Thailand Constitutional Court rules against marriage equality

Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled a law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman in the country is constitutional.

The Foundation for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Rights and Justice, a Thai advocacy group, filed a lawsuit that challenged Section 1448 of the country’s Civil and Commercial Code, which does not extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Bloomberg said the Constitutional Court in its ruling said Thai lawmakers “should draft laws that guarantee the rights for gender diverse people.”

Read: https://www.washingtonblade.com/2021/11/18/thailand-constitutional-court-rules-against-marriage-equality/

International Olympic Committee issues new guidelines on transgender athletes

Athletes will no longer be required to undergo “medically unnecessary” hormone treatments to compete, the IOC said.

Read: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/international-olympic-committee-issues-new-guidelines-transgender-athl-rcna5775

Iceland, Norway, and the Netherlands have the highest levels of LGBTI acceptance

Read: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/global-acceptance-index-lgbt/

Spain opens free IVF to single women, lesbian and bisexual women, trans people with gestational capacity

Lesbian and bisexual women, single women, and trans people with gestational capacity in Spain will now have access to free in vitro fertilization (IVF) services through the country’s national health system, the government has announced.

Rainbow communities celebrated the news after the country’s Health Minister signed an executive order, reversing a 2014 policy that restricted access to the service to cis straight women in a relationship and to individuals with infertility. Activists have ever since fought to see assisted reproduction benefits return, and had considered this as “a ’red line’ in the negotiations for the LGBTI and Trans Law currently being discussed”.

“We have always understood that achieving rights such as assisted reproduction would benefit lesbian, bisexual women and trans people with gestational capacity, without harming anyone,” said FELGTBI+ president Uge Sangil during the signing ceremony. “It is an example of how recognising LGTBI rights means recognising human rights for society as a whole”.

Other groups echoed their appreciation. “Finally, assisted reproduction is included for single women, lesbians, bisexual women, and trans people with gestational capacity,” Arcópoli wrote in a tweet. “This is the way to continue expanding rights and not leaving anyone out.”

Source: https://ilga.org/lgbti-news-201-ilga-nov-2021#Europe

Stating the Obvious: On September 16^th, the first section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled in the case X v. Poland (no. 20741/10) that the denial of custody of a child must not be based on the sexual orientation of a parent

Source: Anne Kompatscher, https://verfassungsblog.de/stating-the-obvious/

On September 16^th, the first section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled in the case X v. Poland (no. 20741/10) that the denial of custody of a child must not be based on the sexual orientation of a parent. According to the Court, Poland has violated Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) when refusing the applicant full parental rights and custody of her youngest child. This ruling comes too late for the applicant, whose child has grown up, as the decision of the ECtHR took twelve years. Nevertheless, in the current Polish context, the finding of the Court on this case sends an important message.

Poland currently dominates European and international news with negative headlines: the rule of law crisis, an escalating conflict with the Court of Justice of the EU, the dire consequences of strict abortion laws, the pushbacks of migrants at the Polish border to Belarus and last but not least the continuous undermining of the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. According to a survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) of 2019 among LGBTQIA+ people in Poland, 68% of respondents find intolerance against them has risen in the last 5 years, and 96% find their government is not effectively combatting prejudice against them. Both of these numbers are the highest compared to all other EU countries.

In light of this context, or maybe because of it, it is worth having a close look at the recent decision of the ECtHR that finds Poland violating the parenting rights of the applicant, a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Facts of the case

The conflict between the applicant (X) and her husband over custody of their four children began in 2005. At the same time, X started a relationship with a woman, Z. Subsequently, when X and her husband divorced, X as the main-carer was granted full custody for the children.

In 2006, the applicant’s ex-husband wanted to change the custody arrangement bringing forward an expert opinion, according to which the applicant was not able to provide the necessary care to her children, as she was “excessively concentrating on herself and her relations with Z”.

The District Court restricted the parental rights of X and stated that she did not want “to abandon her excessive intimacy with Z to improve her relations with her children”. The Court gave the applicant’s ex-husband custody over the four children claiming that it would be better for the “wellbeing of the children”.

