Romania provides quite an interesting case-study of significant progress in ensuring LGBTI rights in a country which is usually perceived as being rather conservative. During the workshop we will discuss advocacy and litigation strategies used by Romanian human rights advocates in order to protect and assert the rights of the LGBTI community, the backlash, as well as ways to respond to the changing tides in equality law. This includes a discussion of key successes such as pioneering litigation before the Court of Justice of the European Union or before the European Court of Human Rights, or the Romanian Constitutional Court, and the successful campaign which lead to the invalidation of the constitutional referendum aimed to ban same sex marriages from the Fall of 2018.
Romaniţa IORDACHE (Co-president of ACCEPT Romania,Senior Expert coordinating the Romanian FRANET team working for the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union,Independent Expert, European Equality Law Network of the European Commission)
A graduate of Bucharest Law School, Romaniţa undertook her post-graduate education at the Central European University and at New York University School of Law specializing in human rights law. She is currently finalizing her doctoral studies in Diversity Management and EU Governance in Graz. In the last 18 years, Romanița worked as human rights researcher for international governmental and non-governmental organizations while remaining actively involved in the work of ACCEPT, a human rights group focused on the rights of the LGBTI community in Romania. At ACCEPT, Romanița coordinates the pro bono strategic litigation work of the organization which lead to several ground breaking cases on homophobia motivated crimes ( M.C. and A.C. v. Romania, ECtHR, 2016), the first case of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the field of employment brought before the CJEU ( C-81/12, ACCEPT v. the National Council for Combating Discrimination, CJEU, 2013) or the first case discussing recognition of same-sex marriages in the context of freedom of movement in the EU (C-673/16, Coman, Hamilton and ACCEPT v. the General Inspectorate for Immigrations, Grand Chamber CJEU, 2018). Romanița also coordinated strategic litigation before the Romanian national equality body and Romanian courts, including the request for a constitutional review before the Constitutional Court which led to a positive decision in favour of same-sex families in July 2018 (Decision 534 from 2018 of the Romanian Constitutional Court). She was actively involved in the advocacy efforts of RESPECT – the civic platform for fundamental rights and freedoms which organized the boycott campaign leading to the invalidation of the 2018 constitutional referendum aimed to restrictively redefine family as the marriage between a man and a woman.