly convinced that they do not belong to the gender that is already entered in the civil status register. Persons under the age of 16 or who are otherwise under guardianship would need the permission of their legal guardian. The announcement of the implementation of these amendments came Sunday.
The change of gender status does not affect existing family relationships, such as marriage or registered partnership. Only male or female gender may be entered, not a third gender or no gender status. However, the Federal Council is working on a report regarding the possibility of creating a third gender category or doing away with a registry entry for gender altogether.
The Federal Council, meeting in October, decided that the amendments will enter into force on January 1, 2022. Earlier this month, New Zealand also passed a law allowing citizens to amend the gender identity on their birth certificates.
Genderdoc-M is an association that represents the interests of LGBT people in the Republic of Moldova (see a previous judgment of the Court concerning Genderdoc-M: Genderdoc-M v Moldova, 2012).
M.D. is an individual born in 1998 and living in Bălți.
The facts
The case relates to two separate issues:
1) An alleged criminal offence committed by M.
In 2014 a District Court found that, in a public statement, M. had “engaged in hate speech and incitement to discrimination against homosexuals by calling on the public to prevent them from being employed in educational, medical and public food institutions and by falsely claiming that 92% of homosexuals were infected with HIV”.
The District Court ordered M. to retract the above-mentioned statements and to pay damages and costs to Genderdoc-M.
M. gave a press conference in which he said that he would “apologise not to homosexuals, but to Christians, whom he had misinformed when he had claimed that 92% of homosexuals were infected with HIV. In fact, he declared, 95% of them were thus infected, adding that many of them were a danger to society”.
Genderdoc-M lodged a criminal complaint against M.
The Prosecutor’s Office refused to start a criminal investigation, finding that M.’s actions did not constitute a criminal offence.
Genderdoc-M appealed against that decision, and the appeal was rejected. All subsequent appeals were also rejected.
2) Ill-treatment suffered by M.D.
In 2014, M.D. was physically and verbally abused in the street by a group of 12-14 minors, who called him gay.
A video showing the abuse was posted on the internet. A criminal investigation was initiated into those events.
Subsequently, A.P. approached M.D in the street and insulted him for being gay, saying that he knew him from the video on the internet.
A.P. again approached M.D. three days later and this time beat up M.D.
M.D. reported this attack to the police, stating that A.P. had “without any reason, hit him in the head seven times and kicked his body three times”, after which he had left. In a further statement to the police, M.D. added that A.P. had, on the first encounter, called him a “faggot” and a “paedophile”.
The Prosecutor’s Office refused to start a criminal investigation, stating that A.P.’s actions did not amount to a criminal offence. The prosecutor found that A.P. had beaten up M.D. not because of his sexual orientation and, moreover, had not said anything on this occasion about his sexual orientation.
Appeals against the decision of the prosecutor were unsuccessful. A key reason given by the domestic courts was that M.D. had not raised the issue of discrimination at the time of the complaint.
Admissibility of the complaint by Genderdoc-M.
Relying on Articles 10 and 14 of the Convention, Genderdoc-M complained of the lack of protection from the State authorities against the hate speech uttered by M. against members of the LGBT community, the interests of which they represented.
The Court stated that, as an association, Genderdoc-M. could not claim, under Article 34 of the Convention (individual applications), to be a victim of the acts or omissions which affected the rights and freedoms of its individual members who can lodge complaints with the Court in their own name.
On this basis, the Court declared inadmissible the complaint by Genderdoc-M.
Judgment on the complaint by M.D.
M.D. complained under Articles 3, 8 and 14 about the authorities’ failure to investigate effectively and punish the violence against him which had been motivated by homophobia.
The Court focused on Article 3 taken in conjunction with Article 14, and did not consider Articles 8 and 14 separately.
The Court stated that, given the unprovoked assault including ten blows to various parts of his body, M.D. had suffered treatment that was degrading, even in the absence of any homophobic overtones, the existence of which the authorities were required to investigate, and Article 3 was applicable.