After a first failed attempt to revise the custody order, in 2009, the applicant requested to be granted parenting rights for the youngest child, D. In the second negative decision in this request, the Court underlined the fact that X was still in a relationship with Z who would also “spend the night in the applicant’s flat”. Furthermore, the Court stated the child needed a “male role model” for its development. The appeal of X was dismissed, with the remark that “the dismissal of her application was not on the grounds of the applicant’s sexual orientation”, but also that “the issue of raising a child in a same-sex relationship is very controversial”.

Following this decision, X decided to apply to the ECtHR.

A hardly surprising judgement of the ECtHR

In the judgement of September 16^th, the ECtHR reiterates its well-established jurisprudence that Art. 14 provides a complementary provision as the Court can only declare discrimination related to rights guaranteed by the Convention. In the examined case, the discrimination relates to Art. 8, the Article guaranteeing the right to respect for private and family life.

X v. Poland is similar to a case of 1999, Salgueiro da Silva Mouta v. Portugal, (no. 33290/96) in which the ECtHR found a Portuguese Court had violated Art. 14 in conjunction with Art. 8 when basing the refusal of custody for Mr da Silva Mouta for his daughter on his sexual orientation. Despite the similarities of the cases, the ECtHR refers to this case only briefly when stating that Art. 14 and the prohibition of discrimination cover questions relating to sexual orientation and gender identity (Para. 70).

Even if sexual discrimination based on sexual orientation and parental rights of LGBTQIA+ is hardly a new concept for the ECtHR, the Court starts by establishing afresh that differential treatment needs a “reasonable justification” (Para. 69). The Court cites research as proof that children of rainbow families are not harmed by the fact of being raised by a same-sex couple. Hence differential treatment cannot be based on the assumption that the wellbeing of children is adversely affected by being raised in a rainbow family. It is not surprising that the Court considers it necessary to cite this research so extensively, even though it has already dealt with parental rights for LGBTQIA+ parents on several occasions before, for instance in Salgueiro da Silva Mouta v. Portugal (no. 33290/96) and Fretté v. France (no. 36515/97). The argumentation of the Polish Court shows that it has not acknowledged this ECtHR jurisprudence. The ECtHR then looks at the concrete case and establishes that the two parents in question have “similar parenting abilities and qualities” (Art. 84) and therefore a differential treatment cannot be justified.

The twofold argumentation of the ECtHR first looks generally at research concerning parenting abilities of homosexual parents and then assesses the abilities of the parents in the concrete case. Looking at the Polish judgments, it makes sense that the ECtHR stresses the fact that there is no prima facie assumption that homosexuals lack parenting abilities in principle. However, a custody case must depend on the best interest of the child and that needs to be evaluated by looking at the concrete case at hand.

Gendered Stereotypes

In Para. 45, the Court also refers to the Intra-American Court which in 2012 in Atala Riffo and Daughters v. Chile found that requiring a woman to not engage in or to end a relationship with another woman for the wellbeing of her children is based on a “traditional concept of women’s social role as a mother”.

The same can be said about the case before the ECtHR: the Polish Court’s assessment focused on the fact that X “remained in a relationship with Z”. The Polish Court concentrated extensively on the well-being of D with regard to the new homosexual relationship of his mother, whereas the new relationship of his father was not examined to the same extent. Hence, the Polish Court did not only discriminate against X because of her sexual orientation but adopted also a very gendered vision of what a mother should and should not do: X should focus on her children and not “excessively” on her relationship with Z. Contrarily, the child’s father’s new relationship was not discussed by the Polish Court. The ECtHR also recognises that the Polish Court repeated “at every stage of the proceedings” the importance of the “male role model” and found this to be discriminatory (Para. 90).

A not so impartial Polish Court

The first set of Polish proceedings regarding the custody was decided by the single Judge D.T. who had been opposing the relationship of X with Z since the very beginning. In the first appeal, the applicant submitted that Judge D.T. was biased, as she was a friend of her parents who were openly opposing that X was in a relationship with a woman. The District Court, which was the same Court as the one where D.T. sat, dismissed this challenge of bias. In later proceedings for amendments of the custody order, D.T again participated in the chamber deciding the case. The ECtHR, however, did not engage with this argument of the applicant regarding a possible violation of Art. 6 since the applicant had lodged this complaint too late. Nonetheless, this section puts to the fore personal biases of judges who have discriminatory views and are still in a position to judge over homosexual parents.

