Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics
A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions
Thoughts
and stories of
being Being
LGBTI by Being
LGBTI in Asia.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights also reported:
• ‘alarmingly high rates of homicidal violence’118
• ‘so-called “honour” killings, carried out against those seen by family or community members to
have brought shame on a family’119
• ‘gay men who have been kidnapped, beaten and humiliated, with film clips of their abuse shared
on social media’120
• ‘lesbians assaulted and raped because of their sexual orientation’121
• ‘the risk to human rights defenders working to uphold the rights of [lesbian, gay and bisexual]
persons, some of whom have been subjected to violence, threats and verbal denigration’.122
In Indonesia, violence against lesbian and bisexual women has included:
• forced marriage
• ‘corrective rape’, where women are forced to have sex with a man to ‘cure them’
• forced institutionalisation in psychiatric or religious facilities
• verbal abuse and bullying in schools by students or teachers
• street harassment
• harassment and intimidation by police.
Violence intervention and prevention are difficult, particularly for lesbian, gay and bisexual young people
who can be trapped by age, economic dependence, lack of agency and lack of mobility.123 Much of this
violence is perpetrated by public officials, in particular by law enforcement officials, especially the police.124
However, an extensive five-country study of violence against lesbians and bisexual women, which also
included violence against transgender people, found that:
36
118
High Commissioner for Human Rights, Discrimination and violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and
gender identity, 4 May 2015, A/HRC/29/23, para. 27.
119
Ibid, para. 30.
120
Ibid, para 30, referring to A/HRC/26/50, para 14.
121
Ibid, para 30, referring to CEDAW/C/GUY/CO/7-8, para. 22 and A/HRC/20/16, paras. 55, 71, 73, 76.
122
Ibid, para. 31, referring to A/HRC/25/55/Add.3 paras. 433-435 and 480-482.
123
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (now Outright Action International), Violence on the basis of Sexual
Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression Against Non-Heteronormative Women in Asia 2012; at http://iglhrc.org/sites/
default/files/386-1_0.pdf.
124
APF, ACJ Report: Human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity, 2010, p. 27; at www.asiapacificforum.net/resources/
acj-report-sogi/; High Commissioner for Human Rights, Discrimination and violence against individuals based on their sexual
orientation and gender identity, 4 May 2015; A/HRC/29/23, para. 34, referring to A/HRC/19/61/Add.4 paras 168 and 172 and
CAT/C/KGZ/CO/2, para. 19.