Asian Caucus Meeting at ILGA World Conference 2019

On 19th March 2019, we had Asian caucus meeting at ILGA World Conference in Wellington, New Zealand / Aotearoa. The ILGA Asia caucus is an important part of the ILGA World Conference, where LGBTIAQ activists from Asia review challenges facing our community and coordinate our collective actions. It was about a 4-hour-long meeting and around 50 people, which is the highest number of attendance ever, from different regions of Asia participated.

With the warm welcome speeches from ILGA Asia's co-chair Manisha and Mani, the caucus meeting started. First of all, ILGA Asia staffs shared the updates from the ILGA Asia office such as progress since the ILGA Asia Conference 2017. Then, Minhee and Candy from Rainbow Action Korea shared the information on the next ILGA Asia Conference which will be held in Seoul this August.

The main part of the Asian caucus meeting was a participatory discussion. Participants shared updates from their own country and raised some issues about ILGA Asia and ILGA World's work and the conference. After that, based on the previous discussion on boiling issues in the region, participants joined a thematic group to suggest ideas for actions to be taken at the ILGA World Conference. In the end, we made a Statement of ILGA Asia caucus agreed by 24 LGBTIAQ activists from the region.

With the statement, we would like to call for the attention of ILGA members and non-members to the 9 issues: Internal Data Security, Decriminalization of Homosexuality, Government Censorship, Promotion of the Intersex Movement, Inclusion of Asexuality, Legal Gender Recognition, Movement Across Borders(Visa, Immigration, Travel Documents), Marriage Equality / Civil Partnership and Indigenous Identities. We would also like to reiterate the message: “ILGA should ensure that ILGA spaces are inclusive and diverse, and honor people’s right to self-identity.”

Here below are some moments from the Asian caucus meeting.