The dissenting opinion of judge Woityczek

The Polish ECtHR Justice Krzysztof Wojtyczek did not agree with the majority. According to him, no discrimination had happened. In his dissenting opinion, he states that in “international human-rights proceedings it is difficult to establish facts” and narrates further facts from the proceedings in front of the Polish Court that the ECtHR did not include in the final judgement. By turning the central question into one about facts, the Polish Judge refuses to recognise that the application did not concern the decision on refused custody as such but the justification that the Polish Court gave for the refusal. Basing the refusal on the fact that X was “excessively involved with Z” and that D needed a “male role model”, the Polish Court engaged in discriminatory reasoning, as the majority correctly held and the Justice Wojtyczek misses.

Context of the decision: discrimination against LGBTQIA+ in Poland

Notably, the ECtHR took its sweet time to decide the case: the judgement was issued twelve years after the dismissal of the appeal by the Polish regional Court. Meanwhile, the youngest two children had moved in with X and her partner, now with the approval of the applicant’s ex-husband. In a dispute about custody of children, such long periods between the application and the decision of a case are highly problematic: in the meantime, children grow, and an eventual decision will not have any real impact on the case at hand. The ECtHR envisions dealing with cases “within three years after they are brought”. X v Poland missed this mark by nine years.

It is not clear from the decision why the ECtHR took so long to decide. The decision of the ECtHR falls into a political situation in Poland that sees discrimination against LGBTQIA+ normalised and much exacerbated compared to the situation twelve years ago.

In the meantime, the current Polish government has spread more and more openly anti- LGBTQIA+ sentiment. Through terms as “LGBT ideology” and policies as the LGBT-Free zones, the Polish government encourages discrimination against members of the LGBTQIA+ community. With regard to the recent judicial reforms in Poland and the lack of judicial independence, LGBTQIA+ members also have to fear not being able to appeal against discriminatory behaviour of the Polish administration.

In stating the obvious, namely that the discrimination of a parent based on their sexual orientation infringes the ECHR, the ECtHR opposes such normalisation of discriminatory behaviour in Poland.

According to an inventory list from October 2020 by ILGA, the European umbrella organisation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associations, currently, twelve cases on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics against Poland are lodged at the European Court of Justice and the ECtHR.

In the current political and societal Polish context, where structural discrimination against LGBTQIA+ is well embedded in hostile policies of the Polish government, the case X v. Poland may come too late for the applicant X but nevertheless sends an important message to Polish Courts: discriminating against LGBTQIA+ people when it comes to their parental rights infringes the ECHR.

Bulgarian Constitutional Court issued a binding interpretative decision that “sex” can only have a binary biological meaning

(c) Teodora Petrova -Verfassungblog: https://verfassungsblog.de/value-judgments/

On 26 October 2021, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court issued a binding interpretative decision on the definition of the concept of “sex”. The Court held that “sex” can only have a binary biological meaning. Instead of engaging in a legal debate in relation to the discussed matter, the Constitutional Court chose to interpret the law through “values established in the society” that are derived from “other normative systems, such as religion, morality and custom”. The result is a judgment which not only neglects the rights and freedoms of transgender people, but also relies on a reasoning that could undermine women’s rights.

On “Traditional Bulgarian Values”

Over the last couple of years, certain political parties have relied extensively on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to gain political traction. Currently, Bulgaria is preparing for the parliamentary and presidential elections in November and politicians do not shy away from attempting to turn people against each other for their own benefit, e.g. by claiming that “gender ideology” is a threat to traditional Bulgarian values.

It is also against this background that the Supreme Court of Cassation had requested the constitutional interpretation in order to establish if, in addition to the biological meaning, the concept of “sex” also possessed a psychological and/or social dimension. The Constitutional Court can provide interpretative decisions on the basis of Article 149(1) of the Constitution. Such decisions are of considerable importance as the Constitution can then no longer be understood without recourse to the interpretative case law.¹⁾Emilia Drumeva, Constitutional Law/Конституционно Право (5th edn, Ciela 2018) 603ff; Stephan Stoichev, Constitutional Law/Конституционно Право (5th edn, Ciela 2002) 594ff. In historical terms, the interpretative power of the Constitutional Court was seen not only as an important tool to clarify vague constitutional provisions, but was intended to facilitate a reading of the Constitution that reflected changing social realities.²⁾Drumeva (n 1) 604. The interpretative decisions of the Court are also important guidelines for the legislator.

