Gender, Sexuality, Islam & Science – Spring 2023

This reading & discussion course will create a space for participants to reflect on and debate critical perspectives in the development of discourses on gender and feminism across the world. The readings explore the variety of shapes women’s movements have taken; how race, class, gender and sexuality interact with one another; and the implications of notions of ‘development’ on women’s movements.

This 8-week course is offered in collaboration with the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR). It’s a space for those keen to bridge philosophical, academic and personal perspectives.

Application Link

Deadline to Apply: 28 February 2023

Questions? Email: Noshaan Shahid (aunshahid38@gmail.com)

#SupportWHRDs for #16Days 2020

Government crackdown against women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has consistently intensified during 2020. Governments have systematically restricted civic space & shut down organizations, and they’re increasingly targeting the few remaining activists with terrorism & security charges. As such, WHRDs have systematically faced government harassment, smear campaigns, detention, arrest, lengthy prison sentences, torture and even assassinations.

For the 16 Days of Activism to violence against women, CSBR joins FEMENA, WHRD-MENA Coalition, DAWN-Mena, AWID, Human Rights Watch, and the International Service for Human Rights, to launch a campaign to raise awareness of the situation of women human rights defenders across Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Follow us along on social media and help amplify our call. Together we can #SupportWHRDs!

Webinar: Resist fundamentalisms and fascisms in Asia-Pacific

Four activists from Asia Pacific share their analysis of the advances of fundamentalist and fascist forces across the region. Listen to the audio below:

 

This discussion addresses the following questions:

  • How are anti-rights forces operating in Asia-Pacific? How are they gaining support?
  • What are the impacts on gender justice and human rights in the region?
  • What does collective resistance look like and how can we strengthen it?

The conversation was led by :

  • Rima Athar (Chair): Coordinator of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR)

With presentations from:

  • Cristina “Tinay” Palabay: Secretary General of human rights group Karapatan in the Philippines
  • Rozana Isa: Executive Director of Sisters In Islam, Malaysia
  • Chayanika Shah: a queer feminist researcher, teacher, and activist based in Mumbai, India.

 

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CSBR hosts Project CARE: A regional program on holistic well-being & the sustainability of queer, trans and intersex activism in Asia

In February 2018, CSBR launched Project CARE: Continuous and Responsive Empowerment through well-being initiatives for LGBTI human rights defenders in SSEA–a regional program in partnership with Asia Pacific Trans Network (APTN), ASEAN SOGI Caucus (ASC), APCOM, and ILGA Asia–which seeks to address the sustainability of LGBTIQ organizing through a keen attention to the holistic well-being of LGBTIQ activists, organizers and human rights defenders.

In Phase I of the program, our activities included the following:

  • February 2018: CSBR & ILGA Asia collaborating to integrate a focus on well-being into the Asia Intersex Forum, which brought together 15 intersex advocates from across India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
    Asia Intersex Forum, Bangkok, February 2018Caption: Asia Intersex Forum, Bangkok, February 2018 (Credit: ILGA Asia)

    Supported by Astrea and ILGA Asia, the forum resulted in the launch of Intersex Asia–the first network led by & for intersex activists in the region. To find out more about Intersex Asia, see their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/IntersexAsia/.

 

  • March 2018: CSBR published a contextual summary on Project CARE, which includes a look at evolving international & regional mechanisms to protect human rights defenders, as well as links to pertinent resources on well-being for LGBTIQ communities and WHRDs on digital security, physical security, emergency response grants, toolkits on well-being for feminist activists, and other websites and manuals. Download it here: CSBR-Resource_Building a contextual approach to Holistic Well-Being for LGBTIQ HRDs in SSEA

 

  • April 2018:  ASEAN SOGI Caucus held a regional well-being & wellness workshop for 14 LGBT human rights defenders from Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Throughout 5 days, activists learned varied approaches to well-being, including from the perspective of psychology as well as body & energy practices from CAPACITAR. Since the workshop, participants have been able to cascade their knowledge and introduce conversations & work on well-being in their home contexts

 

  • May 2018: CSBR & ILGA Asia collaborating to integrate a focus on well-being into a training on human rights mechanisms for East Asian HRDs, bringing together 21 activists from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. For many activists this was the first introduction to the topic as it applies to activism. Together we were able to map common emotional, mental and physical impacts of our work on HRDs, and created space to take small steps as individuals to shift our habits to prevent or mitigate these impacts.

    CSBR-ILGAAsia-EastAsiaWellBeing
    Caption: Participants engaged in mapping out personal well-being for activists (Credit: CSBR)

 

  • June 2018: CSBR & Qbukatabu collaborating on research to support LBTQ movement building in Indonesia. This intervention focused primarily on in-depth interviews and research with key allies from across the women’s movement & faith-based movements in Indonesia on how to strengthen allyship and build support to address the stressors, challenges and need of LBTQ activists in Indonesia.

 

  • June 2018: APCOM released an online survey about LGBTIQ HRDs’ experiences around mental health and well-being in the context of their activism, collecting inputs from activists across the region. One of the primary findings was a consensus that there are not enough spaces or opportunities for activists to discuss and unpack mental health issues, nor is there much awareness or knowledge on friendly and accessible mental health resources for LGBTIQ communities in the region

 

  • July 2018: CSBR collaborating with APTN & PLUHO (People Like Us Hang Out) Malaysia on a two-day workshop on holistic well-being for LBQ women, trans and intersex activists & community members in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

    CSBR-WellBeingWorkshopJuly2018
    Caption: Participants engaged in a visioning exercise on the state of well-being for our communities (Credit: CSBR)

    Over the two days, we brought together 18 people with the aims of creating a reflexive space to:

  •  Share and explore personal lived experiences & sources of support as LBQTI organizers and community members.
  •  Identify contextual stressors & challenges that affect our well-being, particularly as LBTQI organizers and community members.
  • Unpack and explore theory and practice around well-being, self-care & integrated security for activists, as a means of sustaining activism and organizing.
  • Map out existing tools and resources, as well as gaps in what’s available for LBQTI communities.
  • Learn a mix of techniques from psychology, energy healing, and somatic practices to support & strengthen self-reflexivity and resilience.

CSBR’s methodology has drawn primarily from the work of:

  • Interdisciplinary approaches to psychotherapy, including exercises that engage participants in understanding different frameworks & approaches to mental-health, self-reflexivity, resilience and holistic well-being drawing from cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, arts-based therapy and more.


Responses
to the program so far have affirmed that Project CARE is providing support to strengthen activists’ resilience, by focusing on elements of our personal lived experiences, our activism, and the links to our professional and community organizing that are often overlooked.


Stay tuned
for updates from Project CARE in the near future!

For more information, email us at: coordinator@csbronline.org.

Digital Storytelling: Stories of Faith & Sexuality [Videos]

CSBR hosted the first national digital storytelling workshop in Indonesia, on the theme of “Faith & Sexuality”, in partnership with the Youth Interfaith Forum on Sexuality (YIFoS), Kampung Halaman, and GAYa NUSANTARA.

CSBR-DSTApaCeritamu

The workshop brought together 15 participants representing grassroots organizations and collectives working on issues ranging from women’s rights, political participation, and religious pluralism, to digital rights, sex worker rights, sexual and gender diversity, and youth empowerment. Over the five days we explored themes of faith & sexuality, to create narratives that explore lived realities and perspectives on questions of faith, gender, sexuality, diversity, pluralism, secularism and human rights.

 

Method

Through the workshop, each participant learned the art of story-telling through training delivered by Kampung Halaman, as well as the technical skills of open-source video, audio & photo editing software. The workshop was conducted in Bahasa Indonesia to ensure the most accessible, supportive space for learning and self expression amongst participants. At the beginning of the workshop, some participants were completely unfamiliar with computers before the workshop, others had mid-range skills–yet in the course of 5 days everyone produced a short film about a personal struggle and screened it to the group.

It was healing, empowering, and cathartic process for all. The discussions and stories translated into tangible shifts in people’s perpectives, including greater attention to ending violence against women, support for LGBT communities, inter-faith solidarity around people’s struggles for acceptance.


Follow Up

Together we had wanted to create stories to amplify narratives & perspectives in support of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, diversity, pluralism and human rights. We reached out six months after the workshop to find out how participants had been able to use their videos as tools for community engagement. Within one month, some participants had shown the videos to their families to open up conversations on their identities. Others had shown it to community members to encourage dialogue on sensitive topics. One participant was even able to raise funds to hold a new digital storytelling workshop for women survivors of violence in rural areas. Seven participants also agreed to share their stories with us as a public resource, which you can watch below!

