Domination, Asylum, and Sexual Orientation

Asylum And Sexual Orientation

According to the introduction of the Yogyakarta principles “sexual orientation is defined as each person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectionate and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with individuals of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender. Gender identity refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech, and mannerisms” (The Yogyakarta Principles, 2007). These principles aim to draw our attention to the protection of rights and to extinguish transphobia, homophobia, discrimination and violence, fighting a number of exclusion forms (Palazzani, 2012, p. 63). This means that refugees have the right to seek asylum and - according to the principle of non-refoulement - not to be repatriated to their own country, where they would face the fear of persecution (Lambert, 1995, p. 3). In 1981, the Netherlands recognized for first time asylum protection on grounds pertaining to sexual orientation (the Judicial Division of the Council of the State, D 12-51, 13.8.1981; the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 1981).