In its interpretative decision on the concept of “sex”, the Constitutional Court developed its reasoning on the basis of a “traditional binary division between sexes”. It thereby drew on a decision it had issued in 2018. The Court held that it could only depart from its older stance if there was sufficient “social need and social justification” for this. Therefore, instead of delving into the related issues of the respective rights and freedoms, the reasoning of the Court chose to answer the question through examining the “Bulgarian cultural, spiritual and value identity” in order to assess if there was a “social justification” to depart from its earlier case law.

In terms of the personal rights and freedoms, the Court satisfied itself with a brief statement on the right of transgender people to self-determination. One may wonder if this is indeed the case. Transgender people are unable to administratively reassign their sex in Bulgaria even if they have an identity in their social and family lives that does not reflect their official civil status. This remains to be the case despite that they have undergone medical gender reassignment. In Y.T vs. Bulgaria, the European Court of Human Rights has found this to be in violation of Article 8 ECHR. The Court in Strasbourg agreed that the domestic law did not foresee any administrative possibilities for sex reassignment in the civil status which could place transgender people in a state of anxiety and uncertainty. Article 76(5) of the Law on the Civil Registration explicitly states that the change of sex could not be done administratively leaving recourse to the judicial system as the only option. Yet, as the Y.T vs. Bulgaria judgment has demonstrated, regardless of recognizing the fact that an individual had undergone sexual transition altering their physical appearance, courts can still consider that it was in the public interest not to allow the legal change of sex as this could challenge legal certainty given the state of the national law. The courts face different impediments to recognizing sexual transition and sex reassignments, including the lack of a definition of transsexuality in the law and the absence of rules and criteria for granting or rejecting requests to change a person’s registered sex (as the Court of Cassation pointed out in one decision). Concerning the relevance of the ECtHR case law, the Constitutional Court shifted the discussion towards the legislator’s responsibility to address the gaps in the law concerning legal pathways for sex reassignment. Given the related decisions of Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court, however, it is questionable if the domestic legislator could indeed effectively address these shortcomings, especially in view of the Court’s traditionalist argumentation explained below.

The Bulgarian Constitutional Court recognized the possibility for self-determination, but stated that this does not lead to obligations of the state “to recognize this self-determination that is different from the biological sex”. The Court reached that conclusion by relying on three starting points that were all ultimately based on the alleged cultural and spiritual traditions of the Bulgarians and are thus debatable. First, marriage is defined in the Constitution as a union between a man and a woman (Article 46(1)). According to the Court, this provision was based on the binary understanding of sexes. The Court regarded the existence of such a provision in the constitutional text as an expression of the historical past of the nation that understood marriage only in terms of a union between a man and a woman. The Court pointed out that this understanding (in addition to the other traditional Bulgarian values) was developed throughout the years. The need for asserting such values was part of the “political and national identity” of the nation against various historical challenges. Next, by relying on the different constitutional provisions addressing the protection provided to maternity and family, the Court yet again placed the focus on the understanding of these provisions in the light of the “cultural and spiritual traditions of the Bulgarian people”.

The third lengthy aspect concerned the traditional Bulgarian values stemming from Orthodox Christianity which is mentioned in Article 13(3) of the Constitution. The Court considered that the various provisions on the protection of maternity, children, and family were an expression of the Orthodox Christian values. The Court proceeded to give a long overview of the meaning of Orthodox Christianity for the country’s traditional values. This included numerous historical accounts like the fight for the independence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Church’s role in building national values. The Court recognized that religious institutions were separated from the state (Article 13(2) of the Constitution) but pointed out that the proclamation in the constitutional text of a particular religious denomination as traditional was “certainly not without significance”. The Court concluded that Article 13(3) was an exception to the general pattern of modern European constitutions. As such, the provision of Article 13(3) was of specific significance for the delineation of the “Bulgarian cultural and spiritual identity”, which should be taken into account in the Constitution’s interpretation.