The pilot project of Stories of Faith & Sexuality was made possible through a grant from the Love Fund.

________________

 

Stories of Faith & Sexuality

 

Aku Amek


Mujahidah!

 

Like the Earth

 

Becoming Lulu

Doa Ibu | Mother’s Prayer

 

Knowledge = Freedom

Sexual Politics in Muslim Societies: Studies from Palestine, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia

“Why have Muslim majority states become increasingly conservative over time, acting to reverse many hard won advances on women’s rights and those concerning gender diverse populations? How has this happened despite vigorous efforts by activists, civil society organizations and social movements in general? What are the factors that have contributed to state-sanctioned surveillance and policing of sexual morality? Is this rightward shift the result of a backlash to the success of gender and sexual rights activism? In what ways have these moves been resisted or accommodated?” 

SexualPoliticsinMuslimSocieties_CSBR2017_cover

CSBR is pleased to announce the publication of Sexual Politics in Muslim Societies (2017), an updated edited volume of original research carried out by CSBR members in Palestine, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia. From diverse vantage points, this volume explores complex questions on the factors that have contributed to increasing conservatism and fundamentalism against women’s rights and LGBT rights–including state-sanctioned surveillance and the policing of sexual morality–across diverse Muslim societies during the early 2000s.

In the first study on Palestine, Femicide and Racism, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Suhad Daher-Nashif situate their fine-grained analysis of the “local” firmly within the broader context of Israeli settler colonialism, and the effects of the “War on Terror” and “Islamophobia”. The authors seek to analyze the intersection of formal and informal legal systems in the understanding of femicide or the murder of Palestinian women by family members. Conventionally such murders are framed as a purely “cultural” issue, the outcome of local patriarchal attitudes toward women and morality. The authors eschew this narrow framing, arguing instead that localized manifestations of patriarchal and masculine logics are empowered by processes of exclusion at both local and global levels.

In An Analysis of the ‘Conservative Democracy’ of the Justice and Development Party (JDP)–Pinar Ilkkaracan skillfully unpacks the rhetorical strategies used by the incumbent JDP to strategically deploy a secular discourse to restrict and police political and social/sexual dissent in Turkey. The chapter highlights the rise of crackdowns on women’s rights and LGBT organizations, and the strength and power of feminist and queer organizing.

In Moral Policing in Malaysia, Julian C.H. Lee and tan beng hui present a sophisticated historical and sociological account of the rise of state sanctioned moral policing, situated within multiple and intersecting histories. Their analysis sheds light the state’s determination to create an “ideal” Muslim citizen, and the impacts of Islamization on the political system, the courts, and civil society organizing in Malaysia.

In the final study, Women’s Sexuality and the debates on the Anti-Pornography Bill, Andy Yentriyani & Neng Dara Affiah present a compelling analysis of the rhetorical stakes in debates around a controversial Anti-Pornography bill that, in a modified form, was passed into Indonesian law in 2008. The authors contextualizes these debates in relation to Indonesia’s history of militarised authoritarianism, shifting state representations of the ideal Indonesian woman and popular resistance to the perceived imposition of a monolithic Indonesian Muslim identity—smuggled in through a law purportedly for the protection of morality.

As a collective research program amongst CSBR members, the methodology was designed to take into account the specific historical, political and sociological complexities of each national context. The comparative aspect of the project was critical in this respect. Together, with the introduction Sexuality as Difference? by Dina M. Siddiqi, this volume illuminates the unstable terrain and shifting constraints that sexual and bodily rights activists in Muslim societies navigate everyday.

The analysis “refuses easy oppositions and fixed definitions of Islam, culture or rights. It calls for us to be open to improbable alliances and strategies. These researchers are critically aware that there are no ‘pure’ spaces of indigeneity or of rights, that meaning is derived from the political and discursive framing of problems. Traversing as they do geographically diverse and historically distinct contexts, they remind us of the necessity to be vigilant of the analytical and conceptual lens we bring to bear on our scholarship and activism.”

 

Download the full publication: Sexual Politics in Muslim Societies (2017)

 

*     *     *     *     *

CSBR would like to thank everyone who contributed to this collective project over the years. Especially Pinar Ilkkaracan, who initiated, coordinated and led the four-year research program on which this volume is based, providing core support and guidance to the research teams. This volume would not have been possible without the energy, commitment and dedication of each of the country partners and their vantage points embedded within national women’s rights, human rights and sexual rights movements. Credit is due to l’Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), Helem, KOMNAS Perempuan, Mada Al-Carmel, Sisters in Islam (SIS), and Women for Women’s Human Rights—New Ways (WWHR). While logistical reasons prevented us from including the Tunisia and Lebanon studies in this volume, the work by those teams was integral to informing the analysis and synthesis of the overall project.

This volume is dedicated to Zaitun ‘Toni’ Kasim, whose political vision and unwavering commitment to human rights has guided so many in our network. Toni was an integral part of this project from its inception, and she continues to inspire us in our movements for rights and justice.

LBTQ Caucus Statement – 8 December 2017 – Phnom Penh

CSBR had the pleasure of joining ASEAN SOGIE CAUCUS, Sayoni, UN Women Asia Pacific & Justice for Sisters to organize and facilitate a 2-day forum on lesbian, bisexual and queer women’s issues from 4-5 December 2017, ahead of the ILGA-Asia 2017 conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

2017-1210-PhnomPenh

Over the two days, 40 or so participants joined in the discussions, personal story sharing, queer movement history mappings, and the distillation of key issues and concerns for lesbian, bisexual, trans women, trans men and queer (LBTQ) persons. A diverse group of LBTQ rights activists were represented from across Asia, including from Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Nepal, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The LBTQ Caucus was a first of its kind at the ILGA Asia conference, and took place due to the demands of LBQ activists to address the consistent marginalization of LBQ women’s visibility and leadership within the wider movements for LGBTIQ+ human rights.

The caucus resulted in a collaborative statement which highlights core concerns that emerged and eleven recommendations moving forward towards strengthening movements for LBTQ rights across the region.

CSBR_041217

Read the statement below and download the PDF here: LBTQ Caucus Statement 2017-Phnom Penh

__________________________________________________________________

Statement of the LBTQ CAUCUS*

8 December 2017 | Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Lesbian, bisexual, trans women, trans men, and queer persons (LBTQ) exist in all of human diversity. Our issues and concerns cut across diverse groups and communities, including other marginalized groups such as people with disabilities, refugees, migrant workers, and indigenous peoples.

LBTQ persons experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence in multiple spaces based on our assigned, actual, or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). We face arbitrary persecution, socio-economic marginalization, and violation of our self-determination, sexual autonomy, and bodily integrity because of our SOGIESC. Our experiences are often invisible, silenced, and unaddressed.

Gender based violence

The multiple and intersecting layers of discrimination and violence that LBTQ persons experience are underpinned and informed by patriarchal socio-cultural, religious and familial values and structures that expect or impose heteronormative,[1] cisnormative,[2] and socially prescribed behaviors and relationships. Failure to adhere to these norms results in stigma, social exclusion, and increased vulnerability to discrimination, violence, and other forms of punishment.

Families are often sites of violence and discrimination against LBTQ persons.[3] Families can act as powerful enforcers of deeply held patriarchal values that demand of women and persons assigned female at birth to accept a subordinate place in social and familial hierarchies, and to uphold family and community interests. This becomes an integral part of the continuum of violence and discrimination that is perpetuated against LBTQ persons in public institutions and society at large.

Domestic violence and intimate partner violence within LBTQ communities remain unaddressed, due in part to a lack of data, tools, and understanding of how to respond to these forms of violence. While some community support mechanisms exist, their scale and reach remain limited. Moreover, people who experience domestic and intimate partner violence often face isolation, and are pressured to keep silent on these issues by the society at large as well as their own communities.

Criminalization

States institutionalize discrimination and violence against LBTQ persons through laws, policies, and practices, arbitrarily marking us as criminals or deviants. Across national contexts, our consensual sexual relations are criminalized, with several countries even imposing the death penalty. Increasingly, laws are also being used to criminalize and restrict our freedom of assembly, association, and expression.

Even when LBTQ persons are not criminalized, we are at heightened risk of harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrest, or trumped-up charges by state actors with impunity. In plural legal systems, the multiple layers of anti-LBTQ norms and regulations from quasi-state and non-state legal institutions and actors add to the oppression that LBTQ persons experience and create complications in our efforts to access justice. Advocacy often focuses on how discriminatory laws and policies target gay men, which speaks of the need to expand recognition and understanding of the cascading effects of criminalization on lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons.

