By Arvind Narrain and Kim Vance
Negation and acknowledgment’ as a frame of the Report
Using ‘Negation and acknowledgment’ to analyze Communications issued by the mandate
State Responses to the Report in the 38th Session of the Human Rights Council
Conclusion
The positive response by both sympathetic states as well as civil society to this Report indicates that the report has struck a chord among those committed to seeing LGBTI persons as part of what the previous mandate holder called, ‘diversity in humanity’. Since the rights of LGBTI persons are now a matter of institutionalized concern, it’s important that we continue to use the mechanisms of the mandate be it the ‘communications procedure’, the global publicity generated by the presentation of the Report in the General Assembly and Human Rights Council to take forward the struggle for equal rights for LGBTI persons. One also hopes that continuous engagement with this mandate will enable the production of qualitative reports which can play a role in transforming the status quo of ‘negation’ of the existence of LGBTI persons to ‘acknowledgement’ of the humanity of LGBTI persons and entitlement to all human rights.
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