Thank you, Chair.
I am Joey Joleen Matale speaking on behalf of the LGBTIQ+ constituency of APRCEM.
We across the region continue to face overlapping legal, religious, and social barriers that heighten their vulnerability, particularly amid the escalating climate crisis across Asia and the Pacific. Rights Holders’ engagement in the VNR process is crucial to ensure human rights of LGBTIQ+ communities are not left behind.
While Leiti (transgender people) have long held culturally recognized roles prior to the colonial influence, same-sex relations remain criminalized with penalties of up to 10 years in prison, and there are no anti-discrimination protections. Strong conservative values incite violence against LGBTIQ+ people, shape legislation and public attitudes, often portraying homosexuality as incompatible with our societal, religious, and indigenous norms and lives. LGBTIQ+ individuals continue to face discrimination and forms of violence, including incidents of violence such as the 2021 murder of a prominent activist, alongside ongoing exclusion and limited access to essential resources and services.
Our country has joined several UN review processes. However, persistent challenges remain in how civil society organisations (CSOs) are engaged. Too often, participation is limited to late-stage consultations with unclear modalities, and tokenistic processes — where CSOs are invited to validate predetermined narratives. Community-generated evidence and CSO documentation are rarely referenced as primary data sources, and when included, they are annexed rather than integrated into the core findings despite critical data gaps in the SDGs architecture.
We recommend the governments to:
- Prioritize equity and the Leave No One Behind principle by centering VNR analysis on those most marginalized, including LGBTIQ+ communities, and assess how laws and policies address structural inequalities rather than relying solely on aggregate progress indicators.
- Create an enabling civic space by ensuring early, transparent, and continuous CSO engagement throughout the VNR cycle, with clear modalities that allow civil society to shape analysis and recommendations
- Institutionalize the collection and publication of gender- and SOGIESC-disaggregated data, and formally integrate community-generated evidence into core findings and policy recommendations.
- Amplify marginalized voices by guaranteeing the meaningful representation of LGBTIQ+ people as rights holders in national and local SDG consultations and decision-making processes.
- Translate VNR commitments into budgeted action plans with measurable targets shaped by the rights holders, and establish independent and community-led monitoring mechanisms to ensure accountability beyond the reporting process.
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