R-Rights Statement on UN Reso Vote

Dear Sirs,

We, the members and allies of Rainbow Rights Project, Inc., as concerned members and advocates of the Filipino lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, urge you to support the protection of LGBT people by voting for the restoration of the reference to sexual orientation in the UN resolution on extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings on Monday, 20 December 2010, and to consider adding a reference to gender identity as well.

For ten years, this resolution has urged states to "to investigate promptly and thoroughly all killings, including... all killings committed for any discriminatory reason, including sexual orientation". Last month, we saw the amendment of this resolution which removed the reference to sexual orientation. Seventy-nine states voted to remove the reference, seventy opposed this removal, and forty-three states abstained. To our disappointment, the Philippines was one of the forty-three that abstained.

Please consider the following points:

1. While the Supreme Court ruled in April that the LGBT party, Ang Ladlad, could participate as a political party in the May 2010 elections, upholding the equal protection clause and recognizing that it represents a marginalized sector, there remains to be no declared state policy protecting Filipino LGBTs as a sector against violence, discrimination, harassment, and stigmatization.

2. In 2010, there were 11 documented cases of gender-motivated killings of LGBTs in the Philippines. But because of the non-existence of anti-hate crime laws, there are more that remain undocumented.

3. For over 12 years, we have been lobbying for the passage of the anti-discrimination bill which penalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to no avail. Even the UN Human Rights Committee has called our attention to this. Without this bill being passed into law, many LGBTs are denied employment, education, housing, and equal opportunities in civil society.

In his 2008 Report, Prof. Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings recognized the widespread killings of activists in the Philippines. This was confirmed in Atty. Al Parreno’s Report on Extrajudicial Killings (2000-2010), which shows that most victims are members or officers of activist groups, killed everywhere in the country. There is also dismal result in the judicial process, with statistically only 1.05% conviction. In the President’s State of the Nation Address in 2010, he condemned extrajudicial killings, saying, “Pananagutin natin ang mga mamamatay-tao.” (We will make the murderers pay).

These facts, these statistics also include LGBTs. We are also targets; our murders are also unsolved. Please do consider that LGBTs are victims, too and their murderers also have to pay.

In light of the outright human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the Philippines, to allow the removal of sexual orientation in the UN resolution on extrajudicial executions and killings to remain would be a serious detriment to our country and other countries where LGBTs are similarly unprotected by law.

On Monday, 20 December 2010, we urge the President to direct H.E. (Mr.) Libran N. Cabactulan, Philippine Permanent Representative to the UN on behalf of the Republic, to support the vote to restore sexual orientation as a basis of extrajudicial executions and unlawful killings at the United Nations General Assembly.



Angie Umbac, R-Rights