Pride Marches in Moldova: The Case of Genderdoc
/In 2005 the authorities in Chișinău, Moldova, banned a march planned by an LGBT organisation, to deliberately discourage the promotion of LGBT rights. In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights held that the ban was discriminatory and breached the right to peaceful assembly (art.11 ECHR).
In response to the judgment, the Moldovan government submitted an Action Plan, saying that the incident of banning the LBGT march had been an isolated one. It claimed that the organisation had been allowed to freely assemble since then and that their rights had been successfully strengthened by legislation, and that all ‘adverse the adverse effects of the violation were erased by the sole fact of awarding the monetary compensation for just satisfaction, which covers all negative consequences of the violations’ requesting the Council of Europe to end supervision of the case under Enhanced Procedure.
However, the assurances of the authorities that the issue had been promptly addressed turned out to be false. LGBTI marches kept getting banned, and those that did go ahead had to be abandoned, due to the threat of violence and the absence of police protection. This meant that, contrary to the claims of the government, the violation still had not been successfully remedied.
Fortunately, communications about these facts were submitted to the Council of Europe (in the form of Rule 9 submissions), by the local NGO Genderdoc, working in partnership with ILGA-Europe and EIN Board member Nigel Warner. Thanks to this, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe was made aware of the continued discrimination. The submission explained what the real situation was in Moldova and demanded that concrete steps were taken by the authorities in order to end it. Genderdoc also carried out advocacy at the national level to raise awareness and promote the full and proper implementation of the judgment. Following the submission, the case was kept open with the Committee of Ministers and under enhanced supervision.
Under continued pressure from the Council of Europe, important changes were made to the relevant administrative practice in Moldova. Training and awareness-raising events on the prohibition of discrimination were organised for public officials and the general public. As a result of these changes, the LGBTI march could be held successfully and without disturbances for the first time in May 2018 and was repeated in 2019.
In the meeting in September 2019, the Committee noted that significant progress was achieved as concerns the organisation of pride marches in the last few years in Moldova and that the applicant NGO was able to exercise the right of assembly effectively. The Committee’s supervision over the case was therefore brought to an end.
The case of Genderdoc is an example of how NGOs - through engagement with national authorities and submissions to the Committee of Ministers - can ensure that proper information is provided in the implementation process, that monitoring continues while it is still needed, that adequate reforms can be adopted, and that a judgment can lead to rights in practice.