In respect of M.D.’s complaint that the attack had not been appropriately investigated and relevant hate crime law not appropriately applied, the Court noted that in his initial complaint to the authorities M.D. “did not specifically mention discrimination or allege that the ill-treatment was the result of A.P.’s homophobic attitude” and that this was “one of the main reasons for which the courts confirmed the prosecutors’ decisions not to initiate a criminal investigation against A.P.”.
However, the Court stated that when he made his complaint, M.D. was “clearly still recovering from the assault, notably from concussion” and it “would be excessively formalistic for the authorities to base their entire investigation into a serious complaint about ill-treatment only on the first complaint”. Moreover, M.D. had informed the authorities from the outset that he had been approached by A.P. three days earlier who had insulted him using swear words and, in a subsequent statement, M.D. had specified what kind of words those had been, namely “faggot” and “paedophile”. In addition, A.P. had identified M.D. from a video on the internet which clearly identified him as gay.
The Court stated that all of these facts “should have made it obvious to the authorities that [M.D.] was in fact complaining not only of the violence itself, but also of its underlying homophobic reasons” and it was “difficult to understand the domestic courts’ reasoning to the effect that [M.D.] never complained of discrimination or alleged that the violence perpetrated against him had been motivated by hatred towards him” on the basis of his sexual orientation.
The Court concluded that the authorities “never seriously examined the possibility that [M.D.’s] ill-treatment had been a hate crime” and their “failure even to initiate a formal criminal investigation into the […] allegations undermined from the start their ability to establish this crucial point”.
Because of this, the Court stated that the authorities fell short of their procedural obligation to investigate the attack on M.D., “with particular emphasis on unmasking any discriminatory motive for the violence”.
The Court stated that the “absence of such a meaningful investigation undermines public confidence in the State’s anti-discrimination policy”.
The Court held that there had, therefore, been a breach of the State’s positive obligation under Article 3 taken in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention.
Brief comments
In respect of the admissibility decision relating to the complaint by Genderdoc-M, the Court made clear that, as an association, it could not complain in its own name of the breach of the rights of its members and beneficiaries. As such, to pass the admissibility test, a complaint needed to be brought by an individual or individuals claiming to be the victim or victims of a violation.
In respect of the judgment relating to the complaint by M.D., the Court reiterated that the interplay between Article 3 and Article 14 provides LGBT+ people with strong protection against ill-treatment.
The Court’s established position is that the authorities’ duty to prevent hate‑motivated violence on the part of private individuals, as well as to investigate the existence of a possible link between a discriminatory motive and an act of violence, can fall under the procedural aspect of Article 3. Moreover, this may also be seen to form part of the authorities’ positive responsibilities under Article 14 to secure the fundamental values enshrined in Article 3 without discrimination.
In Identoba and Others v Georgia (2015) the Court established that when authorities fell short of their procedural obligation to investigate homophobic crime this meant that there had been a breach of the State’s positive obligations under Article 3 taken in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention. In the case of M.D., the Court reiterated this position. Because the authorities fell short of their procedural obligation to investigate the attack on M.D. – an investigation that should have emphasised unmasking any discriminatory motive for the violence – there had been a breach of the positive obligations under Article 3 taken in conjunction with Article 14.
An important feature of this case is that M.D. did not explicitly tell the police, at the first point that he reported the attack, that he believed the attack was motivated by homophobia. However, with the information that M.D. gave to the police in his initial and subsequent statements, the Court felt that it should have been “obvious” to the authorities that he was complaining about a homophobic motivated attack. As such, the Court’s judgment sends a clear message that States are under a positive obligation to appropriately investigate the “obvious” factors that may indicate that a homophobic hate crime has been committed. As my colleague, Dr. Silvia Falcetta, commented to me, this arguably raises the threshold that national authorities must meet in order to demonstrate that they have fulfilled their obligations under Article 3 and Article 14 and, as a consequence, strengthens the protection against hate-motivated violence.
