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Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka: Asia-Wide Implications of an Essential Evolution in CEDAW's Jurisprudence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2022
Abstract
In 2022, the CEDAW Committee issued an Individual Communication concerning Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, a lesbian woman, human rights defender, and Executive Director of the only organization in Sri Lanka advocating for the rights of the entire lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex community. To date, the CEDAW Committee has received extensive criticisms concerning its neglect of women from diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. In this Communication, the Committee found that Sri Lanka's criminalization of consensual same-sex relations among women violates Articles 2, 5, 15, and 16 of the Convention. Importantly, the Committee makes clear that non-heterosexual relations fall within the right to marriage and family relations, enshrined in the Convention. With numerous States Parties in the region retaining criminalization, this article analyses the implications of this decision for States Parties in Asia and grapples with the question, “Is this Communication ground-breaking?” and if so, how.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Asian Society of International Law
References
1 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka [2022] United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UN CEDAW Committee), Communication No. 134/2018 [Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka].
2 LGBTIQA+ may be preferred, bringing within the rights protected asexual people (A) and others (+) who fit within the queer identity but do not identify with one of the other categories. LGBTI has been chosen for this article as this acronym reflects the groups mentioned and language used in the Individual Communication. Nonetheless, the acronym fails to speak to the highly relevant diversity of terminology used in the region when discussing sexual and gender minorities. In Cambodia, for instance, “third-gender” is the Khmer term; see Maria ELANDER, “In Spite: Testifying to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence during the Khmer Rouge Period” in Dianne OTTO, ed., Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (London, United Kingdom: Routledge Research in International Law, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), 110 at 125.
3 Sri Lanka: An Ordinance to Provide a General Penal Code for Ceylon, 1 January 1885, Ordinance No. 2 of 1883, online: Commonwealth Legal Information Institute <http://www.commonlii.org/lk/legis/consol_act/pc25130.pdf>, at sections 365 and 365A.
4 In Toonen v Australia, the Human Rights Committee member, Mr. Bertil Wennergren, in his Individual Opinion issued under rule 94, paragraph 3 of the Human Rights Committee's rules of procedure, disagreed with the Human Rights Committee's decision that they did not need to look at violation of the right to be equal before the law under Article 16 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Communication No. 488/1992. Rather, Mr Wennergren pointed out the unfairness of criminalization of consensual sex just between men in the Australian State of Tasmania, under which the law did not criminalise the same behaviour between women. Obviously, it is unlikely that Mr Wennergren foresaw or intended to promote the type of law reform that took place in Sri Lankan in 1995.
5 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka, supra note 1 at para. 9.3.
6 Ibid., at para. 9.4.
7 Ibid., at para. 9.7.
8 Ibid., at para. 9.5.
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25 Ibid., at para. 2.4.
26 Ibid., at para. 2.5.
27 Ibid., at para. 2.6.
28 Ibid., at para. 2.8.
29 Ibid., at para. 4.1.
30 Ibid., at para 2.8.
31 Ibid., at para. 5.1.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., at para. 6.2.
34 Ibid., at para. 4.3.
35 CEDAW Committee, United Nations General Assembly, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, General Assembly A/54/4 (1999).
36 Ibid., at para. 4.4.
37 Ibid., at para. 8.3.
38 Ibid., at para. 8.4.
39 Ibid., at para. 8.5.
40 Ibid., at para. 3.1.
41 Ibid., at para. 3.3.
42 Ibid.
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44 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka, supra note 1 at para. 9.5.
45 CEDAW, supra note 9, art. 5.
46 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka, supra note 1 at para. 3.4.
47 Section 365A explicitly criminalises “gross indecency” in either public or private. See also Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka, supra note 1 at para. 3.5.
48 Ibid., at para. 7.4.
49 Ibid., at para. 9.2.
50 Ibid., at para. 9.3.
51 Ibid., at para. 9.4.
52 Ibid., at para. 9.5.
53 Ibid., at para. 9.6.
54 Ibid., at para. 9.7.
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60 Women's Charter, supra note 59 at Preamble.
61 Ibid.
62 CENWOR, “CEDAW Indicators for South Asia: An Initiative” CENWOR and UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office (2004), online: CEDAW South Asia <http://cedawsouthasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CEDAW-Indicators-for-South-Asia-An-Initiative.pdf>.
63 Ibid., at 11.
64 See Anthony J. LANGLOIS, “No Regional Pattern: LGBTIQ Rights and Politics in Asia” in Fernand DE VARENNES and Christie M. GARDINER, eds., Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Asia (London, United Kingdom: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2018), 322.
65 Ibid., at 329.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 “Map of Countries That Criminalise LGBT People” Human Dignity Trust, online: Human Dignity Trust https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/.
69 Langlois, supra note 65 at 325.
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74 Otto, supra note 13 at 1.
75 Simm, supra note 20 at 377.