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The Ombudsman against Discrimination on grounds of Sexual Orientation has ceased to exist. On 1 January 2009 the Ombudsman was merged with the other Ombudsmen against discrimination into a new body: the Swedish Equality Ombudsman. The previously existing acts against discrimination were also replaced with a new Discrimination Act. Some of the material on this website may therefore be out of date. For more information, see: www.do.se
 During this year’s Europride the visitors could meet representatives from all the Swedish Ombudsmen against discrimination which together with the Swedish local antidiscrimination agencies shared a tent in Pride Park. On the basis of the question “Where do you think the risk of being discriminated against is the biggest?” and “To whom or where do you turn if you have been subjected to discrimination?” the visitors were to reflect on the different grounds of discrimination, including the two new ones - gender identity or expression and age. From the Pride visitors’ point of view discrimination in the workplace seems to be the most problematic area – 344 visitors thought that the risk of being subjected to harassment or discrimination was the biggest there. However, both in schools (126) and within sports (90) continuous work against homophobia and discrimination seem necessary.
In addition to the activities in Pride Park the Ombudsman arranged three seminars raising the issue of discrimination in Sweden as well as in the rest of Europe. On Thursday, Christine Gilljam, Development Director at the Ombudsman and Jonas Frykman from the municipality of Huddinge spoke on how the municipalities can work with sexual orientation discrimination.
During the seminar ”Rights of LGBT Families in Europe” prominent researchers and academics discussed the subject together with the Council of Europe Commissioner on Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg and the Ombudsman Hans Ytterberg. Loveday Hodson from the Faculty of Law at the University of Leicester talked on the definition of a family within international law and drew attention to the fact that there are some signs of the Council of Europe expanding its view of the family to also include same sex couples.  Thomas Hammarberg, Robert Wintemute, Loveday Hodson and Hans Ytterberg in a discussion on same sex couples' rights in Europe Robert Wintemute, professor at Kings College, University of London, pointed out the advantage of EU regulations being that a court verdict directly affects other member states, which is not always the case as regards the verdicts of the European court that the member states often ignore until the day a case actually concerns the state in question.
During the seminar Thomas Hammarberg underlined the importance of taking principally important and well prepared cases to the European court in order to reach success in the work on same sex couples’ rights. He also recommended an additional protocol to the European convention defining a family to also include same sex couples. However, he admitted that it would be difficult to gain support from the Council of Europe member states for such a protocol.
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HomO | Box 3327, 103 66 Stockholm | E-mail: homo@homo.se | Phone: +46 (0)8 508 887 80 | Fax: +46 (0)8 508 887 90 |
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