The First Section of the European Court of Human Rights has issued its decision in S.-H. v Poland. The case concerns the refusal to grant Polish nationality by descent to two children born through surrogacy in the USA to a same-sex couple residing in Israel, where the legal parent-child link is recognised in another jurisdiction.
The Court unanimously declared the application inadmissible
The applicants and their citizenship status
The applicants, Mr S. S.-H. and Mr M. S.-H., are twin brothers who were born in 2010 in the USA and live in Israel (hereinafter referred to as “the children”). The applicants’ parents are Mr S. and Mr H., a same-sex couple, residing in Israel with their children (hereinafter referred to as “the parents”). The children have dual Israeli and US nationality. The parents both have Israeli citizenship. In addition, one parent, Mr S., has Polish citizenship.
The key issue The children were born as a result of the parents entering into a gestational surrogacy agreement with K.C. The children were conceived via assisted reproduction technology using Mr S.’s gametes and an egg from a donor.
In September 2010, the Superior Court of California declared Mr S. and Mr H. the natural, joint and equal parents of the twin babies. It also declared Mr S. the biological father of the twins. Following the birth of the children, Mr S., the biological father (who is a Polish citizen), applied on behalf of the children for confirmation of their Polish citizenship.
At the material time, Polish law stated, inter alia, that “The child of parents of whom one is a Polish citizen and the other a citizen of another State acquires Polish citizenship by birth…” In various domestic proceedings in the Polish courts, the children were refused Polish citizenship because:
a) in a first-instance decision it was determined, inter alia, that the Polish legal system did not allow for the concept of surrogacy and, therefore, the children’s parents were not, according to Polish law, their parents.
b) in a second-instance decision it was determined, inter alia, that the children’s original birth certificates had no evidentiary value, even though they indicated Mr S. and Mr H. as their parents, since these documents contravened the principles of the Polish legal order.
c) the Warsaw Regional Administrative Court held that, inter alia, under the relevant domestic provisions, the children’s mother was K.C. and the Polish legal system did not recognise surrogacy.
d) The Supreme Administrative Court held, inter alia, that for the determination of Polish citizenship, a child who had one Polish parent and one foreign parent acquired Polish citizenship at birth. However, for the purposes of Polish law, a child’s mother was the woman who had given birth to that child and, if the child was born during her marriage, there was a legal presumption that the child’s father was the mother’s husband. This court further held that surrogacy agreements were not recognised in the Polish legal system as they “ran counter to the principles of community life” and that the Polish legal system had not attributed parental rights to “so called partner relationships”. For that reason, this court held that accepting the judgment of the Superior Court of California would have been against “public policy principles”. As such, the children’s birth certificates could not have any legal effect because: “These certificates indicated Mr S. as the [children’s] father and Mr H. as the [children’s] mother/parent. Since the certificates indicated the two men as parents, and by that confirmed the surrogacy agreement, they ran counter to the basic principles of the Polish legal system. Mr S. could not therefore be considered to be the [children’s] parent.”
Complaints to the European Court of Human Rights
The children complained under Article 8 taken alone and in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention that the domestic authorities had not recognised their legal parent-child relationship with their biological father and had based the decisions not to confirm their Polish citizenship on considerations relating to their parents’ sexual orientation.
Under Article 8 the children argued, inter alia, that the circumstances of the case fell within the ambit of “private and family life”. In their view, they had been denied Polish citizenship solely on discriminatory grounds, namely the sexual orientation of their parents, one of whom was their biological father. They noted that the domestic authorities had relied on the fact that their birth certificates indicated two men as their parents and that they had been conceived in execution of a surrogacy arrangement.
Under Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 8 the children complained that they had been discriminated against in the enjoyment of their right to respect for private and family life on account of their status as children of same-sex parents.
