🌈Include SOGIESC as a ground of discrimination in your complaint mechanisms

The first step to ensure LGBTQIA+ people are aware that they can make complaints through your complaint mechanism is to explicitly include sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics as grounds of discrimination. You could also provide examples of how discrimination may manifest and make available redress through your mechanism.

If the inclusion of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics could pose risks to your organisation, include ‘other status’ as grounds of discrimination to include SOGIESC, and other grounds that were not included in the complaint mechanism.

Born Free & Equal

The application of international human rights law is guided by the fundamental principles of universality, equality and non-discrimination, as framed by Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These core principles are reaffirmed through international human rights covenants and treaties, many of which contain open-ended provisions against discrimination, and have been interpreted to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.

In their jurisprudence, general comments, concluding observations, reports and communications, United Nations treaty bodies and special procedures have repeatedly held that sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics are prohibited grounds of discrimination under international law … All lists of prohibited grounds of discrimination in treaties include “sex”, which the Human Rights Committee has interpreted as including sexual orientation, and also contain reference to “other status”, which treaty bodies have interpreted as including sexual orientation and gender identity. Treaty bodies have called on States to adopt anti-discrimination legislation that explicitly includes sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics as grounds for protection and have welcomed enactment of such legislation.

Source: Page 9 & 55 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/Born_Free_and_Equal_WEB.pdf