Travaux de la Law Clinic
Signature de la Charte de la diversité par l’Université de Genève, en présence du Recteur Yves Flückiger
Performance de LUD

10H – 15H – Hall d’Uni Mail – Stands

Activités d’informations et de sensibilisation

16h15 – Salle 4220 à Uni Mail – projection

From parties to conferences, the celebrations will span over 13 locations. In the Eastern part of the country, the national HIV prevention organisation AHSGA will screen special IDAHOT messages in their trains, encouraging safe same-sex flirting!

The city of Geneva is again doing its annual campaign against LGBT-phobias on the weeks around IDAHOT, to join the global mobilisation around May 17.

The campaign aims to fight against the use of derogatory terms used against LGBT people by promoting the visibility of neutral terminology in the six languages most commonly spoken in Geneva: French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Albanian and Arabic. Sensitization actions will take place from 9th to 26th of May in the streets, at the University of Geneva and in several organizations, also those working with migrants. Read more on www.ville-geneve.ch/17mai. Posters in all languages can be downloaded in high resolution.

The situation of LGBTI Refugees in Switzerland
LGBTI refugees and their situation in Switzerland are the focal points of Pinkcross’ project. To debate this issue they  invited activists, politicians, refugees and medias for a work in progress event. The goal was to raise awareness in the Swiss population and institutions.
A hashtag campaign and a law project with their political allies  followed this event as a concrete action for a better treatment of LGBTI refugees.

Pinkcross is the Swiss Gay Federation, based in Bern but connected across the country.
Find out more about them here.

Placemats and Picnic
Dialogai together with UNAIDS carried out the third edition of the IDAHOT placemats to be disseminated in local restaurants, schools, institutions and cafeterias around the city of Geneva, Switzerland. The placemats provide material to reflect and discuss and have been very well received by establishment owners as well as costumers.
This year, the campaign was extended to the whole week of May 17, even though there were small delays due to printing problems. This year’s placemats were designed by LGBTQI Youth, in coherence with the global theme for IDAHOT.
On IDAHOT itself, Dialogai invited everyone to join the “IDAHOT picnic” on Geneva’s lakeshore. Find more details and updates on the event page.

One of the five IDAHOT Placemats from 2013

Find the Placemats for 2015 here.

Dialogai was established in 1982 and has therefore a long history of activism, advocacy and social projects for LGBT people to offer. They are also an important address in raising awareness of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections and offer support for people concerned within French-speaking Switzerland.
Learn more about them and their work here.

In Zurich, the organisation Achtung Liebe (Caution, Love) and allies were handing out information material and provided free hugs in the city centre. Find out more about the organisation and their activities here.

A few days before the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, ILGA launched at the Palais des Nations in Geneva the 10th edition of its annual report on State-Sponsored Homophobia, a world survey of laws: criminalisation, protection and recognition of same-sex love, authored this year by Aengus Carroll and Lucas Paoli Itaborahy.

The launch on May 13 featured a panel discussion on International Human Rights relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Speakers included Mona Rishmawi from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ambassador Regina Maria Cordeiro Dunlop of Brazil, co-author of the report, Aengus Carroll, LGBT rights defender, Joseph Sewedo Akoro, ILGA Executive Director, Renato Sabbadini and President of Riwi Corporation, Eric Meerkamper. 

Various actions took place to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia 2014 in Switzerland, in different cities, and spanning a great diversity of types of action and themes addressed.

Dialogi actions in Geneva – Love Does Not Differentiate

The association Dialogai in Switzerland developed, in cooperation with the municipality of Geneva, 3 main activities for IDAHOT. Firstly, a communication campaign on equality of all love, which was promoted in Geneva’s public transport systems from May 9 to May 18. During 10 days, all screens in the Geneva transport system showed a short slide show featuring three couples kissing: one straight, one lesbian and one gay. The 20 second long slide show concludes with the slogan ‘Love does not differentiate’.

‘Love does not differentiate’ – campaign for IDAHOT 2014 Switzerland

Dialogi campaign for IDAHOT 2014 in Switzerland

Stop Homophobia in Sports

Secondly, in collaboration with the City of Geneva, information booths were set up at the Jeux de Genève, as part of a campaign against homophobia and gender discrimination in sports. For this action, they worked with the visuals of the Stop Homophobie dans le sport campaign of the Swiss association of Sports services. 500 rainbow coloured wristbands were given out to young sportsmen and women aged 10 to 18 with the motto ‘Freedom to Love’ engraved in them.

UNAIDS Placemats Campaign

Finally, developed in partnership with UNAIDS, 10,000 placemats were distributed in restaurants and UN and school cafeterias. The pic and the list of restaurant can be accessed here.

Dialogi and UNAIDS infographic developed for IDAHOT 2014

Marriage Rights Event

A coalition of Swiss politicians from several political parties organised a gathering in the Capital city Bern in favor of same-sex marriage rights, thereby countering a current campaign by conservative movements to restrict marriage rights constitutionally to the union between a man and a woman. A march also took place in the city.

During the meeting, the city of Bern’s educational authorities presented the French and German versions of the ‘IDAHO lesson’, an official UNESCO lesson plan to fight homophobia and transphobia in schools.

Poster for IDAHOT 2014 march in Bern, Switzerland

IDAHOT Switerland Equality Video

Activists also produced this promotional video for IDAHOT 2014 actions in Switzerland:

Other Events

Various other events, such as a special club evening by the organisation 360°, or a dance evening in support of a Nigerian gay man who is threatened to be deported back to Nigeria, also marked the day in the country.

