🌤️Raise Public Awareness
Public awareness of your complaint mechanism is a crucial component of increasing access to remedies, as most people are not aware of the existence of these channels or their functions.
Advertise your organisation’s mandate, services, and reporting platforms both in high-traffic areas as well as key locations for target communities.
Actively reach out to target groups to introduce & disseminate the mechanism. Contact LGBTQIA+ organisations to make them aware of the mechanism and ask them to share it with community members for a more targeted outreach.
Provide examples of how people can use the complaint mechanisms. State what your organisation does, the organisation’s mandate, and actions that the organisation is empowered to take on behalf of complainants.
Be explicit that your organisation’s mandate and services extend to LGBTQIA+ people. This helps LGBTQIA+ people in understanding their rights and protections offered to them and addresses their fear of criminalisation. Some examples:
Duty-bearers in healthcare settings should highlight that patients are entitled to be placed in wards corresponding to their gender, to use a name different from the one on their legal documents, and that they must be referred to by the correct terms, not slurs. Patients experiencing this should explicitly be invited to lodge complaints through the appropriate portal.
When advertising the ADUBULI complaint mechanism for schools, duty-bearers should be explicit that this includes bullying from teachers and students alike, and extends to bullying on the basis of SOGIESC. These terms should be explained in the appropriate language for each level of understanding.
Be transparent about the investigation process. Knowing the next steps and anticipated timeline for responding will increase LGBTQIA+ people’s confidence in using the complaints mechanism.
State upfront the protections available to complainants in terms of criminalisation, privacy and confidentiality, and retaliation. This will increase trust in the reporting mechanisms, oversight bodies, and other complaint mechanisms and encourage more reporting about human rights violations.
State upfront the potential outcomes and available remedies. State upfront the potential outcomes of the investigation: apology, reinstatement to a job, compensation for lost wages, changes to a policy or developing and promoting anti-discrimination policies. This information helps LGBTQIA+ people understand what remedies they may seek as an alternative to judicial reparations.
Best Practices: Australian Human Rights Commission (Public Awareness & Engagement)
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) designed their website to make it easy for complainants to submit issues for review.
On the landing page, the “complaints button” is prominently displayed on the top right of the website and remains in the same position on any page within the website.
The site also plainly states that they serve LGBTQIA+ communities and issues of discrimination on the basis of SOGIESC.
It is easy to get more information about how to lodge complaints. The AHRC provides information about the Commission, the process, and possible outcomes.
The information is provided in several formats - as a downloadable PDF document, or in audio format.
The complaint form explains why certain personal information must be collected in order to process a complaint, and also offers the complainant an option to state what assistance they may need to participate in the process.
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