February 2014 – We enthusiastically welcomed the approval of the European Union Roadmap against Homophobia and Discrimination on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, known as the Lunacek Report. We note that Amnesty International has also taken a strong stance against the discrimination and inhuman and degrading treatment to which transgender people are subjected in Europe.
http://www.amnesty.it/Europa-trattamenti-disumani-e-degradanti-per-persone-trangender
The Lunacek Report correctly addresses the issue of EQUALITY and the RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION of transgender people, specifically addressing, within the scope of the competences conferred on the Union by the Treaties, the areas of work and employment, the right to education, health, the right to asylum, access to goods and services, and freedom of movement.
Specifically, the Parliament calls on the European Commission to act, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, to permanently depathologize any condition affecting the gender identity of European citizens. Equally clearly, the need to protect the rights of intersex/DSD people (i.e., children born with atypical genitalia) is expressed by prohibiting "corrective" cosmetic surgery to the atypical organs in childhood, procedures that often have dramatic consequences for the lives of those who undergo them. (These rights are enshrined in other European resolutions, such as the recent October 2013 resolution on the "Right of Children to Physical Integrity," or the United Nations Special Report on Torture, which recommends that Member States avoid surgical and pharmacological interventions on newborns and children to "normalize" their primary and secondary sexual characteristics.).
Amnesty's report clearly addresses the issue of transgender people's self-determination, urging European states to ensure the right to legal recognition of their gender identity through "a fast, accessible, and transparent process that respects each individual's feelings about their gender identity, protecting the right to privacy, and avoiding imposing mandatory requirements that violate human rights." This awareness is now coming from all sides, as is right and natural.
The Lunacek Strategy joins the numerous recommendations, resolutions, strategies, roadmaps, and so on, that should have ensured our national legislation had already complied in the past. Will this too be a useless document? Will this too be grounds for official sanctions and warnings against our country? Or can we all finally be less afraid to assert our sacrosanct and inalienable rights, against the stubbornness of those in our parliament who still refuse to even hear about certain matters?
For these and other reasons, we believe there is no longer any justification for delaying the scheduling, discussion, and approval of legislative instruments aimed at respecting the rights of transgender and intersex people.
Octavia Voza
Arcigay Trans Rights
Flavio Romani
President of Arcigay