Physical, sexual, and mental health

The discrimination and violence that LBTQ persons experience impacts adversely on our physical, sexual, and mental health. Depression, substance abuse, and self-harming behaviors, even suicide, are common among LBTQ people. The lack of family and social support, and the lack of accessible health services, aggravate the effects of these problems. Medical health professionals generally lack consciousness about the health issues of LBTQ persons or are not trained to deal with us. In general, society and even LGBTIQ+ movements have failed to acknowledge the serious health dimensions of the discrimination and violence that LBTQ people experience. This includes the physical and psychological harms caused by medically unnecessary and invasive surgery on intersex people. Sexual and reproductive health rights of LBTQ peoples are still not seen as a priority concern within existing SOGIESC advocacy.

Feminist organizing and movement building

LBTQ persons continue to mobilize resistance to the discrimination and violence we face, and to protect and promote our rights across Asia. The movement for LBTQ rights is growing, and it also faces many challenges. Externally, our organizing is taking place amidst rising political authoritarianism and religious fundamentalisms, the expansion of neoliberal trade policies that increase disparities in social welfare and the feminization of poverty, as well as forced migration and displacement due to conflicts and climate change. Feminist movement building is all the more urgent in this context.

Within the broader movement for the recognition, protection, and promotion of the rights of all persons of diverse SOGIESC, the dominance of cisgender gay male leadership, discourse, and practices shapes the movement’s international and national advocacy priorities, and poses a challenge to the struggle of LBTQ persons to be visible, recognized, and respected. The use of English as a medium in practically all areas of regional and international advocacy, including communication materials, has further marginalized LBTQ people who do not speak the language.

Movement building has also been affected by funding models, results-oriented criteria, and frameworks of donor organizations that do not reflect the lived realities of LBTQ women, thereby reinforcing our marginalization. The added layer of global north organizations and networks acting as intermediaries and directing regional priorities and the flow of financial resources limits the genuine growth of grassroots and global south led initiatives, and maintains existing disparities. Global resource reviews from 2013-2015 showed that funding for lesbians makes up 3-5% and for bisexuals less than 1% of the total funding for LGBTIQ+ organizations outside the United States.[4] There is a critical need to review existing donor frameworks and to address the significant funding gap for global south LBTQ organizing.

LBTQ persons continue to experience resistance to integrating our concerns within other movements. Our concerns are still perceived as “too political” or “too controversial”, potentially jeopardizing the progress of the feminist, development and human rights agenda.

LBTQ human rights defenders

Presently LBTQ human rights defenders face increased threats, intimidation, censorship and persecution within a context of rising state crackdowns on human rights organizing across the region. In some contexts, there is no protection at all for human rights defenders. This has created fertile ground for collusion between state and non-state actors to proceed with impunity in targeting LGBTIQ+ people and communities. While some data exists,[5] there remains a clear gap in our understandings of the nature and expanse of threats specifically against LBTQ human rights defenders.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  1. Guiding Principles. In the adoption of measures and interventions to eliminate discrimination and violence against LBTQ and to address our needs and concerns, state and non-state actors should uphold the right to self-determination, autonomy and bodily integrity of LBTQ persons. Participation of LBTQ persons and communities in the revision or creation of legislation and programs must be a priority. Our human rights must be respected, protected, and promoted at all times.
  2. Decriminalization. States should work toward repealing all laws criminalizing LBTQ persons based on assigned, actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or consensual sexual acts. This includes all laws criminalizing and restricting freedom of assembly, association, and expression of LGBT groups and the work of human rights defenders.
  3. Legal protection from gender-based violence, discrimination and mechanisms for redress. States should pass comprehensive anti-discrimination and other appropriate laws that explicitly include protections for all forms of discrimination and violence on the basis of SOGIESC. Domestic violence laws should cover diverse forms of families, relationships, and violence. Governments should also explore alternative redress and support mechanisms beyond criminalization, particularly at the municipal levels. Community-driven prevention and support mechanisms, including targeted social services for LBTQ people, should be budgeted for, established and made accessible.
  4. Legal gender recognition. Governments and communities should work toward the legal recognition and affirmation of trans people’s gender identity, based on self-determination and bodily autonomy, without mandating medical interventions.
  5. Review international human rights norms and standards. The sex and gender binary of male and female and the heteronormative framework of many international human rights standards need to be reviewed, including in CEDAW documents.
  6. Documentation and research. Documentation and research on varied forms of discrimination, lived experiences and needs of LBTQ persons and human rights defenders is imperative, using feminist and participatory framework and methodology. Research should be action-oriented, and produce disaggregated data based on gender identity and intersecting groupings.
  7. Addressing physical, sexual, and mental health issues. LBTQ people’s experiences of physical, sexual, and mental health issues must be heard and define any interventions to be made. Health care and support service professionals need to be provided appropriate training in order to enact sensitive and gender-responsive approaches to LBTQ persons’ health needs, without necessarily medicalizing or pathologizing our concerns. Comprehensive and accessible healthcare information and services for LBTQ people, including friendly and affirming sexual reproductive health services and counseling, must be established and integrated in national healthcare systems.
  8. Education. Gender, SOGIESC, and comprehensive sexual health and rights education should be introduced and integrated in school curricula.
  9. Political participation. Affirmative measures designed to increase the political participation of LBTQ persons in community, government and international processes and institutions, including measures designed to ensure that the LBTQ people are represented in elective positions, must be adopted.
  10. Movement building.  Movement building is critical in empowering LBTQ people and enhancing our capacity to take action to address the discrimination and violence we experience and to transform social attitudes towards us. Grassroots LBTQ community-led initiatives must be supported as the foundation of building effective and sustainable movements for the protection and promotion of our human rights. Responsive budgeting and financial commitments should be made to ensure meaningful participation and language justice for diverse LBTQ persons, including on the basis of disability and language accessibility.
  11. Funding, Donor and Program priorities. Consistent with the principles of participation and self-determination, donors, women’s rights, human rights, development, and LGBTIQ+ organizations must ensure that decisions on funding LBTQ groups and projects targeting LBTQ issues are made after consultations with the affected LBTQ groups or communities. Projects must be implemented in partnership with us, with a practical and applied commitment to accountability, transparency, and LBTQ led organizing.

 

 

* This statement emerged from a 2-day forum focusing on lesbian, bisexual and queer women’s needs, organized by ASEAN SOGIE Caucus (ASC), Sayoni, UN Women Asia Pacific, Justice for Sisters & the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) and supported by OutRight Action International and ILGA Asia.  For the caucus, women is based on self-determination, and includes intersex, transgender, cisgender and all who identify as women. The LBTQ Caucus was held from 4-5 December 2017, in advance of the ILGA-Asia regional conference which ran from 6-8 December 2017 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

 

Notes

[1] Heteronormativity refers to the assumption that all persons are heterosexual; practices and norms of heterosexual persons form the dominant narrative.

[2] Cisnormativity refers to the assumption that all persons are cisgender and norms of cisgender persons apply. Cisgender persons refer to persons whose sex and gender ‘match’ or persons whose lived experiences match the assigned identities at birth.

[3] Violence: Through the Lens of Lesbians, Bisexual Women and Trans People in Asia (2014); Negative Family Treatment of Sexual Minority Women and Transmen in Vietnam: Latent Classes and Their Predictors (2015); Research Report on Opinions, Attitudes and Behavior toward the LGBT Population in Cambodia (2015); Cambodians’ Attitudes Toward LGBT Surveyed (2015); Hitting Close to Home: Homophobia and Transphobia In Asia = Family Violence (2016).

[4] Global Resource Report: Government and Philanthropic Support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Communities (2014) ; LGBT Grantmaking by US Foundations (2015)

[5] Violence: Through the Lens of Lesbians, Bisexual Women and Trans People in Asia (2014)

Students hit the road to fight street harassment in Kuala Lumpur – in pictures

On a global day of action for sexual and bodily rights in Muslim societies, Malaysian students stood against harassment in public spaces.

SIS-ODOS2017demo-GroupShot
The organising team from Sisters in Islam sported shirts reading “Muslim Women Speak.” Credit: CSBR.

 

“Cats are cute, catcalls are not”; “Don’t keep calm and stop sexual harassment”; “My name is not baby.” These were some of the slogans on signs floating above a group of about 40 people gathered at Petaling Jaya city council square, in greater Kuala Lumpur last month.

The university students and activists chose to highlight fights against street harassment in the Malaysian capital as part of the annual ‘One Day One Struggle’ campaign, on 9 November, organised by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies.

Armed with audio samples of common verbal insults and catcalls, they invited passersby to listen, share their own experiences, and show support for the anti-harassment campaign.

