IDAHOBIT Week about Safe Space

May 17th is the International Day against Homo, Bi, Inter and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). The aim of the day is to demand respect and equality for queer people. The date was chosen to commemorate the decision to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the WHO (World Health Organization) on 17 May 1990. Trans was only removed 2018.

  • In Switzerland, LGBTQIA*+ people are again and again victims of discrimination, hate speech or violence. Since 2020, bi- and homosexual people have been legally protected against this, but inter and trans*people are still not.
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  • Marriage for same-sex couples does not yet exist in Switzerland.
  • In December 2020, Parliament made a clear case for same-sex marriage.  However, a referendum has been submitted and the Swiss electorate will now vote on it.
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  • Since same-sex couples are not allowed to marry, there is currently no possibility for them to adopt children. Only stepchild adoption is currently permitted in Switzerland.
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  • Same-sex couples are still excluded from all reproductive health procedures in Switzerland (Art.28PartG). Only married heterosexual couples are allowed to use sperm donation.  Surrogate parenting is forbidden in Switzerland.
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  • In Switzerland, it is not possible to have no gender entry in the passport, so anything other than male or female. Thus, only a change from female to male and from male to female is possible.
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  • Men who sleep with men are only allowed to donate blood after 12 months without sex, even without risk behaviour – HIV can be detected in the consistently tested blood preserves after 3 months at the latest.