LGBTI rights activists in El Salvador have formed a new federation to fight for LGBTI rights in the Central American country. (Washington Blade photo by Ernesto Valle)
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Different LGBTI rights organizations have joined forces to spur the Salvadoran government to respect and promote LGBT and intersex rights. They are also demanding that political parties make security and the right of transgender people to self-identify a priority.
A total of 16 organizations have come together to form Asociación Federada LGBTI, thus uniting the entire population for the first time behind a common goal.
The federation’s strategic plan describes Raquel Caballero, director of the El Salvador Attorney General’s Office of the Defense of Human Rights, as a threat to the LGBTI movement’s agenda. It notes she has made her conservative positions towards abortion and the LGBTI community clear.
“It is unclear if the deputy prosecutor is working, but prosecutor Caballero has not met with us,” said Bessy Ríos, director of Fundación de Familiares y Amigos por la Diversidad Sexual, De la Mano Contigo, an LGBTI advocacy group.
The federation also hopes to create an observatory down the road that would document LGBT-specific human rights violations, filling a void that the government must fill.
Some of the federation’s member organizations recently met with Attorney General Douglas Meléndez and highlighted the needs of the LGBTI community in terms of the application of justice and the application of penal code reforms. “We needed to know if there are advances in hate crimes cases, especially those of Tania Vásquez, Francela Méndez and the most recent cases in San Luis Talpa, all of whom were trans women,” Xavier Hernández, member of Asociación de Generación Hombres Trans de El Salvador, a group that advocates on behalf of trans Salvadoran men, told the Washington Blade. “The attorney general said his office is working to strengthen prosecutors’ ability to serve vulnerable population, among them the LGBTI community, and there is a proposal to create a special LGBT unit, but there is not enough funding for it.”
The federation is working to obtain legal status that would allow it to raise funds. Its working plan for the next three years includes the creation of a school that would bolster the participation of LGBTI people in the political process, a nondiscrimination campaign that promotes human rights and a lobbying strategy that focuses on public policies and laws.