“Cats are cute, catcalls are not”

One of the organisers Andi Suraidah said the action was inspired by “rising awareness as a result of #MeToo campaign globally.” She said: “The time could not have been better to ride on the campaign by bringing it to the local level.”

“As a woman, being harassed on the street is not uncommon,” she said, describing having to wear “clothes that will attract less attention” and “assessing my surrounding consistently when going out alone.”

She added: “The experience of harassment could even be worse, depending on which race or religion you belong to, if you do not fit within the stereotype of male/female framework; these elements give harassers extra bullets to attack you with.”


Credit: Empower Malaysia.

University of Malaya students conducted a survey with 113 respondents on campus. 80% said that they had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces before.

There is little official data on street harassment in Malaysia. There are statistics on gender-based violence, but street harassment specifically is poorly documented.


Credit: Sisters in Islam.

Activists participating in the anti-street harassment action posed for a photo. One member of the team captured it on video.

Sisters in Islam, one of the organising groups, is a leading Malaysian organisation advocating for women’s rights within the framework of Islam and human rights.


Credit: Sisters in Islam.

Passersby were intrigued by the campaign. Some stopped to listen to audio samples prepared by students with examples of common verbal insults and catcalls.

This creative tactic was designed to encourage reflection and conversations on how one could respond and intervene when witnessing street harassment.


Credit: Sisters in Islam

University students talk to members of the public collecting pledges to combat street harassment.

The action engaged passersby to think of everyday personal actions they could take to build a culture of respect.


Credit: Sisters in Islam

Sisters in Islam staff member Zaffan Ariffin acted as a ‘group leader’ for five university students talking to the public to raise awareness against street harassment during the action.

They used sandwich boards to highlight unwanted sexual advances that women commonly hear on the streets.


Credit: CSBR

Volunteers hold signs asking drivers to “Honk if you’re against sexual harassment”!

Suraidah, one of the organisers, said tackling mindsets is one strategy against street harassment. Another is anti-discrimination law and policy.


Credit: CSBR

The organising team from Sisters in Islam sported shirts reading “Muslim Women Speak.”

The group aims to amplify women’s rights within the frameworks of Islam, universal human rights, and democratic politics.

 

______

By: Rima Athar and Bérengère Sim

About the authors: Rima Athar is coordinator of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies. Bérengère Sim is a journalist based in Paris.

Re-Posted from: 50.50 Open Democracy, published 8 December 2017.

Toppling Walls, Building Bridges: The Rise & Prospects of New Global Feminism

CSBR is honoured to have been able to connect with our sisters in Turkey, and those from around the world as far as Peru, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Ireland and more–for an important and timely conversation on “Toppling Walls, Building Bridges: The Rise and Prospects of New Global Feminism“, sponsored by Heinrich Boll Stiftung in Istanbul, from 2-3 November 2017.

kureselfeminizmmailing.19.10.17.rev1_

* * * * *

Over two days speakers shared lessons & insights for strengthening feminist organizing in a political moment where authoritarianism, the “polypore state“, militarism and neoliberal global economic interests are coalescing in new ways to suppress and threaten women’s human rights around the world.

 

Aliyme Demir (KAOS-GL), Rima Athar (CSBR), and Berfu Seker (WWHR-New Ways) - Istanbul 3 November 2017
Aliyme Demir (KAOS-GL), Rima Athar (CSBR), and Berfu Seker (WWHR-New Ways) – Istanbul 3 November 2017

* * * * *

On the fourth panel on “Resisting & Organizing Locally and Globally“, our Advisory Committee member Aliyme Asli Demir discussed the interconnected rise of ‘right-populism’ globally, from the Turkey to the US to India and beyond, and the shifting terrain and tools we have available as activists to resist and organize creatively.

CSBR Coordinator Rima Athar, discussed transnational networks of anti-rights actors–including evangelical Christian NGOs, the OIC block, the Russian Orthodox Church and others–that are pushing an international campaign to suppress sexual and bodily rights under the guide of “protection of the family” and “traditional values”. She highlighted implications for new feminist organizing that recognizes that recent hate-campaigns against LGBT communities in Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia are not isolated events, but rather connected to similar campaigns that have taken place in Russia, Uganda, and at international UN forums with increasing frequency and coordination in the last decade.

Emily Morgan Waszak, an organizer of the organic and powerful women’s protest against the Anti-Abortion Law in Ireland, discussed the methods and considerations of calling the women’s strike to repeal the 8th amendment, which equates the life of a pregnant women with that of an unborn fetus. The #Strike4Repeal was inspired by the Polish women’s black protest the year before, and brought thousands to the streets in Ireland to claim reproductive autonomy.

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The full program can be seen on Heinrich Boll’s website here: https://calendar.boell.de/en/node/111607, and is copied below.

 

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التسجيل للورشة الاقليمية حول جنسانية الفرد والأسرة

التسجيل للورشة الاقليمية حول جنسانية الفرد والأسرة

يسرنا في منتدى الجنسانية أن نعلن عن فتح باب التسجيل للورشة التدريبية حول جنسانية الفرد والأسرة، والتي نسعى من خلالها إلى خلق “مجموعة عمل” مهنية تتبادل فيما بينها الخبرات والافكار والابداعات بالأدوات والتوجهات التربوية في كل ما يتعلق بالجنسانية، ويشمل ذلك انتاج ادبيات ومصطلحات جنسانية حساسة للسياق المجتمعي والحضاري العربي.

نحلم بأن تتحول “مجموعة العمل” هذه مستفبلا إلى شبكة تشكل مظله مهنية داعمة وملهمة وخلاقة للمهنيين والمهنيات من الوطن العربي، تشجع مبادراتهم\ن في مجالات الجنسانية في بلدانهن\م ومجتمعاتهم\ن.

الأهداف العينية للورشة التدريبية

توسيع دوائر المعرفة الجنسانية وتطوير الوعي الذاتي لتمكين المتدربين والمتدربات من التواصل الفعال ومن الحوار مع الناس بكل ما يتعلق بالقضايا الجنسانية والجندرية من منظور حضاري وأخلاقي

تعزيز قدرات المتدربات والمتدربين لتمكينهن\م من اعتماد نهج “المشاركة الفعالة التأملية” في عملهن\م مع الفئات المجتمعية المختلفة

تزويد المتدربين والمتدربات بالمواد والأدوات والفعاليات التربوية اللازمة لانطلاق العمل في هذا المجال، كل في إطاره\ها وبلده\ها

تطوير برنامج تربوي في الجنسانية باللغة العربية، حساس للسياق الاجتماعي وقابل للتطبيق والممارسة في أرجاء الوطن العربي

الفئات المستهدفة

الورشة معدة لمهنيين ومهنيات عرب يعملون في الوطن العربي داخل مؤسسات وأطر مجتمعية وتربوية وصحية بالإضافة إلى نشطاء ومقدمي خدمات ممن يعملون مع الناس مباشرة.

نوّد التنويه الى أن الورشة لن تنظر في الطلبات المقدمة من الداخل الفلسطيني( أراضي ال 48) والضفة الغربية, بسبب توفر هذه الورشات بشكل دوري في منتدى الجنسانية في حيفا ورام الله.

شروط القبول

سيتم الاختيار بناء على الخبرة الميدانية في العمل مع الناس من جهة، وعلى مستوى الأداء خلال المقابلة الشخصية على سكايب. في هذا السياق، تم تشكيل لجنة قبول ستقوم بفرز كافة الطلبات وتحديد مواعيد للمقابلات الفردية لكل المتسجلين والمتسجلات.

موعد ومكان وتكلفة التدريب

ستنعقد الورشة التدريبية على مدار ستة أيام مطولة، خلال الفترة ما بين 11\9\2017 – 16\90\2017 في عمان. البرنامج المفصل سيرسل لاحقا لكل من تم قبوله\ها

سيغطي منتدى الجنسانية كافة التكاليف المتعلقة بالسفر ذهابا وإيابا وتشمل تذاكر الطيران والمواصلات العامة في بلد السكن وفي عمان. كما سيغطي المنتدى كافة تكاليف الإقامة وتشمل المبيت في الفندق لسبع ليال بالاضافة الى الوجبات اليومية.

الاطار العام للتدريب والمضامين العينية

يتم التحضير لهذه الورشة تحت إشراف لجنة توجيه مهنية مكونة من المدربات الأساسيات، وقد صُمم هذا النموذج التدريبي بناء على الخبرات المهنية لكادر منتدى الجنسانية وتجربته الميدانية العريقة من خلال مئات ورش العمل حول الجنسانية، مع كافة الفئات المجتمعية الفلسطينية، بالإضافة إلى ورش إقليمية على مستوى العالم العربي.

