Pressestelle des Lesben-
und Schwulenverbandes (LSVD)
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
Oral Intervention by Mr. Philipp Braun
Agenda Item 11: Civil and Political Rights
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Chairperson, distinguished delegates,
My name is Philipp Braun and I am speaking on behalf of the Canadian
HIV/AIDS Legal Network which has links with many organisations including
the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, of which I am a Board Member.
Today I am addressing the issue of the civil and political rights that
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people are entitled to
under both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. I am doing this
coming from a country that epitomizes both some milestones of activism
for LGBT people as well as one of the darkest hours faced by LGBT people
in the last century.
The fight against the criminalization of gay men and lesbians through so
called “sodomy laws” stood at the beginning of the more than 100 years
old movement of LGBT people for emancipation and equality before the law.
Indeed it still is our most basic demand today!
In 1867, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first known gay activist, spoke
against sodomy laws at a legal conference in Germany. In 1897, the first
gay activist group (the Scientific Humanitarian Committee) was formed by
Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. The issue of Germany’s infamous Section 175
was discussed in parliament the same year. After being the site of the
first political movement for LGBT rights that flourished in the 1920s,
Germany was also the site for the worst persecution of LGBT people under
the Nazis. Gay men were forced to wear the infamous pink triangle in the
Nazi concentration camps and thousands perished.
Germany’s example demonstrates how societies can change and overcome
extreme discrimination and prejudice. In 2000, the German Parliament
unanimously apologized for the prosecution of lesbians and gays under
the Nazis and for their continuing criminalization in the 50s and 60s.
In 2003, it voted for the construction of a memorial for the persecuted
homosexual victims of the Nazis for which a design competition is being
currently held1 . We invite High Commissioner Arbour and all
delegations and NGOs at the Commission to come to Berlin for the
inauguration of the memorial and to contemplate the painful lessons we
have had to learn in Germany about persecution and intolerance.
Today over 70 countries still criminalize consensual same-sex sexual
relations in spite of the fact that in 1994 the Human Rights Committee
ruled in Toonen v. Australia2 that such laws are in
contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. Indeed there are members in this Commission that still torture
and execute gay men and lesbians for consensual same-sex activity.
On all continents LGBT people continue to have their rights to free
speech, association, privacy, liberty, freedom from torture and even to
life itself infringed by states and private actors. In Egypt gay men
have been entrapped by the state and charged with debauchery. In Nepal
transgender people are subject to police harassment and violence. In
Jamaica some popular dance hall music has called openly for the murder
of gay men and last year the founder of the group J-FLAG Brian
Williamson was murdered. In Poland the mayor of Warsaw prohibited a LGBT
pride parade because he saw it as violating public decency.
Many special rapporteurs and treaty bodies have repeatedly underlined
the obligations of states to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of
sexual orientation or gender identity. Today together with the
International Lesbian and Gay Association, which has members in 90
countries, we call upon this Commission to recognize the human rights of
LGBT people and upon states to uphold their duty to protect people from
discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.
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- http://www.gedenkort.de/eng-chronicle.htm
- Communication No. 488/1992: Australia, CCPR/C/50/D/488/1992, Nicholas Toonen, v. Australia, April 4, 1994
