The Declaration of Montréal

01Adoption

The Declaration of Montréal on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights was adopted on 29 July 2006 at the International Conference on LGBT Human Rights, part of the first World Outgames in Montréal. It was drafted by the conference co-presidents, Joke Swiebel, a former member of the European Parliament, and Robert Wintemute, and adopted unanimously by the conference’s international scientific committee of 37 LGBT activists and experts.

The conference ran from 26 to 29 July, just before the sports programme. The declaration’s own website puts attendance at 1,500 people from more than a hundred countries and calls it the largest international conference on LGBT issues held to that point. Wikipedia gives slightly different figures in two articles: almost 2,000 delegates and 600 speakers in one, 1,516 participants in the other.

02Who spoke

Keynote speakers included Louise Arbour, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose speech at the opening dinner encouraged the conference’s aim of recognition at the United Nations. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, spoke, as did Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the author Irshad Manji, Georgina Beyer of New Zealand, the world’s first openly transgender member of parliament, and Martina Navratilova.

Five plenary sessions covered the United States and Canada, Africa and the Arab world, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. More than a hundred workshops ran alongside them.

03What it covers

The declaration sets out rights it proposes should be guaranteed to LGBT and intersex people everywhere. Its first demands concern protection from state and private violence: an end to the death penalty for same-sex relations, action against hate crimes and forced marriage, and an end to unnecessary surgery on intersex people who are not old enough to consent.

It calls for the repeal of laws against consensual same-sex activity and for freedom of expression, assembly and association, including the right to hold pride marches. Under freedom from discrimination it covers asylum and immigration, family rights including marriage and parenthood, education, health care, the media and employment.

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The text also addresses the United Nations directly. It was intended to be presented to the UN and to national governments, and it asks the then new UN Human Rights Council to take up LGBT rights, citing the Human Rights Committee case Toonen v. Australia. It also calls on states and the UN to recognise 17 May each year as an international day against homophobia. The full text is published at declarationofmontreal.org in English, French, Spanish, Catalan and Bahasa.

04An advocacy tool

The authors did not present the text as a summary of the conference. The declaration’s website describes it as perhaps the first attempt to state the main demands of the international LGBT movement in the broadest terms. It calls it a starting point for political discussion rather than the result of a long consultation, and an advocacy tool to be used according to national and local circumstances. Carrying it forward, the website adds, was to be a task for GLISA, the body responsible for future Outgames, and it suggested the text could serve as a benchmark for later conferences.

The next one came in Copenhagen in 2009. Co-chaired by Rebeca Sevilla and Svend Robinson, it ended with the Copenhagen Catalogue of Good Practices, a collection of effective actions for LGBT human rights from around the world. Wikipedia also notes that the Montréal text’s section on intersex people influenced Principle 18 of the Yogyakarta Principles, on protection from medical abuse.

05Adoption by others

The Montréal borough of Ville-Marie became the first elected body to adopt the declaration, on 1 August 2006, while the Games were still running. The New Democratic Party of Canada followed on 10 September 2006 with a unanimous vote at its federal convention, and on 20 September its LGBT rights critic, Bill Siksay, presented a motion in the House of Commons asking the government to abide by it. The city councils of Montréal, Barcelona, San Francisco, Denver and Sydney also adopted it, according to Wikipedia.

One of its authors returned to the series later. Robert Wintemute was listed as a presenter at the 2017 Human Rights Conference in Miami Beach, eleven years on.

06The 2006 Games

The first World Outgames ran in Montréal from 29 July to 5 August 2006, with 10,248 athletes from 111 countries, according to Wikipedia’s summary. At the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium on 29 July, Martina Navratilova and Mark Tewksbury read the declaration aloud after the parade of nations. Later editions followed in Copenhagen, Antwerp and Miami.

07Frequently asked questions