Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Archives - Page 3 of 6 - OURs - The Observatory of the Universality of Rights

Sri Lanka: Challenging ‘Gender Norms’ Brings Abuse

Transgender people and others who do not conform to social expectations about gender face discrimination and abuse in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 63-page report, “‘All Five Fingers Are Not the Same’: Discrimination on Grounds of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in Sri Lanka,” finds that people who don’t conform to gender norms face arbitrary detention, mistreatment, and discrimination accessing employment, housing, and health care. The government should protect the rights of transgender people and others who face similar discrimination, Human Rights Watch said.

“All Sri Lankans, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, should be able to exercise their rights without discrimination or abuse,” said Yuvraj Joshi, Gruber fellow in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “While the government has begun to address these issues, it should urgently seek to eliminate laws and practices that discriminate on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Read the rest of the article at Human Rights Watch.

Anti-Gay Activism Trumps Religious Freedom At UN ‘Family’ Event

Religious Right activists say they’re fighting to save religious liberty in America from the gay rights movement, but many of the same leaders are happy to partner with the most religiously repressive regimes in order to resist advances toward LGBT equality around the world.

Consider Monday’s “Uniting Nations for a Family Friendly World” event at the United Nations. It was sponsored by anti-gay and anti-choice groups like the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam, formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute) and Family Watch International, which work to keep LGBT-friendly language out of international documents and agreements. Their cosponsors included the 25 countries that make up the Group of Friends of the Family (GoFF), a coalition of UN member states created last year to “reaffirm that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Among the freedom-loving members of GoFF whose representatives spoke at Monday’s “high-level event” was Iran, which the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom has just accused of seeking to “eradicate” the country’s Baha’is.

In fact, there’s a lot of overlap between GoFF members and countries identified by the Commission, currently chaired* by social conservative strategist Robert George, as the worst in the world for religious freedom: Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Malaysia, Egypt, and Iraq. Also included in GoFF are countries where anti-LGBT religious and political leaders have been generating hostility and threatening the lives and freedoms of LGBT people, including Nigeria, Uganda, Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Read the rest of this article from Right Wing Watch

Rights Spotlight: IDAHOT

Yesterday and today – people around the world continue to be denied their basic and fundamental human rights, targeted on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression. And not only do violence, criminalization, discrimination, and impunity remain widespread, anti-rights actors frequently justify them at the national and international level in the name of culture, religion and tradition.

Over 70 countries continue to criminalize consensual same-sex relationships, and many people who are non-conforming in terms of their gender identity and expression and sexual orientation, including LGBTIQ people, undergo torture and ill-treatment in everyday life, in custody, and in clinics and hospitals. Across contexts, the law is employed to punish individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity and to restrict rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. Still today, region across region, entrenched discriminatory attitudes thrive in legal and policy vacuums and hate-motivated violence blights and ends the lives of many.

Yet states are legally bound by international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all persons, no matter their gender identity and expression and sexual orientation.

Human rights are for each and every one of us. To reserve rights for the powerful in society and to withhold them from the marginalized makes a mockery of our human rights system and of state obligations to their citizens, and to deny any group or individual their essential rights is nothing less than to try to define them as less than human.

Join OURs today in celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) and stand in solidarity with activists and individuals worldwide. Let us call for all states to uphold the universality of rights for everyone, everywhere – equally and without discrimination.

What is OURs?

OURs aims to monitor, analyze, and share information on anti-rights initiatives threatening our human rights systems. Our goal is to strengthen the work of activists facing direct challenges to rights, especially rights related to gender and sexuality.

Resources and further information

This IDAHOT, OURs highlights a selection of resources for activists working on rights related to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression worldwide.

Please share these with your networks, let us know of your key resources, and tweet using the hashtags #RightsAreUniversal and #IDAHOT

Resources:

Religious Right Leaders Head To Republic Of Georgia For ‘Pro-Family’ Attacks On West

The World Congress of Families, a global network of organizations that oppose LGBT equality and legal access to abortion, will hold its annual summit in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, beginning on Sunday, May 15.

Over the next several days, American Religious Right activists will meet with their counterparts from around the world to share and plan strategies for resisting and rolling back women’s and LGBT rights — often lumped together with opposition to sex education under the banner of fighting “gender ideology.”

