The Latin American and Caribbean region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association - ILGA-LAC commemorates the century of March 8th- International Women´s Day with the certainty that the cultural transformation depends on our struggle and all the other struggles.

¡We are all Women; workers too! Hence, we lesbians, bisexuals struggle for women´s rights and for the construction of our own rights emptied by the imposed chains of the masculinity´s hegemony. ¡What cannot be seen doesn´t exist and what doesn´t exist has no rights! So today March 8th again we raise our voice and demand the right to have rights, because:

• Directly and indirectly our sexual practices are penalized by at least 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean;
• We are denied of the right to form a family and our children are taken from us, although they wanted to stay with us;
• We hide our identity because of the violence it generates in other people. This implies that we don´t exist in most of the reports which denounce violence against women;
• Our crimes are reduced to the category of “passion crimes”, which hides and preserves the lesbofobic hate behaviors that affect us;
• We are raped in order to correct our sexual orientation, which is justified by many discourses that show us as abnormal and ill;
• We are discriminated, mistreated, laid off and our careers are limited for the mere fact of being women.
• We are not included in most of the narrow sexual health policies. Hence we have double incidence of breast cancer and vaginal herpes, among other difficulties that affect our physical and mental health;
• We are expelled of educational centers. When we are part of them we are permanent victims of lesbofobic bullying.

What has been mentioned above affects female transgenders too whom in a 70% - in most of LAC countries – have not finished their secondary studies. This forces them into prostitution and makes them vulnerable to HIV. ¡Transgender people are assassinated and their murderers are not judged!

To exclude lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders from the yet scarce advances in the field of violence against women, infringes the International Human´s Rights policy laws relegating them to inacceptable social inferiority positions. Hence to the states and governments who represent them, we demand:

• To fulfill the historic demands of the feminist and women´s movement;
• To apply the Yogyakarta Principles that direct the fulfillment of Human´s Rights in matters of sexual orientation and gender identity;
• To actualize the democratic ideal through the active involvement of groups of women, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders in the design of laws and public policy;
• To make the opportunities equal between men and women, and among those for lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, gays and intersex;
• To design public policy laws that protect and make effective the economic, social and cultural rights for lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. Emphasizing the solution of those problems that significantly difficult their complete development;
• To promulgate antidiscrimination laws clearly enacting the political demands from the movement of women and feminist lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

With strength and courage we -lesbians, bisexuals and transgender- face the moral dictatorships that pretend to rule our bodies and the conservative governments that hinder the development and implementation of an approach of human´s rights that goes in depth in the achievement of the sexual and reproductive rights. There in the middle of neoliberal’s terrorism -exacerbated by a post capitalism model- ILGA-LAC raise its voice together with all the women of the world to remember that human´s rights… ¡ARE FOR ALL THE WOMEN!

The Latin American and Caribbean region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association

ILGA-LAC

March 8, 2010