An obscure concluding argument of the Constitutional Court concerned the observation that the “traditional binary division between sexes” was a foundation for the reproduction of humankind. In this relation, the Court mentioned different demographic projections that positioned the country as one of the fastest-ageing and depopulating states in the world. This was then used as an argument for the Court not to reconsider its position on the solely biological dimensions of the concept of sex. It was not clearly explained how the demographic issue related to the rights of transgender people. Moreover, the logic of the reasoning could be viewed as a slippery slope argument that can be used to justify attempts for curbing women’s rights, such as it serving as an argument for the criminalization of abortion (as it used to be a practice during the years of socialism).

In general, the concept of sex is mentioned only once in the constitutional text, namely as one of the grounds on the basis of which no discrimination is allowed (Article 6(2) of the Constitution). Instead of enlarging the scope of protection against discrimination, the constitutional decision does the opposite. The result of such an approach is that LGBTQ people are excluded from the scope of constitutional protection with a range of legal consequences. Moreover, as one of the dissenting judges in the case has pointed out, the concept of “biological sex” in itself is a term that is empty of content as the legal understanding of a person could not be simply limited to the biological aspects. Hence, the understanding of “sex” would necessarily require a psychological and social dimension.

How a Convention on the Prevention of Violence against Women Violates the Bulgarian Constitution

As mentioned above, the Constitutional Court laid the groundwork for the new interpretive decision back in 2018 when it ruled on the constitutionality of the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (also known as the “Istanbul Convention”). 75 members of Parliament had requested a constitutional review on the compatibility of the Convention with the Bulgarian Constitution on the basis of the Court’s power for preliminary control over the constitutionality of international treaties (Article 149(1)4 of the Constitution). The Constitutional Court then established that the Convention contained aspects that were in violation of the rule of law and therefore struck down the Convention’s ratification.

The Court focused on the Convention’s use of “gender” alongside the concept of “sex” and claimed that it introduced dimensions of “sex” that are independent of the biological aspects. According to the Court, the simultaneous presence of concepts such as “gender” and “sex” moved the Convention away from its stated aims of protecting women. In particular, the existence of “social dimensions of sex” could mean the recognition of a “sex” that was “different from the biological one”. The Court contemplated that the concept of “gender” represents a “social construct” which presupposes contradictory applications in Bulgarian law. According to the Court, national law and the Constitution were “entirely built upon the understanding of the binary existence of humankind” where sex is understood only in the biological categories of a man and a woman. According to the Court, having two different understandings of “sex” in the national law was in violation of the principle of legal certainty and thus the rule of law principle pursuant to Article 4(1) of the Constitution. The Court was of the opinion, that ratifying the Convention would require the national law to develop mechanisms for the recognition of a sex that was different from the “binary” biological one which would be in violation of the Constitution.

One of the dissenting opinions to the decision pointed out that an assessment of the constitutionality of the Convention should have focused on the obligations that stemmed from it and whether those obligations were in accordance with the constitutional text. Moreover, according to the dissenting opinion, none of the Convention clauses required the state to recognize a “third sex” or to commit to legitimize relationships that do not meet the present understanding of marriage by the national law as equal to marriage. Finally, the dissenters accused the reasoning of the majority of the Constitutional Court of creating new concepts, such as the “binary sexuality”, that were not relevant for the review on constitutionality.

In addition to yielding negative legal consequences for all people that cannot be simply ascribed to one of the binary categories (the idea of two sexes has been questioned in science), the reasoning of the Constitutional Court also undermines the development of women’s rights: in order to support its claim of a binary distinction in the constitutional text, the Court sought to define what the sex of a woman entailed. It held that “woman” was associated with the constitutional provisions on the social role of a “mother” (for instance, Article 14 and Article 47(2) of the Constitution), which is also related to the constitutional provisions on “childbirth” and “obstetric care” (Article 47(2) of the Constitution). Such reasoning oversimplifies the matter by turning the clock back on years of development of women’s rights since it presents a constitutional understanding of a woman that is reduced to her reproductive biological functions.

