GALE The Global Alliance for LGBT education
March 26, 2007 - Today, 28 international experts launched the Yogyakarta Principles. The Yogyakarta Principles translate general human rights to the position of people who may be disadvantaged on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The participants of the international meeting included a former high commissioner for human rights, independent UN experts, members of human right organizations and NGOs, judges, academicians and human right activists.
Human rights are universal, without exception. Nevertheless, men, women and persons whose sexual orientation does not reflect the dominating (heterosexual) standards frequently are victims of rape, torment, assassination, violence and other degrading treatment, particularly on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. “The Yogyakarta Principles underline that human rights should not have any exceptions”, said researcher Maria Onufer Corrêa from Brazil, co-president of the congress.
The Yogyakarta Principles were drafted to push the UN, national human rights organizations and NGOs into more action. The launch date of 26 March was not chosen accidentally. This date it was exactly a year ago that at a Human Rights Commission meeting, 54 UN member states called the UN in Genève to more action in this area.
The Yogyakarta Principles cover a broad spectrum of human rights and are a response to extrajudicial executions, rejection of the rights to meet and free expression of opinion and discrimination at work, at training and in education, in health care and jurisdiction and at immigration.
Article 16, which refers to education, has 8 subparagraphs. The full Yogyakarta Principles can be found on http://yogyakartaprinciples.org/. We added article 16 tot our database of good practices.