Decision of the Court
The Court employed a “consequence-based approach” to determine whether the refusal to recognise the legal parent-child relationship with the children’s biological father, and the ensuing refusal to confirm the acquisition of Polish citizenship by descent, affected the children’s private life in a way that made Article 8 applicable.
This “consequence-based approach” has been used by the Court in, for example, the context of professional and business activities to deal with situations when “the reasons for imposing a measure affecting an individual’s professional life are not linked to the individual’s private life” but “an issue under Article 8 may still arise in so far as the impugned measure has or may have serious negative effects on the individual’s private life” (Denisov v Ukraine, 2018, § 107).
The “consequence-based approach” is in contrast to the “reason-based approach” which is employed “when factors relating to private life were regarded as qualifying criteria for the function in question and when the impugned measure was based on reasons encroaching upon the individual’s freedom of choice in the sphere of private life” (Denisov v Ukraine, 2018, § 103).
In considering it appropriate to employ a “consequence-based approach” the Court set about considering whether the impugned decisions of the Polish courts had “sufficiently serious negative consequences” for the children. In this respect, the Court stated that it was for the children to show convincingly that the threshold was attained in their case and, in this respect, relied on the principle that:
“The applicant has to present evidence substantiating consequences of the impugned measure. The Court will only accept that Article 8 is applicable where these consequences are very serious and affect his or her private life to a very significant degree” (Denisov v Ukraine, 2018, § 116).
On this basis, the Court determined, inter alia, that: – the Court had not been provided with any specific information or details about the family’s plans to relocate to Poland and it did not appear that such a move was imminent;
– the children had never lived in Poland and, since birth, had been living in Israel as a family unit with their parents;
– the children already had dual US/Israeli citizenship and the Polish domestic decisions did not render them stateless;
– the children had not alerted the Court to any negative consequences or practical difficulties which they might encounter in their chosen country of residence, resulting from the Polish courts’ refusal to confirm the acquisition of Polish citizenship;
– the children can benefit, in the State where they live, from the legal parent‑child relationship with their biological father where the recognition of that relationship is not put into doubt;
– whilst the Polish authorities refused to give effect to the foreign birth certificates establishing the legal parent-child relationship between the children and their biological father, this link is recognised in the country where the family resides.
Although the Court stated it was “mindful that the domestic decisions have clearly had some repercussions on the applicants’ personal identity” it concluded that it “does not appear that the negative effect which the impugned decisions had on the applicants’ private life crossed the threshold of seriousness for an issue to be raised under Article 8 of the Convention”.
In respect of the family life limb of Article 8, the Court stated that the arguments advanced by the children were in principle the same as those submitted in relation to the complaint concerning respect for their private life. The Court stated that it was “unable to find any factual basis for concluding that there has been an interference with the right to respect for family life in the present case”. The Court’s ultimate conclusion was: “[…] it does not appear that so far the family has had to overcome any practical obstacles on account of the Polish authorities’ decisions […] Most importantly, since the applicants’ family resides in Israel, the inability to obtain confirmation of acquisition of Polish citizenship has not prevented them from enjoying, in the country where they live, their right to respect for their family life. The applicants and their intended parents all have Israeli citizenship, and their legal relationship is recognised in Israel. It does not appear that the fact that the applicants are not recognised as Polish citizens would have any bearing on their family life, for example in the event of their intended parents’ death or separation. Thus, any potential risk to their family life should be regarded in this particular case as purely speculative and hypothetical and could only possibly materialise if they took up residence in Poland”. On this basis, the Court found that Article 8 of the Convention was not applicable. In light of this, the Court also rejected the complaint under Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 8 of the Convention, since Article 14 can only apply if the facts at issue fall within the ambit of one or more of the other provisions of the Convention. Consequently, the Court declared the application inadmissible.
