NG NGO participates in the 83rd session of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
The 83rd session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is held on 10–28 October 2022, during which it reviews Finland, Armenia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Belgium, Ukraine, Honduras, the Gambia and Switzerland on how they are implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Alina Mirzoyan, Human Rights and Advocacy Coordinator of New Generation Humanitarian NGO, delivered an oral statement on the Alternative Report — a commentary on the List of Issues CEDAW/C/ARM/Q/7 — submitted by the consortia of the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity (ECOM) and New Generation Humanitarian NGO (NGNGO) as per the invitation of the Committee during the review of the sixth periodic report by Armenia, on October 10-11.
The statement and the report particularly dwelled upon the Human Rights Violations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Republic of Armenia, and submitted the following recommendations of ECOM and NGNGO:
– Armenia undertakes active measures with haste, specifically, to adopt legislation that would ban all forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression within a reasonable timeframe;
– Armenia exercises activities to include SOGIE as aggravating circumstances for committing a crime, as well as to criminalize hate speech and hate acts based on SOGIE;
– Armenia undertakes to adopt an evidence-based, progressive national HIV-prevention plan that would include LBT women as individual key population groups, allocate the necessary resources for their HIV-coverage, and start gathering proper HIV-statistics in relation to LBT women;
– Armenia creates and adopts a progressive, evidence-based legislative framework for legal gender recognition and change of gender markers for trans people at large, making gender recognition akin to a regular administrative process, as well as eliminates the need to undergo gender – affirming medical procedures for gender marker change;
– Armenia takes steps to exclude homosexuality, gender dysphoria, and “transsexualism” or any other related terms from its list of psychiatric disorders as per the recommendations and data available in ICD-10 and ICD-11
– Armenia ensures protection mechanisms of labour rights of LBT women as well as ensures their engagement in the decision-making processes.
The Alternative Report submitted by the consortia of the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity (ECOM) and New Generation Humanitarian NGO (NGNGO) to the CEDAW is available here.
