Kaleidoscope Australia Human Rights Foundation


Kaleidoscope Australia Human Rights Foundation is a non-governmental organisation in Australia focused on human rights of sexual and gender minorities in the Asia Pacific region.

Objectives

The stated objective of the organisation is "to promote human rights and particularly the rights and freedoms of those who face discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity".

History

Kaleidoscope Australia was founded in September 2013 and was inspired by The Kaleidoscope Trust in the UK. Paula Gerber, the deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, has been the president. Michael Kirby is the patron.

Advocacy

Kaleidoscope Australia has a particular focus on submitting shadow reports to the UN Human Rights Committee and also to the UN Human Rights Council. The intention is to ensure that every national review by the Council and Committee includes an examination of the human rights of sexual and gender minorities as well as wider human rights issues. To date, shadow reports have been prepared for the Human Rights Committee on Nepal, Cambodia, Japan, and Sri Lanka. The Melbourne offices of the law firm DLA Piper helped in the writing of these reports.
In addition shadow reports on the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nepal, Myanmar and Micronesia have all been submitted to the Human Rights Council for these countries' Universal Periodic Reviews.
It is still too early to examine how effective the submission of these reports has been as the review process is still ongoing for most of these countries and it often takes several years before reform processes role out in countries who have been assessed. However, there are promising indications that one of the first Shadow Reports on Sri Lanka may have spurred the government there to move its position.
Kaleidoscope Australia also keeps up lines of communication with the Australian government over issues relating to Australia's foreign relations with regional nations over their record on the human rights of sexual or gender minorities. During the election campaign in 2013, KAHRF ran a pledge campaign to get the political parties in Australia committed to LGBTI rights in foreign policy. They were successful in getting the Greens, Labor and the Liberal candidate in Melbourne Ports, Kevin Ekendahl, to sign the pledge. In November 2013, Kaleidoscope Australia was also one of almost 20 groups across the Commonwealth that participated in and helped publish the "Speaking Out" report on Homophobia in the Commonwealth that had been coordinated and compiled by the Kaleidoscope Trust.