Photo: Milena Abrahamyan, contributor from Armenia & NYC

Egypt

“Egypt, as a conservative closed religious country, has a specific image on the hierarchy within its society. If you are not a heterosexual male in Egypt, you will definitely be discriminated against. And with the all the political and economical problems Egypt is having over the past years, people have started to express their feelings out very violently, and because they are still not able to face the authorities, they started taking it out on those who they believe they are the weakest links which are LGBTI and women. They believe when they do assault these categories, authority will be on their side this time, which is true. Now a lot of rape cases, sexual assaults, physical and verbal harassment, and attacks on Feminists and LGBTI groups and centers is happening in Egypt, and the authorities and media end up doing nothing as they believe that these groups are effecting public morals and traditions, and because they are very busy fighting political activists, they leave Feminists and LGBTI activists for the society to deal with.

As a Feminist and lesbian activist, I feel that my goal is to try to tie the two cases together and work on both of them. I believe that if I don’t have my full rights as a woman, my rights to have proper education, proper health treatment, political rights, the right to control my own life and make my own choices, I will not be able to express my gender and sexuality freely. Also if I skip all that and just focus on LGBTI problems like criminalizing it or the right in marriage and adopting, I will still be discriminated against as a woman. It is basically like a chain and each end is linked to the other, either we keep it tied up or break it and make it easier for anyone to step in and destroy all our hopes and dreams.”

- Maha Youssef, Bedayaa Organization for LGBTQI of the Nile Valley Area

Switzerland

“If feminist and LGBT activism aim at transforming power relations, we have to ask ourselves what justice entails for whom. Switzerland was comparably ‘late’ in its political and legal recognition of women and is still reluctant to fully recognize LGBTI claims. Whilst it is tempting to reduce March 8 to a celebration of measurable feminist achievements such as anti-discrimination legislation or principles that make inequality comparable such as the gender pay gap, why not think about those women whose experiences have been outside of what has been accomplished. On March 8, it deems important to broaden our understanding of justice and violence. Many experiences of sexism and queerphobia cannot be accounted for in the existing legalistic framework yet they still matter.

As LGBTI and feminist activists, we have to ask ourselves who we are allowing to set the political agendas. If Swiss feminism is so concerned with women’s economic independence and the gender pay gap, which in Switzerland currently hovers around 20%, why are we not concerned with the precarious labour conditions of sex workers and domestic workers? And what about the specific difficulties trans women, non-conforming genders or lesbians face in the work place? The discrimination Muslim women have to deal with, especially if they dare to wear a headscarf?. These are all feminist issues that have not made it on the mainstream feminist -or LGBTI- agenda in Switzerland.

Intersectional workings of queerphobia and sexism are particularly difficult to contest if the subjects who represent them are always marked as ‘marginal’. Queer-feminist activists worldwide have shown that a critique of power relations -also within feminist and LGBTI movements- has to go hand in hand with their political claims. In Switzerland this became particularly pertinent in 2009 when the country voted in favor of banning minarets. The campaign led by the Christian-Conservative front was using gender equality as an argument to push through their racist agenda. The violence against Muslim women and queers emerging from that campaign was subsequently contested by anti-racist feminist activists and researchers.

March 8 therefore is an opportunity to come together and think about the power relations that inform our work as feminist and LGBTI activists. It starts with who is allowed to take part in the marches, whose claims are deemed important and whose have ‘no priority’. Creating justice is also a result of power relations.”

- Maria von Känel, General Manager of the Swiss Rainbow Families Association and co-founder of NELFA (Network of European LGBT Families Associations) & Stefanie Boulila, a Swiss queer-feminist researcher from the University of Leeds

Japan

“Lesbian, bisexual women and transgender people have always been in women’s movements. Those of us who fight against homophobia and transphobia believes in women’s rights regardless of one’s sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity, gender expression or bodily diversity. On this day, let’s celebrate diversity among women all over the world.

Happy International Women’s Day from Japan!”

- Azusa Yamashita, Co-Secretary General, International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)

Armenia

“March 8th is ultimately about fighting for respect. It is not, as is common practice in Armenia, about giving flowers to women to highlight how fragile and beautiful they are. We shouldn’t live in a world where our only value is beauty, and where we are deemed fragile creatures to be protected, especially when we certainly aren’t protected from the violence of patriarchy.

To me, feminism is simply put the act of loving women, which ultimately means loving humanity. This is meaningful to anyone who has ever loved a woman not for being their sister, not for being their mother, not for being their wife or lover, but for being a human being. When girls are harassed in their own homes, when young women are shamed for expressing their sexuality, when women are subjected to violence by their husbands or partners, when feminists fighting for women’s rights to equal status in society are attacked by street mobs, when LBTI identified women are harassed, attacked, discriminated against at all levels of their lives, we are given a clear message that we live in an anti-woman world. The kind of love this world wants to give women is rooted in dehumanizing them to the level of sexual objectification or submissive servants. This is not love. This is disrespect.

March 8th is my everyday, the conscious act of loving women, and thereby loving and respecting what is human.”

- Milena Abrahamyan, Armenia & NYC

If you would like to add your voice, email us at contact@dayagainsthomophobia.org

The Facebook page also contains specific information about bullying and this year’s IDAHO campaign “Fighting homo/transphobia IN and THROUGH education”.

Imbarco Immediato is promoting the campaign in local newspapers.

The Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mi-pi…