This year’s summit is likely to feature a particular focus on siding with Putin’s Russia and the Orthodox Church as defenders of “Christian civilization” against a secular, decadent West. Georgia, which joined the Council of Europe in 1999, is front and center in what many of these activists see as a civilizational battle. Last October the EU and Council of Europe recommended policy changes to strengthen human rights protections in Georgia; the action plan to achieve them was launched this week. Back in 2014, with the encouragement of the EU, Georgia adopted a sweeping nondiscrimination law, which infuriated people like the WCF summit’s chair, businessman and philanthropist Levan Vasadze, who called the law part of “an international agenda” to “destroy the family.”

An anti-Western quote from Vasadze has been featured on the WCF home page this week:

The West is attacking our Christian culture with atheism, new forms of socialism and sexual radicalism — worse than what we saw during the last 25 years when we were part of the Soviet empire. This is why we need you to come to Tbilisi and work with us.

Read the full story from Right Wing Watch

Editor of Bangladesh LGBT magazine killed

The editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine has been killed in the latest of a series of horrific murders of bloggers and activists.

Xulhaz Mannan was one of two people hacked to death in an attack in the capital, Dhaka, police said, by a gang posing as couriers in order to gain access to his apartment in the Kalabagan district.

Mohammad Iqbal, the officer in charge of the local police station, confirmed that about six people had entered the apartment building and hacked Mannan and his friend to death in a first-floor flat. Two other people were seriously injured.

“A person came with a box identifying himself as courier service personnel. Xulhaz took him upstairs to his flat,” Iqbal said.

Mannan, 35, was the editor of Roopbaan, the country’s only magazine for the LGBT community and also worked at the US development agency USAid. The magazine had been launched in 2014 to promote greater acceptance of LGBT communities in Bangladesh.

Read the full article on the Guardian now.

Nigeria State Representatives deny any human rights violations taking place in Nigeria based on SOGI

The Coalition of African Lesbian reports form the 58th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights

On the first day of the 58^th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights [ACHPR], civil society organisations were given the opportunity to present statements to the Commission, highlighting issues of concern in respect to the situation of various human rights in their contexts.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity [and Expression] was an issue that was brought up consistently by various civil society organisations. The Coalition of African Lesbians, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria [CHR], as well as theLegal Defense and Assistance Project [LEDAP] all referenced the relevance of Resolution 275 in ensuring that the violence experienced by people who are non-conforming in their sexual orientation, expression and identity is stopped. Both reports by CHR and LEDAP spoke of recorded human rights violations happening in Nigeria. LEDAP, in their statement to the Commission shared statistics of violence and violations experienced by people non-conforming to heteronormative expression and sexual orientation. The LEDAP Statement mentioned that human rights organisations in Nigeria had recorded 172 such cases in 2015, and 52 cases in 2016. They stated that these violations are perpetrated and allowed by both state and non-state actors.

The LEDAP statement also highlighted the need for the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria to establish a reporting process that guarantees anonymity of victims of human rights based on their SOGIE.

On the 3^rd day of this 58^th Session, the Nigeria State representative responded to this statement. The Coalition of African Lesbians recorded and transcribed the State Representative’s response below:

“The [Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, 2013] simply defines a valid marriage in Nigeria to be legal union between persons of opposite sex in accordance with the marriage act, Islamic law, or customary law. With specific reference to the allegations raised by the NGO, the Legal Defense and Assistance Project, two days ago, we wish to state that the organization has failed to provide details of human rights violations suffered by any person in Nigeria where the violations took place based on real or perceived sexual orientation in Nigeria. Not even a single instance was cited that is capable of being verified. Presently the National Human Rights Organisation of Nigeria has constituted a panel of experts to examine all federal and state laws in conflict with human rights standards with a view to ensuring necessary amendments or repeal. The committee has received a memorandum on the same sex relations and is under consideration. It is rather interesting to note that the national human rights commission has not received a single complaint on the so called 172 cases violation alleged in 2015. Nor any of the 52 cases in 2016. The National Human Rights Commission standing orders and rules of procedure allow anonymity in complaints handling in circumstances such as these. It is rather strange that the NGO is not well acquainted with the legal and institutional framework of the Commission. Which to say that the NGO has not exhausted all available channels for resolving such issues before coming to this conference.”

