changing policy

History owes an apology to the members of this [LGBTQI] community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries. Supreme Court of India Ruling on Section 377, 6 September 2018

• On September 6, 2018, after 24 years of legal and political struggle, the Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality. The decision was met with cheers and hope, celebrating the fact that LGBTI people are no longer criminals in the eyes of the law. As a founding member of the coalition ‘Voices Against 377’, CREA worked for over 15 years to decriminalize homosexuality in India, providing a platform for lesbian women to advocate for their own rights at the national level alongside allies.

• In India, CREA helped draft the historic Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. Using an intersectional and sexuality lens, CREA provides input into bills and laws impacting sex workers, women with disabilities and transgender persons. CREA’s work alongside women with disabilities led to the first women with disabilities-led national network in Kenya.
• CREA was a founder of the Global South coalition Sexual Rights Initiative in 2006, along with national and regional organizations from across the world. SRI advocates for the advancement of human rights in relation to gender and sexuality and has greatly increased Global South activists’ participation at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and with other UN mechanisms.
  
  CREA’s focus at the HRC has been on abortion, maternal mortality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, disability, sex work, women and sports, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity, and gender-based violence. CREA has worked with SRI members to prepare submissions for the Special Rapporteurs on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on Violence Against Women and on Trafficking as well as for the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women on Law and Practice. In 2010, CREA conducted trainings with sexual rights activists from around the world on how to advocate within HRC’s processes and mechanisms.

• CREA is also a part of Dignity for All, a global consortium that advances the rights of LGBTI persons by engaging with democracies where national laws continue to criminalize sexual orientation and gender identity in varying degrees. CREA focuses on advancing issues of decriminalization both within existing legal frameworks as well as participating in civil society responses to address these complex issues.
• CREA is a partner in the Gender 360 group, which made a submission to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to enhance the Office of the Prosecutor’s understanding of sexual- and gender-based crimes, challenge normative ideas about gender and sexuality, and point out how normative ideas embedded in legal documents such as the Rome Statute have an exclusionary and harmful impact. Our submission to the ICC proposed a non-carceral and human rights-based approach that would mitigate harm and violence.