سيعتمد التدريب منهج المشاركة الفعالة والتأمل والتفكير النقدي، إذ أن الهدف منه هو التركيز على المسارات الشخصية التي يمر بها المشارك\ة كمقدمة أساسية لتشكيل المعرفة ومن ثم الوعي. انطلاقا من مبدأ “فاقد الشيء لا يعطيه”، فإن معرفة الذات بعمق لهي حجر الأساس لتشكيل المقدرة على الارتقاء بالقيم الشخصية وعدم اسقاطها على الآخرين مهما كانت معتقداتهم\ن وانتماءاتهم الدينية والايدولوجية، هكذا هي رؤية منتدى الجنسانية وتوجهاته في العمل مع الناس.

العدد المتوقع للمشاركة بهذه الورشة هو 15-17 مشارك ومشاركة من عدة دول عربية، بالاضافة إلى 2-3 من طاقم منتدى الجنسانية.

أما المضامين التي سيتطرق إليها التدريب خلال ورشة العمل فهي كالتالي

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نبذة عن المنتدى العربي لجنسانية الفرد والأسرة – منتدى الجنسانية،

نما منتدى الجنسانية من بذور تجربته الميدانية التي زرعها على مدار عشرين عاما، بدء من تكوين فكرته في مؤسسة تامر للتعليم المجتمعي في رام الله في التسعينيات، مرورا بتدريب كوادر المرشدين التربويين العاملين في الضفة والقطاع، إلى العمل مع مؤسسات أهلية فلسطينية في القدس والنقب والمثلث والجليل، بالإضافة إلى القيام بورش تدريبية – تجريبية على مستوى العالم العربي في القاهرة وعمان وتونس.

قام المنتدى بتدريب المئات من الكوادر المهنية والتي لعبت دورا هاما في خلق نويات محلية تعمل على تعزيز الوعي الجنساني داخل المجتمع الفلسطيني. تحول المنتدى الى جمعية رسمية عام 2006 عنوانها بمدينة حيفا، وساهم في تأسيس منتدى الجنسانية في رام الله عام 2015.

خطط العمل في المنتدى مبنية على المعلومات الناتجة عن أكثر من بحث علمي قمنا به مع طلبة الجامعات الفلسطينيين في الضفة الغربية وفي مناطق 48، بالإضافة إلى آلاف الاستبيانات التي فحصنا من خلالها احتياجات طلبة المدارس على مستوى فلسطين التاريخية.

ساهمت هذه السنوات الغنية بالخبرات في جعل المنتدى المرجعية المهنية والفكرية الأهم محليا في مجال التربية والصحة الجنسانية عموماًز

كادر المنتدى بأكمله، من هيئة إدارية، موظفات ومتطوعين/ات، مكون من ذوي الخبرات المهنية المتعددة، أهمها مجال الخدمة الاجتماعية والإرشاد التربوي والنفسي والتمريض. جميعهم/ن حاصلين على اللقب الجامعي الأول كحد أدنى ولديهم على الأقل ثلاث سنوات خبرة في العمل الميداني المهني. عضوية الهيئة العامة للمنتدى مشروطة بشهادة التأهيل في “جنسانية الفرد والأسره” والعدد الحالي للأعضاء هو ثمانية ووثمانين عضو/ة.

وأخيرا،

في حال شعرت بأنك ملائم\ة للمشاركة بهذه الورشة، الرجاء تعبئة نموذج التسجيل التالي.

لمزيد من التفاصيل وللاستفسار:

الرجاء التواصل معنا على : muntada@jensaneya.org أو على safa@jensaneya.org

 الموعد النهائي لتسليم طلبات التسجيل هو 15/6/2017

ملاحظة:

الورشة بدعم من :

 GIZ

CSBR– الائتلاف للحقوق الجسدية والجنسانية في العالم الاسلامي

Open Society Foundation

APPLY HERE: http://bit.ly/2rbHRp4

Apply for the 9th CSBR Sexuality Institute! Deadline 12 March 2017

Applications Open!

Deadline for submissions:
12 March 2017
CSBRSexualityInstitute
 
The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) is pleased to announce our Call for Applications for the 9th CSBR Sexuality Institute, to be held from 30 June – 7 July 2017.


Interested?

    • Do you have at least 2 years of experience working on issues of sexuality & human rights?

 

    • Are you committed to undertaking efforts to promote sexual and bodily health and rights at national and international levels? 

    • Do you represent an organization/institution engaged in advocacy, research, fieldwork, and/or grassroots organizing on issues of sexuality and rights?   

Then we’d like to hear from you! 


To Apply:
 Please (1) submit the Application Form online, and (2) send your current C.V. to csbrsexualityinstitute@gmail.com by 12th March 2017. 


Deadline to apply:
12 March 2017

 

* * * * * * 

 

About the Institute: Designed as a comprehensive curriculum on sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights with in-depth discussions on the linkages between research and practice, the CSBR Sexuality Institute offers a holistic interdisciplinary program combining history, theory, research and politics of sexuality with applications of advocacy and fieldwork.

 

Each CSBR Sexuality Institute brings together about 25 leading sexual and reproductive rights activists, academics and researchers for a six-day training comprised of lectures, group work, round-tables, panels, site visits and film screenings, all bolstered by participants’ own experiences around sexuality & sexual rights advocacy.

Language: The Sexuality Institute is held in English.

Costs:

  • The cost of tuition is USD 100 for all participants
  • Scholarships to cover international travel & attendance costs are available for participants from smaller organizations based in the Global South, including tuition costs as needed.
  • Applicants from international NGOs, and organizations based in Europe and North America, are not eligible for scholarships and must cover their own travel & attendance costs for the training.
For more information: Email coordinator@csbronline.org.

ODOS 2016: EIPR submits open letter to WHO urging change of the Arabic definition of female circumcision/FGC/ FGM on its website to correspond with English and French definitions

To mark the One Day, One Struggle campaign, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights submitted an open letter to the World Health Organization’s high-level Working Group for the Health and Human Rights of Women, Children and Adolescents, calling on it to amend the definition of female circumcision/female genital mutilation on the organization’s Arabic website to correspond with the definition in English and French. The EIPR found substantial discrepancies between the Arabic definition of female circumcision and the definition in all other languages on the WHO website.

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The Arabic definition lacks an important sentence affirming that there is no medical basis for the practice. The second paragraph of the Arabic definition also diverges completely from the definition in other languages. The problem is that this incomplete definition is the same one adopted by the Egyptian legislator in recent amendments to the Penal Code article criminalizing female circumcision. The EIPR therefore calls on the WHO to change the Arabic definition on its website and to urge the Egyptian government to alter the definition of the practice in the Penal Code to reaffirm that there is no medical basis for female circumcision.

Read the PDF full letter in Arabic here and PDF full letter in English here.

Caring as Resistance and Sisterhood

Caring as Resistance and Sisterhood by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Sisterhood by Anjum KhanEvery week, the women participating in my workshops easily share their experiences in the social, political or community world. However, it is difficult for them to talk about themselves. Several of them face complex situations: A divorce or a long layoff, illness of a relative whom they are caretakers, raising a disabled child. They are ashamed to speak up about how they feel; this should not be so. We women have the right and the duty to speak openly about what ails us in our private lives. The idea that the personal is political has to be a perfect circle.Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi says that the lack of attention to physical, emotional and spiritual needs of women has become one of the weak points in the work of feminists. In our own social and institutional spheres where we work, the combined effects of the strong reactions against women’s movements, harassment on social networks, cultural and religious fundamentalisms, the pressures for leadership and the challenge of finding a balance between multiple spheres of life make it difficult to conserve energy.

While activisms mean resistance to the hegemonic system, some dynamics could reproduce patriarchal control’s devices on women’s emotions and impact us negatively: The expectation of renunciation and silent sacrifice as supreme feminine virtue. Sadness, illness or emotional distress are political issues and a way to control us with them is through the imposing or adopted silence about.

Renunciation is enabled in activisms through, for example, the compulsion to negotiation. Karina, one of the participants in my workshops, in charge of the Secretariat of Gender Affairs of her Workers Union, told us one day the violence that meant to her to feel pressured to accept certain terms because “women are so generous and conciliatory.” She cried helplessly when she got home.

The mandate of virtuous sacrifice operates, for example, when we neglect ourselves and remain silent in our moments of weakness.