Fuelling Social Divide

The most recent interpretative decision of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court indicates a retraction from the legal reasoning and its replacement by obscure concepts that are usually inherent to the realm of political populism and nationalism. Instead of engaging in a legal discussion on the potential of an evolved reading of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court relied on vague and disputable concepts such as “traditional Bulgarian values”. The incorporation of the religious element in such unclear constructs on the constitutional level is reminiscent of the constitutional development in Hungary that “strengthens the role of religion to constitutionally legitimize the concept of ethnic nation”. In addition, the reliance on religion in the interpretation of constitutional provisions in a secular and multiethnic country is more than questionable, not least given the traditionally unequal position of women in the Christian Orthodox religion that also fiercely opposes LGBTQ rights. One of the dissenting judges pointed out that the Constitutional Court does not seem to understand its role in the greater social processes in the country. A couple of days after the issuing of the decision, the office of a community LGBTQ centre in Sofia was attacked by the supporters of a far-right politician. In times when politics deliberately uses LGBTQ persons as a scapegoat at the expense of igniting social divide, the Constitutional Court should not pick up and feed questionable political rhetorics but be a voice of legal reason.

References

↑1	Emilia Drumeva, Constitutional Law/Конституционно Право (5th edn, Ciela 2018) 603ff; Stephan Stoichev, Constitutional Law/Конституционно Право (5th edn, Ciela 2002) 594ff.
↑2	Drumeva (n 1) 604.

The European project “DxB – Identities on the move” is delighted to announce the opening of the Call for Papers & Panels in view of its Final Conference to be held on 23-24 June 2022 in Castel San Pietro Terme (Italy)

The European project “DxB – Identities on the move” is delighted to announce the opening of the Call for Papers & Panels in view of its Final Conference to be held on 23-24 June 2022 in Castel San Pietro Terme (Italy). Expressions of interest are invited for the delivery of paper and panel proposals within the overall project’s theme: The implementation of the Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 promoting the circulation of public documents in the everyday practice of several EU Member States. 

To ensure the widest participation and highest quality of speakers and discussants as well as the variety of topics and issues, we encourage applicants to submit proposals for papers and for panels on a topic strongly related to Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, analysing how this act is currently implemented in the context of national civil status systems and fundamental rights and exploring the potential positive impact on the freedom of movement of European citizens and on the enjoyment of their fundamental rights as well as focusing on critical aspects and deficiencies of the current legal framework. 

Participation is not restricted to lawyers or to established scholars. We welcome registrars, public administrators, professionals, practitioners, doctoral students. 

Paper proposals must have a maximum of 500 characters, panel proposals a maximum of 800 characters and must be submitted by 22 December 2021 to info@identitiesonthemove.eu. Applicants will be informed about the outcome of the abstract selection process no later than 15 January 2022. If successfully selected, full papers must be submitted by 15 April 2022.

We encourage submissions in English. However, as part of the vision of a truly European conference, paper and panel proposals will also be accepted in Italian and German. 

For all information, please click on the Call for Papers & Panels below and visit the page dedicated to the Final Conference on our website.

Click here for the CALL FOR PAPERS & PANELS

Submission Templates for paper & panel proposals are available here:

• DxB Abstract proposal template
• DxB Panel proposal template
• DxB Full Paper template

New website launched about being intersex in Europe

To mark Intersex Awareness Day on 26 October, OII Europe and NNID Foundation launched a new website thisisintersex.org, talking about being intersex in Europe and the issues intersex people combat daily. The goal of the website is to increase the knowledge on intersex human rights issues in Europe, contributing to the overarching goal of reaching more acceptance.

Visit the new website thisisintersex.org.

Council of Europe: PACE calls for decriminalisation of same-sex relations in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan

On 1 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) issued a written declaration on the decriminalisation of same-sex relations in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. ILGA-Europe call upon the European Union and the Council of Europe to ensure that decriminalisation of same-sex relations is a cornerstone of partnership and cooperation with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, voluntary sexual relations between two men are punishable by imprisonment under their Criminal Codes. Due to the widespread failure to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity among the general public and law enforcement, this law negatively impacts all of the LGBT community in both countries. Read the written declaration of the PACE.

Hungary – High court rejects claim that denial of listing LGBTQI organisation among family organisations by Ministry of Human Capacities amounts to discrimination

Read: https://www.equalitylaw.eu/downloads/5528-hungary-high-court-rejects-claim-that-denial-of-listing-lgbtqi-organisation-among-family-organisations-by-ministry-of-human-capacities-amounts-to-discrimination-94-kb