Short commentary on the Court’s decision
The application of a “consequence-based approach” in this case is extremely surprising. Given the facts of the case, which focus on the legal recognition of parent-child relationships, it would have been more obvious for the Court to have declared the measures complained of to fall within the ambit of Article 8 of the Convention and, on this basis, to have proceeded to carry out the standard Article 8 “tests” to determine whether a violation of this Article had occurred (in essence, whether the decisions of the Polish authorities were in accordance with law, pursued a legitimate aim, and were necessary in a democratic society). It is concerning that the Court relied on the “consequence-based approach”, which was developed for dealing with situations when a measure imposed is not linked to the individual’s private life but produces an effect on it, when, in this case, the impugned measures are so obviously linked to private and family life. In adopting the “consequence-based approach” the Court, in essence, started from the position that the complaint would only be deemed to fall within the ambit of Article 8 if the applicants could prove that the decision of the Polish authorities had produced very serious consequences. One could argue that the outcome of the measures complained of – citizenship denied solely on the grounds that the children were born via surrogacy and had same-sex parents – was already a very serious consequence and, as such, brought the complaint within the ambit of Article 8 and placed the emphasis on the Polish government to justify the decisions taken by its authorities. However, under the “consequence-based approach” it was the applicants who were required to convince the Court of the negative consequences of the decisions of the Polish authorities and, moreover, to show that these reached a certain severity. In this sense, the refusal to recognise the children and the parents as a family was not enough, and significant “practical” consequences needed be demonstrated. The “consequence-based approach” seems wholly unsuited to dealing with the facts of this case. In my view, the Court should not have adopted this mode of analysis. The Court could just as easily have begun with the presumption that the notion of “private life” within the meaning of Article 8 is a broad concept which encompasses, according to its case law, a person’s physical and social identity which includes the legal parent-child relationship (Labassee v France, 2014, §§ 38 and 75) and, on this basis alone, have determined that the facts of this case fell within its ambit. The Court has previously held that, for the purposes of Article 8, there is a direct link between the establishment of paternity and an applicant’s private life (Mikulić v Croatia, 2002,§ 55). Moreover, a key issue at stake in this case is the sexual orientation of the children’s parents, and sexual orientation is long established to fall within the ambit of Article 8. If the Court had started by accepting that the issue in question fell within the ambit of Article 8, it could have conducted a full review on the merits and employed the standard Article 8 and Article 14+8 tests. This would have involved the Court interrogating the facts of the case in light of its established principle that if the reasons advanced for a difference in treatment are based solely on sexual orientation, this will amount to discrimination under the Convention (Kozak v Poland, 2010, § 92).
Whilst the Court may ultimately have reached the conclusion that the decisions of the Polish authorities did not amount to a violation of Article 8 or Article 14+8, it should, in my view, have reached its conclusion via a full interrogation of the facts based on the presumption that Article 8 did apply. It is wholly unconvincing, in light of the Court’s established case law, for it to state at the admissibility stage that it was “unable to find any factual basis for concluding that there has been an interference with the right to respect for family life”. That is an astonishing statement in the context of the Polish authorities saying so clearly and candidly that since the children’s birth certificates indicated two men as parents, and by that confirmed the surrogacy agreement, that they ran counter to the basic principles of the Polish legal system. In essence, then, the refusal of the Polish courts to recognise Mr S. as the children’s parent should have rendered Article 8 applicable, and required the Court to conduct a full review, on the merits, of whether the decisions of the Polish authorities were justified. However, having pursued the approach that it did, a further surprising feature of the Court’s decision is its conclusion that the children could benefit, in the State where they live, from the legal parent‑child relationship with their biological father, where the recognition of that relationship was not in doubt. Put another way, because the children and parents were deemed not to be suffering discrimination in Israel, the consequences of the decisions by the Polish authorities were deemed to be less negative. This, to my mind, is a deeply problematic approach. It could be interpreted to mean that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in