Many times our colleagues and fellow activists are tired, depressed, angry, worn by family problems, with romantic trials, suffering for the betrayals people they trust, communication difficulties, job crisis or just because, because there are bad days when you do not feel like getting up. This impact seriously our activisms, but we do not speak about or we procrastinate on our emotional health and leave it for later, while we focus on helping others to find their balance. Or, in the name of feminism and the “movement”, we decry our comrades who want to express themselves in this regard because “there are more important things” or “the struggle is about political things” or “is not the space to hear romantic shit”.

If feminist spaces are not safe spaces to validate our experiences in misogynistic societies, or to dump all the pain of multiple patriarchal oppression we face on a daily basis with the certainty of receiving a lucid, honest, critical and loving support, then  Where is that space ? Where we can socialize this daily violence that collectively we live in and build from it? Does exist this space to talk? If it doesn’t exist, we have to create it.

I remember my experience in Cape Town with a group of women from one of the most troubled districts. They met every Monday and the first 15 minutes were to share what had happened during the last week with them. It sounds childish, but for many of them was THE time of the week to get rid of a lot of fury, sorrow and fear of living in a highly violent environment and somehow, sharing their concerns allowed them to find common grounds and build up sisterhood.

Someone could say that feminism is NOT for those things, that is about politics and not self improvement. I agree. Feminism is NOT like a book written by Paulo Coelho or a manual on How-Be-Happy-Forever. It is more than that: It is a set of strategies for women to get awareness about ourselves, in terms of oppressions, challenges and possibilities and learn how to work together.

One of these strategies is learning and practice self caring and care -giving among us, as expressions of political love, in the understanding that silence and isolation on pain, illness, and emotional distress are elements of oppression. So, I take care of myself and others to break the socialization for  neglecting and virtuous sacrifice imposed by patriarchy. In a system that educates us in self-devaluation and contempt towards other women, speaking up is an act of justice, joining together in pain is a way to resist and supporting each other in grief, is community preservation.

We are indivisible as humans. We can not leave half of our life at home while the other half go to the march. As individuals and collective we should invest time and talent in creating strategies to support and strengthen each other. The deeper and more intimate circles of our lives this strength gets, the merrier.

Because the struggle will always be ugly and will always be too much.

Because the personal is political.

Because the shared pain of today will create a better shared tomorrow.

 

Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente is a social communicator, writer, mentor in digital activism and community educator in gender and capacity development. She has led initiatives for grass roots female leaders’s empowerment in Latin America and Africa. She is an intersectional feminist interested in the crossroads between Religion, Power and Sexuality. Her academic work adresses Feminist Hermeneutics in Islam, Muslim Women Representations, Queer Identities and Movement Building. Vanessa is the founder of Mezquita de Mujeres (A Mosque for Women), a social media and educational project based in ICT that aims to explore the links between feminism, knowledge and activism and highlights the voices and perspectives of women from the global south as change makers in their communities.

Image: Anjum Khan, “Sisterhood”.

CSBR: President Widodo & Indonesian Govt. Must Uphold Constitutional Rights of Indonesian Citizens


CSBR Logo

President Joko Widodo & the Indonesian Government Must Uphold the Constitutional Rights of Indonesian Citizens

 

The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) is gravely concerned about the on-going attacks against the civil, political and human rights of Indonesian citizens of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.

What began in January 2016 with a spiteful comment from the Minister of Research, Technology and Higher education that LGBTIQ people ‘corrupted the morals of the nation’, has turned into an almost two-month long series of attacks and an increasingly hostile climate spreading across different cities and provinces in Indonesia.[1]

As a Coalition of over 30 civil society organizations and academic institutions working to uphold sexual and bodily rights in Muslim societies, CSBR urges President Joko Widodo to unequivocally come out in support of Indonesia’s LGBTIQ citizens, to uphold democratic rights and ensure protection from discrimination and harassment, and to call for an end to the hateful and discriminatory rhetoric being propagated by government officials.

To this end, President Joko Widodo and the Indonesian government must take all measures to protect the constitutional rights[2] of Indonesian citizens, including:

  • the right to education and the right to participate in and benefit from social, cultural and scientific life (Art. 28C(1));
  • the right to collective struggle for rights (Art. 28C(2));
  • the rights to equal recognition, guarantees, protection and fair treatment under the law (Art. 28D(1) and 28I(1));
  • the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, expression, opinion, assembly and association (Art. 28E);
  • the right to be free from discriminative treatment based upon any grounds whatsoever and the right to protection from such discriminative treatment (Art. 28I(2)).

As a member of the United Nations, and as a state party to the ICCPR and the ICESCR, the Indonesian government also has a duty to ensure non-discrimination, academic freedom, and access to education, to enable citizens to make informed decisions and autonomous choices on all matters relating to themselves, including their beliefs, opinions, and identities.

CSBR applauds the strong leadership demonstrated by KOMNAS-HAM, Indonesia’s independent National Human Rights Commission, which has consistently applied clear, rational and informed juridical reasoning to highlight the unconstitutionality of attempts to restrict the rights of all those who would seek to engage in public discussions, support services, and advocacy for rights, protection and education on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.[3]

 

Background & Further Details:

In January 2016, the Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education called to ban a Support Group and Resource Centre on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) that offered LGBTIQ-friendly counselling services to students on Indonesian university campuses. His statement set off a chain reaction of spiteful attacks by militant groups, the police, and other government officials against civil society and LGBTIQ individuals.

Since January, numerous government officials have made hateful statements against the LGBTI community. This includes:

  • Legislator and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Nasir Djamil stating that “The LGBT community should not be allowed to grow or be given room to conduct its activities. Even more serious is those LGBT members who go into universities with scientific studies, or hold discussion groups”;[4] in contravention of Articles 28D(1) and 28D(2) which upholds the rights to education and participation in technology, arts, and culture, and the collective struggle for rights.
  • Culture and Primary Education Minister Anies Baswedan telling parents and teachers “that LGBT people were deviant and a danger to adolescents”,[5] and the National Broadcasting Commission banning content on TV and radio that ‘normalizes’ being LGBTIQ, in the name of ‘protecting children and adolescents’.[6] Such rhetoric ignores the Constitutional rights of LGBTIQ children to protection from violence and discrimination (Art. 28B(2)).
  • Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Yuddy Chrisnandi, who stated that “Of course it is inappropriate for civil servants to be [homosexual]”, despite Art. 28D(3) guaranteeing “Every citizen shall have the right to obtain equal opportunities in government”.
  • Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu labelling the LGBTIQ movement a ‘proxy war’ that is a greater threat to national security than nuclear weapons;[7]
  • Indonesia’s Communications and Information Ministry has proposed and begun drafting a bill that will ban websites that ‘promote LGBT propaganda’ that could “damage national security, identity, culture and the faith of Indonesians.” [8]

The proliferation of fear-mongering and hateful rhetoric has also emboldened vigilante and militant groups to harass civil society and succeed in shutting down LGBTIQ events and spaces:

  • On 4 February, a militant group harassed participants at an event on access to justice for LGBTIQ people in Jakarta, and had the police shut the event down;[9]
  • On 23 February, the police turned against LGBTI advocates at a public demonstration in Yogykarta who were rallying to counter an anti-LGBTIQ demonstration;[10],[11]
  • On 24 February, the Al Fatah Pesantren Waria, a longstanding community supported religious boarding school for waria (transgender) students, was closed in Yogyakarta.[12]

 

These are but a few of the many statements and incidences that have been reported on in mainstream media in recent months, and they highlight a clear lack of political will to uphold the rule of law or ensure access to justice.

As Vera da Costa, an activist from long standing Indonesian LGBT organization GAYa NUSANTARA shared with us,

“The space for LGBTIQ people to exercise their rights to freedom of assembly and association in Indonesia is now very limited. The security of individuals and organizations is in jeopardy; we are being threatened and there is no protection from the government. Meanwhile the media sensationalizes the news in a negative fashion, so that the public is increasingly misinterpreting what is at stake here. We want the President to intervene and take action to protect us as citizens, because it is the government officials of his cabinet that are attacking us in the first place.”

The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies is deeply concerned for the security and safety of our friends and allies who are organizing and living within such a climate of fear and insecurity, with no protection or recourse from the judicial or legal systems in place.

We join Indonesian civil society’s call and urge President Joko Widodo to take immediate action to end the harassment and to uphold the civil, political and human rights of Indonesia’s LGBTIQ citizens.


12 March 2016


For more information, please contact CSBR: coordinator@csbronline.org, and GAYa NUSANTARA: gayanusantara@gmail.com.

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[1] Further details below.

