Three international gay rights advocacy organizations are jointly urging the UN body that reviews implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) to incorporate the radical “Yogyakarta Principles” in its recommendations.

The Yogyakarta Principles were partly developed by Irish legal expert, and Catholic priest, Professor Michael O’Flaherty. Professor O’Flaherty is a member of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC).

The principles, among other things, call for adoption by same-sex couples, for the right of individuals who believe they have been born into the ‘wrong’ sex to have their birth certs etc changed to reflect their desired sex or ‘gender’, to limit freedom of expression in order to ‘protect’ gay rights, to have the licitness of homosexuality taught in schools, and to have the rights of gays and lesbians protected within religious organisations.

Currently, the Principles have no legal status. However, according to C-Fam, a Catholic human rights body that monitors the UN and the EU, the lobbying effort of these three groups is an attempt to elevate them to the status of “soft law”. This would enable bodies charged with reviewing countries’ compliance with international treaties be referenced in more formal contexts, such as by the UN committees which monitor the implementation of international treaties.

In turn this would allow homosexual rights’ groups to argue that domestic legislation on such issues should give way to new, evolving soft-law international norms, despite the absence of reference to such “norms” in actual hard-law treaties ratified by sovereign nations.

The three groups – ARC International (ARC), the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association (ILGA) – lobbied the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) last month to include a reference to the Yogyakarta Principles in a new “General Comment,” or interpretive guideline, that CESCR is drafting in order to “assist” states “in meeting their treaty obligations.”

As with all other United Nations (UN) treaties, ICESCR is silent with regard to “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. Last month a Dutch government official also called upon nations to join his country in accepting the Yogyakarta Principles.

The joint statement by ARC, IGLHRC and ILGA appears derived in substance from a 2008 Human Rights Law Review article authored by Professor O’Flaherty and John Fisher. Fisher is ARC’s co-founder.

In their article, “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and International Human Rights Law: Contextualizing the Yogyakarta Principles,” Professor O’Flaherty and Fisher fault CESCR for lagging behind the UN Human Rights Committee in urging member states to adopt sexual orientation non-discrimination policies via recommendations that the authors acknowledge to be “non-binding and flexible.”

ARC is a Canadian NGO committed to advancing “recognition of sexual orientation and gender identity issues at the international level.” IGLHRC emphasizes advocacy and “coalition building,” while ILGA is an umbrella organization which in 1993 became the first homosexual group to be granted UN consultative status.