one State is less important if the person or people complaining about it can go and live somewhere else and not suffer from that discrimination (which is an interpretation that can be drawn from earlier decisions of the former European Commission of Human Rights in respect of complaints by same-sex couples). This suggests that the extent of the right of the children to respect for their private and family life is determined by where their biological father has chosen to live with them. Would the Court, therefore, have taken a different view if Mr. S. had, in fact, lived with his children in Poland? And, if so, why? Why should the decision of Mr. S. about where he lives with his children determine an assessment of whether the children are being subject to discrimination by the Polish authorities? One could say, either the children are being discriminated against or they are not, and where they live is not relevant. Relatedly, it seems problematic for the Court to tell the children that “any potential risk to their family life should be regarded in this particular case as purely speculative and hypothetical and could only possibly materialise if they took up residence in Poland”. That seems to send the message that the Court will only deal with the issues raised if the children and their parents move to Poland and, if they encounter similar problems regarding recognition of their family life, make a fresh application to the Court – which, of course, they could do. But what if the children’s parents do not feel able to move to Poland without first establishing that they have recognition as a family and, on this basis, their children are regarded as Polish citizens? The Court’s message seems to be that the children and their parents must first face the potential “risks” to their family life that may be created by living in a jurisdiction that so obviously does not recognise their family life before those risks can be dealt with. In the context of this case, that seems a problematic approach. Ultimately, in this case, the Court was presented with complex facts, involving children born by surrogacy, who have same-sex parents who are legally recognised as their parents in one jurisdiction and who all live together in another jurisdiction. Clearly, Polish law was incapable of dealing with the reality of the children’s family life and could not recognise their same-sex parents (legally defined as such in another jurisdiction) as their legal parents. This case clearly, in my view, called for a full examination on the merits, on the basis that Article 8 was applicable, and cried out for an application of the principle that the Convention is a living instrument that must be interpreted in the light of present day conditions. Instead, the Court’s approach can be interpreted as a way of avoiding having to deal with the complexities raised by this case. That is a shame because this case, which deals with the complex realities of contemporary family relationships in a legal context that cannot or will not evolve to accommodate such realities, is a case that transcends the person and the interests of the applicants (Deweer v Belgium, 1980, § 38). As such, it would have been good if the Court had remembered that its mission is to determine issues on public-policy grounds in the common interest, thereby raising the general standards of protection of human rights and extending human rights jurisprudence throughout the community of Convention States (Karner v Austria, 2003, § 26). Instead of doing this, the Court disposed of the application in a manner which is problematic and missed the opportunity to evolve its jurisprudence in important ways.
ECJ: All EU nations must recognise children of same-sex parents
The European Union’s (EU) top court has ruled that Bulgaria must issue identity papers to a child of same-sex parents, and that all EU nations must respect such families.
European Court of Human Rights finds Georgia complicit in violence against LGBT demonstrators
The European Court of Human Rights Thursday held against Georgia in a case concerning an attack on LGBT protestors in the capital city Tbilisi.
Amidst threats of a counter-demonstration by ultra-conservative NGOs and clergymen, senior officials of the Ministry of the Interior had guaranteed the safety of the applicants, a group of 35 Georgian nationals and two LGBT rights advocacy groups, during a 20-minute silent flash mob on the International Day Against Homophobia.
On the day of the demonstration, May 17, 2013, the applicants were attacked at Pushkin Square by 35,000 to 40,000 counter-demonstrators wielding sticks, stones, and batons, and hurling homophobic slurs and death threats. Following an inquiry by the Ministry of the Interior, criminal proceedings resulted in the acquittal of four demonstrators, and imposition of a fine on four others. One proceeding is still pending.
The Court held unanimously that Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) and Article 11 (freedom of association) in conjunction with Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated. They also found that the mental anguish suffered by the applicants in the face of homophobic threats of violence was sufficient to sustain charges under the Convention.
