The Yogyakarta Principles: What the 2006 Document Said, and What the 2017 Addendum Added

In November 2006, a panel of twenty-nine international human-rights experts convened in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and adopted a set of twenty-nine principles articulating how established international human-rights norms apply to sexual orientation and gender identity. The resulting document — the Yogyakarta Principles — took each principle from binding treaty law, customary international law, or established UN doctrine, and stated its application to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons explicitly. The principles covered the right to life, freedom from torture, rights to privacy, equality before the law, access to justice, employment, health, education, housing, and freedom of expression, among others. Each principle was accompanied by a preamble statement and a list of recommendations addressed to states, UN bodies, and civil society.

The document does not create new law. Its authority rests on the claim that the law it recites already binds states through instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ↗ and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The drafting panel included current and former members of UN treaty bodies, special procedures mandate-holders, and academic international lawyers. The text was published in 2007 by the International Commission of Jurists and the International Service for Human Rights.

In November 2017, a smaller group of experts adopted the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 — an addendum of ten additional principles, bringing the cumulative total to thirty-nine. The additional principles addressed areas the 2006 text had not reached, including the right to protection from poverty, the right to sanitation, and rights specific to the protection of gender identity as a distinct legal category. The addendum also introduced the category of "gender expression" and "sex characteristics" alongside sexual orientation and gender identity, reflecting developments in intersex advocacy and jurisprudence in the intervening decade.

UN special rapporteurs and treaty-monitoring bodies have cited the Yogyakarta Principles in reports and concluding observations since the document's publication. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights referenced the principles in Advisory Opinion OC-24/17 ↗, issued 9 January 2018, which addressed state obligations regarding sexual orientation and gender identity under the American Convention on Human Rights. The principles remain non-binding as a matter of formal international law; their function is persuasive, offering a consolidated interpretive framework that adjudicators and advocates can cite when applying existing treaty obligations to questions the original treaty texts did not address in explicit terms.