The Coalition sought a comment form the Women’s Health and Equal Rights [WHER] Initiative based in Nigeria. The Initiative affirmed their support for the claims presented in the LEDAP statement. A WHER representative said, “Human Rights violations that involves LBT women has constantly been documented by women human rights organizations in Nigeria, and these are reported to the Nigeria National Human Rights Commission based on its rules of procedure 51 and the commission has several times acknowledged the receipt of such complaints. We will continue to remind and notify the commission of the human rights violation based on LBT women in Nigeria and we urge the commission to exercise its statutory responsibility of protection of all human rights of Nigeria including the LBT woman.”

The Coalition will track this situation and see if the Government of Nigeria in the upcoming Ordinary Session responds to this, or at least acknowledges receipt of reports of violations experienced by people resisting heteronormativity and challenging heterosexism in Nigeria.

Anti-LGBT group from U.S. holds Barbados conference

An anti-LGBT group from the U.S. held a conference in Barbados this past weekend.

National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown and Scott Strim, an American evangelical who opposes efforts to repeal Belize’s sodomy law, spoke at the World Congress of Families Caribbean Regional Conference that took place at a resort on the Caribbean island on April 8-9.

Josh and Caroline Craddock of CitizenGO, which describes itself as a “community of active citizens” who use “online petitions and action alerts as a resource to defend and promote life, family and liberty,” were among those who were also present.

An agenda posted to the conference’s website indicates that Brown was scheduled to speak on a panel titled, “Marriage as a public good: Why we should defend marriage as between one man and one woman.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has designed the World Congress of Families as a hate group.

Those who presented at the conference also spoke against abortion and contraception.

Read the full article from the Washington Blade now.

Key points from Pope Francis’s major new document on family issues

After two years of high-level meetings to discuss some of the most contentious and most personal issues in the Catholic church — including gay marriage, cohabitation and divorce — Pope Francis published a major teaching on Friday about the Catholic family.

Don’t have time to read the whole 256-page document? Take the time to read these six key excerpts, which together sum up Francis’s conclusions.

1. The Church defines the ideal relationship as a heterosexual marriage. But Francis writes that other loving relationships can have value too.

“Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecrated by the sacrament, which grants them the grace to become a domestic church and a leaven of new life for society. Some forms of union radically contradict this ideal, while others realize it in at least a partial and analogous way. The Synod Fathers stated that the Church does not disregard the constructive elements in those situations which do not yet or no longer correspond to her teaching on marriage.”

2. That being said, Francis makes it totally clear in this document that he won’t support gay marriage.

“During the Synod, we discussed the situation of families whose members include persons who experience same-sex attraction, a situation not easy either for parents or for children. We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence…. In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, ‘as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’”

Read the full article on the Washington Post now.

Colombia high court rules in favor of same-sex marriage

Colombia’s highest court on Thursday ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry.

Colombia’s constitutional court issued its 6-3 ruling nearly nine months after it held a hearing on whether to extend nuptials to gays and lesbians.

Colombia Diversa, a Colombian LGBT advocacy group, in a press release said the ruling “established that marriage is the only legal institution that addresses the lack of protection for same-sex couples and there is no basis to deny it.” The landmark decision also says that judges and notaries must perform civil marriages for same-sex couples who request them.

“Same-sex couples can access the institution of civil marriage with the same rights, benefits and the same responsibilities that this institution affords to heterosexual couples thanks to the Constitutional Court of Colombia,” said Colombia Diversa.

Angélica Lozano, a lesbian who was elected to the Colombian Congress in 2014, also celebrated Thursday’s ruling. “Equality is unstoppable,” she said in a tweet she posted to her Twitter page.

Read the full article on the Washington Blade now.

Experts unite to end human rights violations based on SOGI

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people across the world often face grave human rights violations, including torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, even killing – all because of who they are.

In an unprecedented dialogue, regional and UN human rights experts joined forces to look at their human rights situation, and to call for an end to violence and other human rights violations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

A report, launched today during the 58th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the Gambia, summarises the historic dialogue that took place in November 2015 between the African Commission, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN human rights experts.

The report also highlights the impact that human rights violations have on the health of LGBTI people and their access to HIV prevention and care.

“Violence and other human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity constitute universal challenges that require concerted responses by national, regional and UN human rights institutions,” said Pansy Tlakula, Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Read the full article on the OHCHR site now.