The Court found that the authorities had failed to take proper safety measures to protect the applicants’ right to freedom of association despite knowing the risks associated with the tension-fraught event. A prior announcement by the counter-demonstrators of their intentions and the State’s failure to manage the previous year’s LGBT rally discredited the State’s contention that it was not anticipating the escalation. The State’s response to the threat was “to deploy unarmed and unprotected police patrol officers who were supposed to contain the tens of thousands of aggressive people by forming thin human cordons.” These safety precautions were deemed to be wholly inadequate for the event especially considering the notice given by both groups. The Court also explained that whenever large-scale violence is foreseeable:
It is important for the domestic authorities to evaluate the resources necessary for neutralizing the threat of violent clashes by, amongst other things, equipping law-enforcement officers deployed to the scene with appropriate riot gear in order to be able to discharge their police functions.
The impartiality of the criminal proceedings was also questioned given that they were led by the same unit of the Ministry of the Interior which had guaranteed the safety of the protestors. The Court held that “no tangible results” had been achieved in these cases and that:
the protraction of the investigation exposed the domestic authorities’ long-standing inability – which can also be read as unwillingness – to examine the homophobic and/or transphobic motives behind the violence and degrading treatment committed against the relevant twenty-seven individual applicants.
The Court under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention found Georgia liable to pay the applicants a total of 193,500 euros in damages.
Six international legal norms on the protection of same-sex partnership have emerged
by Kees Waaldijk *
19 December 2021
When in 2006 I wrote the first version of my article ‘Same-Sex Partnership, International Protection’ for the online Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, only some fifteen cases on the topic had been decided by international bodies. At the time, it felt as a daunting task to write a for this prestigious, authoritative and massive Encyclopedia (the roots of which go back to the 1920s, while the printed edition of 2012 has more than 11,000 pages covering more than 1,600 topics). Even more so, because what was expected was a comprehensive and – as far as possible – impartial account, complemented by a personal assessment. At the same time, inclusion of this topic in the Encyclopedia felt as a welcome recognition for – and ‘coming out’ of – a new topic of international law.
Fifteen years later, international protection of same-sex partnership has become a well-established topic of international law – albeit a highly dynamic and controversial issue. By 2021 the number of decided international cases about same-sex partners has reached 50, while more and more international written law and soft law documents touch upon the topic. So after my minor 2013 update of the article, a much fuller revision and update was needed for 2021.
The beginning of my article (paragraphs 1-3) could remain unchanged:
“Many people want to live their life in intimate partnership with another person. And many do. These two facts have been recognized and protected in law for many centuries. Hence the existence—in domestic law—of family law, and of numerous related provisions in other areas of public and private law. International law, too, and especially international law on the protection of human rights, recognizes and protects the desire for, and existence of intimate partnership. It does so mainly through guaranteeing rights to marriage, to family, and to private life, and through prohibitions of discrimination. (…)
Although international human rights instruments do not contain wordings that refer explicitly to heterosexual partnership, their provisions on the rights to marriage, to family, and to privacy have traditionally often been interpreted as only covering different-sex partners. Thus same-sex partnership has often been excluded from the protection of these rights. (…)”
Meanwhile, my research has discovered that my bold claim about the non-existence, in international human rights documents, of any explicit reference to heterosexual partners, was even more true than I realized in 2006. If you look closely at the drafting history of article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is nothing heterosexual about the words “men and women” as used in human rights provisions on the right to marry. In 1948 these words had been introduced as an amendment to the originally proposed “Everyone has the right to contract marriage”. And the aim of this amendment had been to make clear that women must have the “same freedom” to marry as men. No doubt the drafters were thinking about different-sex marriages, but they did not include this exclusivity in the text of the fundamental right to marry. Instead the drafters underlined the equal rights of “men and women”. The drafters were not thinking of same-sex partners. (For a detailed analysis of all this, see my 2021 book chapter ‘The Right to Marry as a Right to Equality’ or my 2018 podcast; details below.)
A lot, however, had to change in the rest of my article, because in international law (as in more and more countries) there now is substantial recognition of same-sex partners.
