LGBTI equality and human rights in Europe and Central Asia

LGBTI children have the right to safety and equality

ILGA-Europe welcomes Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner comment on LGBTI children’s right to safety and equality

Today Nils Muižnieks, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, published the Human Rights Comment LGBTI children have the right to safety and equality.

We welcome this important and timely comment which addresses the very specific human rights violations LGBTI children experience. We also consider this comment to be an important contribution against a manipulative usage of arguments wrongly based on child protection and children’s rights by those who oppose and deny the human rights of LGBTI people.

Indeed, human rights are universal, interrelated and indivisible; therefore protecting and ensuring the human rights of children means protecting and ensuring human rights for all children, including LGBTI children.

We increasingly witness the use of a narrow and one-sided interpretation of children’s used in a number of European countries to justify the introduction of restrictive and discriminatory laws limiting access to information, education, and freedom as expression. The same arguments are used to prevent measures tackling school bullying and challenging gender stereotypes.

We particularly welcome the Commissioner’s call to ensure that “sex or gender assignment treatments [are] based on fully informed consent”.

ILGA-Europe
Brussels, 2 October 2014