[2] http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_protect/—protrav/—ilo_aids/documents/legaldocument/wcms_174556.pdf

[3] http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/02/05/komnas-ham-slams-vilification-lgbt-officials.html

[4] http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/01/25/lgbt-not-welcome-university-minister.html

[5] http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/02/13/luhut-defends-lgbt-groups.html

[6] http://www.kpi.go.id/index.php/lihat-terkini/38-dalam-negeri/33218-kpi-larang-promosi-lgbt-di-tv-dan-radio

[7] http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2016/02/23/055747534/Minister-LGBT-Movement-More-Dangerous-than-Nuclear-Warfare

[8] http://www.curvemag.com/News/Indonesia-Sees-Rising-Discrimination-Against-LGBT-Community-1008/

[9] https://www.hrw.org/tet/node/286749

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu66JLcEv8I

[11] http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/02/24/police-ban-rally-held-lgbt-supporters.html

[12] http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/02/26/yogyakarta-transgender-islamic-boarding-school-shut-down.html

Panel On the Sexual & Bodily Rights Of Refugee Women and LGBTI people in Turkey

The international campaign for sexual and bodily rights titled “One Day, One Struggle” organized simultaneously by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) member organizations every year on November 9 was realized in 8 countries this year with various events held by 20 organizations.

Two separate events were organized in Turkey as part of the international campaign. CSBR member Kaos GL Association supported by the Foundation for Society and Legal Studies (TOHAV) organized a “Workshop on Psycho-Social Support” for LGBTI activists in Ankara, while CSBR members Women for Women’s Human Rights-New Ways (WWHR) and Lambda
İstanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association partook in the campaign with a “Panel on the Sexual and Bodily Rights of Refugee Women and LGBTI” held in İstanbul Bilgi University Social Incubation Center in İstanbul.

Convening at the “Workshop on Psycho-Social Support” co-organized by Kaos GL Association and TOHAV, LGBTI activists discussed ways of “healing” together in the aftermath of the Ankara massacre, easing the pains through solidarity, and continuing the struggle by preserving the hope amidst our current environment of war and violence. The most important outcome of the workshop that lasted two and a half hours was the emphasis on standing together as a powerful impetus in resisting for peace.

ODOS 2015 - Ortak Mücadele1Şehnaz Kıymaz Bahçeci of WWHR-New Ways delivered the opening speech of the “Panel on the Sexual and Bodily Rights of Refugee Women and LGBTI” which was heavily attended by individual participants as well as representatives of numerous non-governmental organizations working in fields of women, LGBTI and human rights. Information on CSBR and the “One Day, One Struggle” campaign was relayed in the opening speech conveying that the coalition was established in 2001 as an international entity with the aim of creating a common line of struggle for sexual and bodily rights advocates and expanding the fields of struggle for feminists, activists and rights advocates in face of increasing pressure created by religion and traditional norms and rising conservative policies in the political arena. Bahçeci explained that since 2009 CSBR has been organizing the “One Day, One Struggle” campaign every year on November 9 in order to draw attention to sexual, bodily and reproductive rights and the struggle carried out for these rights. She emphasized our ever growing need to come together against the problems of refugees, which we witness everyday especially in big cities, escalated by the ongoing war in Syria. She underlined the importance of the women’s movement acting in solidarity with refugee women and LGBTI.

The panel was moderated by İstanbul University Faculty of Political Sciences lecturer Associate Professor Zeynep Kıvılcım who conducts field research on Syrian refugee women and LGBTI. Proffering examples from the dialogues that take place during her research, Kıvılcım said, “We are in the fourth year of the war that erupted in Syria and we are responsible for our reticence. We must take action on this issue all together. This ongoing state of the Syrians’ lack of status must be ended immediately.”

In her speech titled “The Gender of Immigration” Özgül Kaptan, who has been working in the field with refugee women for almost two years on behalf of Women’s Solidarity Foundation (KADAV) and Women Without Borders, explained the terms that define emigrants such as immigrant, asylum-seeker, refugee, guest, illegal alien, undocumented, etc. Noting that the term “illegal alien” used for paperless immigrants who have not been registered has an escalating effect on hate speeches against immigrants, Kaptan emphasized the importance of dialogue and solidarity for the solution of these problems.

ODOS2015-AnkaraWorkshopNilgün Yıldırım Şener of the Human Resource Development Foundation (İKGV) stated that sexual violence is used as a method of war between the fighting parties in Syria. Giving examples from the cases they encounter in the counseling center for Syrian asylum-seekers set up in Esenler, İstanbul, Şener stressed that 10 out of every 100 asylum-seekers applying to the center have been subjected to sexual violence. She said that among the case files opened at the center during the January-July 2015 period, 89 of the sexual violence victims were women, 37 men, and 9 were LGBTI individuals. Delivering a summary of the sexual and bodily rights violations of women and LGBTI, Şener underlined that housing is the gravest problem along with the very widespread fear of harassment and rape. She also talked about the prevalence of major problems such as the constantly changing practices regarding access to health care services, and the impossibility of access to services such as birth control and abortion.

Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Fidanlık Yezidi Camp director Müzeyyen Anık Aydın expounded the conditions and difficulties in the Yezidi camps maintained with the efforts of municipalities in the region without any financial or infrastructural support from the state. She said that presently in the camps there are around 4,000 Yezidis among whom there is a prevalent practice resembling the caste system, and that all decisions concerning women are taken by men. Aydın underlined that immigrant Yezidi women cannot practice their sexual and bodily rights and that there are severe rights violations. Further explaining that municipalities try to provide all services including shelter, health and education for the Yezidis who do not receive any form of state support, Aydın stated there are major shortages primarily in terms of human resources.

Lawyer Fırat Söyle of Lambdaİstanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association stated that as Lambdaİstanbul they have established a commission for refugees and are providing legal support for LGBTI refugees who apply to them. Noting that the rights violations experienced by LGBTI in Turkey are experienced also by refugees, Söyle observed that despite the immigration administration put in place the system is run by the police, and that the number of LGBTI refugees who have to do sex work in order to meet their needs for shelter and food is increasing by the day. Söyle added that the trans individuals held in camps in satellite towns cannot access the health services and medicine they require for their transition process.

The panel which was concluded with a question-and-answer session emphasized the importance of recognizing the existence of immigrants in Turkey and conducting common works to lead a life together, and made suggestions for creating public opinion towards the adoption and implementation of legal regulations required for the refugees/immigrants/asylum-seekers to lead humane lives; supporting refugee women and LGBTI to create their own initiatives for organizing; opening multilingual and multicultural counseling centers; and developing solutions through solidarity networks. All these discussions were also shared live in social media through @kadinih and @lambda_istanbul twitter accounts.

12.11.2015

Kadının İnsan Hakları – Yeni Çözümler Derneği / Women for Women’s Human Rights-New Ways (WWHR) www.kadinininsanhaklari.org, Tel : (+90) 212 251 00 29
Lambdaİstanbul LGBTİ Dayanışma Derneği / LambdaIstanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association
http://www.lambdaistanbul.org, Tel: 0549 490 90 71

Kaos GL Derneği / Kaos GL Association www.kaosgl.org Tel : +90-312-2300358 Faks : +90-312-2306277

One Day, One Struggle 2015: Over 20 groups across 8 countries collaborate on actions for sexual rights as human rights

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Each year on November 9th, the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR), its members and allies celebrate sexual rights as human rights with the One Day, One Struggle international campaign.

The historic campaign began in 2009, making 2015 the 7th year running that we are coming together in solidarity with all those struggling for the rights to choose freely on matters of sexuality, fertility, bodily autonomy, gender identity and self expression.

This year the campaign has involved over 20 organizations across 8 countries hosting collaborative events, and the gamut of activities shines a spotlight on the diversity of key and emerging sexual rights issues across our contexts.

From street actions to talk about sexual harassment in public spaces in Tunisia, to film screenings and poster exhibits on LGBTI experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan, to a look at the right to assisted reproductive technology in Egypt, to a drama- and arts-based workshop exploring healing in the face of terror attacks in Turkey, to supporting trans communities’ access to justice in Malaysia, and more, CSBR members and allies continue to push the boundaries and break new ground in promoting a holistic approach to sexual rights as human rights in Muslim societies.

See a brief listing of the planned actions below, and keep up with us on Twitter (@SexBodyRights, #OneDayOneStruggle, #sexualrights) and Facebook (facebook.com/CSBRonline) on November 9th for more details and updates as the actions occur!