After discussing all 50 rulings on the topic given by international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, plus various decisions of other bodies of UN, EU and other international organizations (covering human rights law and international staff law, and touching on rules of free movement and private international law), I now conclude the 2021 version of my Encyclopedia article as follows:
“International protection for same-sex partnership is a topic that has seen important developments recently (…). At least two ‘global’ norms have emerged:
(1) a prohibition of discrimination between unmarried different-sex cohabitants and unmarried same-sex cohabitants; and
(2) an obligation to recognize existing same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions (at least for some purposes).
Two related ‘global’ norms seem to be emerging (…):
(3) an obligation to respect existing marriages that are becoming ‘same-sex’ because one of the spouses is having a change of sex/gender; and
(4) an obligation to recognize existing registered partnerships from other jurisdictions (at least for some purposes). (…)
Authority for these four ‘global’ norms can be found in decisions of bodies of the UN, in decisions of European and Inter-American bodies, and also in the domestic law of countries in different parts of the world. (…) In two regions of the world (Europe and the Americas) two further norms are emerging. One of these regionally emerging norms is:
(5) an obligation to give same-sex couples access to a legal framework for their relationship.
In the Americas this emerging obligation ultimately requires the opening up of marriage, while in Europe it still leaves it to the countries themselves to decide whether this legal framework will be marriage or only a form of registered partnership (…). The other regionally emerging norm is:
(6) an obligation to give same-sex couples access to rights and benefits derived from marriage.
In the Americas this obligation seems to concern all rights that flow from marriage, while in Europe it so far seems limited to core or essential rights, such as the right to live in the same country as your partner (…). For these emerging regional norms there is not yet much authority in decisions of bodies of the UN, and even less from regional bodies outside Europe and the Americas. However, these norms do reflect developments in domestic law that have at least started on all continents. It seems likely that in both regions the international case law will crystalize further, and there seems scope for some convergence between the approaches of ECtHR and IACtHR. (…) (Also because) both courts have acknowledged both the controversial character and the dynamic nature of developments in the national and international protection of same-sex partnership. (…)”
For the full text of this quote, and for references to case law and previous paragraphs, see paragraphs 38-40 of my Encyclopedia article. And for an analysis (based on how the law has been developing in 21 European countries) of what rights for same-sex partners could be considered as “core or essential rights” in the sense of emerging norm 6, see my 2020 book chapter ‘What First, What Later?’, where I conclude (in paragraph 2.7):
“a core minimum of rights would consist at the very least of (…) – legal protections at times of death (…); – legal protections for times of other great sadness (…); – the right to be able to live in the same country (…); and – the right to take at least some responsibility for each other’s children (…).”
Perhaps this will emerge as a seventh international legal norm on the protection of same-sex partnership.
Kees Waaldijk, ‘The Right to Marry as a Right to Equality – About Same-Sex Couples, the Phrase “men and women”, and the Travaux Préparatoires of the Universal Declaration’, in: Niels Blokker et al. (eds.), Furthering the Frontiers of International Law: Sovereignty, Human Rights, Sustainable Development (Liber Amicorum Nico Schrijver), Leiden: Brill Nijhoff 2021, p. 457-472 (pre-print version of this chapter will be online soon at http://www.law.leidenuniv.nl/waaldijk).
Kees Waaldijk, ‘What First, What Later? Patterns in the Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partners in European Countries’, in: Marie Digoix (ed.), Same-Sex Families and Legal Recognition in Europe (European Studies of Population Series, volume 24), Cham (CH): Springer 2020, p. 11-44 (open access to this chapter at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-37054-1_2).
This timely book comprehensively examines whether the worst human rights violations directed specifically at sexual and gender minorities are punishable under international criminal law, as codified in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Drawing on general rules of interpretation, the development of human rights for sexual and gender minorities, and the social construction of gender, this monograph reveals that the worst crimes committed against persons because of their sexual orientation or gender identity can amount to crimes against humanity, particularly the crime of persecution under Article 7(1)(h). It also shows how legislators can be held individually criminally responsible for passing laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexuality.
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 