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Egypt:

  • Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) is hosting a talk on “Treating male infertility in Egypt: Psychological and Social Consequences for Women”. The issue of infertility in Egypt, particularly male infertility, remains a very sensitive topic. When do couples choose to disclose this diagnosis and when do they hide it? How do laws regulating infertility treatment in Egypt impact couples’ choices, especially given the fact of the illegality of egg and sperm donation? Who bears the greater psychological burden of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)? How do these assisted reproductive technologies shore up a particular conception of women’s reproductive roles? Invited speaker Shams Labib will explore these key questions in relation to her research on the topic.


Indonesia:

  • GAYa NUSANTARA, in collaboration with C2O Library and discussants from Airlangga University are hosting a screening of “Stories of Being Me” and a discussion on experiences of LGBTI Indonesians.


Kyrgyzstan:

  • Bishkek Feminist Collective is producing and launching a video called “Bishkek Girls Unite for their Sexual and Bodily Rights”. For the video, 10 girls gathered together to share their concerns related to their body and sexual rights, and particularly to explore traditions and stereotypes, and the adverse impacts this has on women and girls’ rights to bodily autonomy and integrity. While mapping out challenges, the discussion also provided the space to talk about solutions, particularly from a lens of solidarity as women and girls facing the same challenges across the country.


Malaysia:

  • Women’s Aid Organization (WAO), drawing on resources from Justice for Sisters and the My Trans Ally campaign, is hosting a social media campaign across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest from 9am – 4pm, which will look at transgender rights, including ways to support and inform local actions especially after the recent Federal Court ruling and subsequent rise in violence against mak nyah across Malaysia. Join the campaign and share your thoughts, comments, and experiences, using the hashtags: #BeFreetoBeYourself #TransAlly #OneDayOneStruggle #ODOS


Pakistan:

  • VISION and allies are organizing a poster exhibit and discussion on sexuality rights, focusing on the power of personal reflection and self-discovery as a starting point to understanding social systems and constructions of stigma, discrimination, and divisions in society.
  • Drag It to the Top and allies are hosting ““Responses to Homonationalism in South Asia: Conversations on strengthening queer feminist solidarity across South Asia and the Middle East”. Key questions in the conversation include: What is homonationalism and what are the responses to homonationalism in Pakistan?, What threats, if any, does it pose to cultural beliefs and indigenous social practices?, What roles can homonationalism play in decolonizing and democratizing feminist practices?, Can it be used as a tool to strengthen cross-cultural transnational solidarity?


Philippines:

  • PILIPINA Legal Resources Centre (PLRC) has organized a workshop with LGBT leaders, academia, media, civil society, and representatives from the local governmet to develop a proposal for the Implementing Rules & Regulations (IRR) on the Davao City Anti-Discrimination law as it pertains to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

 

Tunisia:

  • Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), in collaboration with ATL, Chouf, Groupe Tawhida Ben Cheikh, Mawjoudin, Rojalnu, Waai and Without Restrictions, is organizing a street action and a public discussion to raise awareness on sexual harassment in public spaces.


Turkey:

  • Women for Women’s Human Rights, in collaboration with LAMBDA Istanbul, are organizing a panel on the sexual and bodily rights of women and LGBTI refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in Turkey. Panelists include experts working in the field, along with members of women’s rights and LGBTI organizaitons. A discussion with the audience will follow.
  • KAOS-GL is organizing a psychodrama workshop for witnesses of the Ankara massacre, which aims to use drama and art therapies to strengthen the participants’ bodily and spiritual rights, resiliency and health.

We also give a big shout out to those who planned activities in other countries and cities for this year’s campaign, but due to security concerns had to postpone their actions.

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Keep up with the actions on November 9th by following us on Twitter (@SexBodyRights, #OneDayOneStruggle, #sexualrights) and Facebook (facebook.com/CSBRonline).

CSBR Statement in Support of Mak Nyah in Negeri Sembilan & Across Malaysia

CSBR-Statement

CSBR Statement in Support of Mak Nyah in Negeri Sembilan & Across Malaysia

The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) expresses our solidarity with Mak Nyah in Negeri Sembilan state and across Malaysia, whose access to justice in the face of arbitrary arrests, detentions, and violations of their personhood, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement and public participation continues to be delayed.

Since 2010, trans women in the Negeri Sembilan state have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and violent detentions under Section 66 of the Negeri Sembilan Syariah Criminal Enactment 1992, which states that ‘any Muslim male person, who, in any public space, poses as a woman and wears a woman’s attire shall be guilty of an offense, and shall be liable upon conviction to a fine of up to MYR 1000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to both’.  

In February 2011, three transgender women—Muhamad Juzaili Mohd Khamis, Shukur Jani, and Wan Fairol Ismail—filed a Judicial Review application on the constitutionality of Section 66, and a long, complex struggle to access justice in the formal court system began.[1] Almost four years later on 7 November 2014, the Court of Appeal delivered a landmark decision that Section 66 was incompatible with the Malaysian constitution, particularly Articles 5(1) regarding life and liberty, 8(1) regarding equality, 8(2) regarding gender discrimination, 9(2) regarding freedom of movement, 10(1)(a) regarding freedom of speech, assembly and association.

The Court of Appeal’s judicial reasoning was a strong affirmation of Mak Nyah communities’ rights to self-determination and dignity, and to equal protection under the law. The Court of Appeal’s reasoning was also important in recognizing that laws such as Section 66 that criminalize gender expression impact upon the rights of all persons, regardless of gender or religion, and cannot be used to undermine constitutional rights of Malaysian citizens.

Today, on 8 October 2015, the Federal Court of Malaysia has decided that the decision by the Court of Appeal cannot be upheld, on the basis of a technicality regarding judicial process. The Federal Court sided with the argument put forth by the Negeri Sembilan government that the High Court and the Court of Appeal erred in entertaining the judicial review, and that it should have been taken up by the Federal Court directly.

Despite the ruling, the atmosphere at the courthouse was not one of resignation. As Nisha Ayub shared with us after the judgement was delivered, “As a citizen of Malaysia reflecting on the judgement today, I’m trying to understand why this objection is only being raised now, and not at any of the original proceedings in the last four years. At the end of the day, they are just trying to find a scapegoat entry to say that this is not right. That is very clear, because we already won the case. So yes I feel disappointed, but at the same time I feel I’m still empowered because we got a good judgement. We as a community are empowered and can support each other through the legal procedures. They can say whatever they want to say, and we will continue fighting our way for rights.

As respondent lawyer Aston Paiva shared, “The orders of the High Court and the Court of Appeal were set aside today, but what is important is that the reasoning of the Court of Appeal is still there. So if we do go back to the Courts, all we’re going to do is go back with the reasoning of Justice Hishamudin, Justice Azia Ali, and Justice Lim Yee Lan and say, ‘This is our case, you have to deal with the argument now’. And in that regard I am actually happy. The Court of Appeals’ decision on its substance was never overturned, just the procedural point.”

In terms of next steps, S. Thilaga of Justice for Sisters expressed that it would be important now to monitor the state enforcement of Section 66, and see whether the arrests and harassment of transgender communities under Section 66 would begin again. She highlighted that while after the Court of Appeals 2014 ruling, no further arrests of Mak Nyah in Negeri Sembilan were made as that would have contradicted the ruling, other Malaysian states that have similar laws criminalizing gender expression and identities have continued to arrest trans women at private gatherings, including weddings and birthday celebrations in private homes.

In our mind, access to justice shouldn’t be this difficult, this tedious, this complex; it should be transparent and accountable. But despite the decision today, we are comforted by the fact that there are a lot of supporters, and people working to raise awareness on violence and discrimination faced by trans women and hope people will continue to speak out.

The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies supports the on-going struggles to access justice for Mak Nyah in Negeri Sembilan state and across Malaysia. We join the call for the safety, security, and well-being of transgender communities to be upheld, and for an end to harassment, intimidation, arrests and detentions on the basis of gender identity and expression.

For more information about the court case and proceedings, contact Justice for Sisters at justiceforsisters@gmail.com.

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8th CSBR Sexuality Institute – Call for Applications!

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8th CSBR Sexuality Institute –
Call for Applications!
 

 

The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) is pleased to announce our Call for Applications for the 8th CSBR Sexuality Institute, to be held from 9-16 February 2016, in Sri Lanka.


Interested?

  • Do you have at least 2 years of experience working on issues of sexuality & human rights?
  • Are you committed to undertaking efforts to promote sexual and bodily health and rights at national and international levels?
  • Do you represent an organization/institution engaged in advocacy, research, fieldwork, and/or grassroots organizing on issues of sexuality and rights?

Then we’d like to hear from you!

 

Deadline for applications is

5 October 2015

 

To apply, (1) Submit the Application Form online, and (2) Email us your current C.V. at csbrsexualityinstitute@gmail.com