Blog: Perspectives

Each World Social Forum shows a glimpse of the chaos that results when civil society comes together in all the splendor of its plurality and diversity. If you are looking for order, straightforward proposals, reassuring conclusions, and smooth coordination of joint actions and if you love vertical and hierarchical leadership, this is not the place for you. The World Social Forum is a space for multiple voices, for dialogue and mutual understanding, for diversity and plurality and all the turmoil and disorganization that results from it. I believe that as part of a vulnerable sector of society LGBT groups and activists should love these more pluralistic arenas.

However, each World Social Forum event bears the imprint of the host country. This may be seen in the supreme freedom, solidarity, and self-determination in Porto Alegre to the distressing verticalism of Caracas. In the case of Dakar I also noticed a particular local imprint: an absence of visibility for LGBT people. Thanks to the committed activism of their creators and coordinators, spaces for sexual orientation and gender identity and expression have always been important and principle features of each chapter of the World Social Forum. This has been true from Porto Alegre to Belem do Para and from Mumbai to Nairobi. However, in Dakar, despite the superhuman efforts of the organizers, everything was different from the beginning.

OutRight Action International stands in solidarity with Uganda’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in strongly condemning yesterday’s killing of human rights defender David Kato. OutRight Action International joins groups across the world to demand that the Ugandan government immediately denounce David’s murder, thoroughly and impartially investigate this heinous crime and ensure the safety of all LGBT Ugandans.

November 20th, 2010 marked the 12th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day we remember those who have been killed by hatred and prejudice against transgender people and raise public awareness to combat violence against transgender people.

On Transgender Day of Remembrance, IGLHRC also celebrates the tremendous work of transgender activists and human rights defenders committed to promoting and protecting the human rights of transgender people. This is a powerful opportunity to insist that transgender rights are human rights, and that all members of the global community have an obligation to stop violence against transgender people.

Despite its relatively young existence Zambia has attempted four times to amend her constitution. For the Zambian LGBT community the most recent efforts to make a credible, durable and legitimate constitution, have in fact dealt the community a severe blow. The National Constitutional Conference (NCC) – the official body tasked with driving the reform process and rewriting the constitution – recently included a clause that forbids marriage between people of the same sex in the draft constitution. Friends of Rainka, an LGBT organization in Zambia condemned the move by the NCC as a direct attack on an already vulnerable community – and one that may overshadow any successes that the community has made to date. This condemnation is only one step in the response of activists to this threat to the human rights of LGBT people in Zambia.

To increase awareness and understanding of the constitution making process and to strengthen the capacity of activists to respond to its outcomes and implications for LGBT rights in Zambia, 12 Zambian LGBT activists and 4 allies attended a training on Constitutional Reform in Zambia: Managing the Impact from October 28-29, 2010 in Lusaka Zambia.

The review of Mongolia started with the opening remarks by Mr. Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, Vice President of the Human Rights Council (HRC). Then His Excellency Mr. Tsogtbaatar Damdin, State Secretary of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) of Mongolia introduced Mongolian government officials and delegates (consisting of seven men and two women from Mongolian Ministries, National Human Rights Commission, and General Police Department).  He then introduced the human rights situations of Mongolia in general terms, highlighting some issues such as capital punishment, desertification and other natural disasters, and people with disabilities.

After that, the most exciting part of the review commenced with each State asking questions and making recommendations. There were 43 States listed to speak for two minutes each. The first eight countries spoke with no mention of the LGBT rights issues and I started to feel nervous. Then, Canada stated, “Canada recommends that the Government of Mongolia (GoM) enacts broad-based anti-discrimination law that specifically protects … based on sexual orientation and gender equality.” A breath of relief! This was the mission delegation I met only the night before the review to insist that they include our LGBT rights issues. At this point, I realized the effectiveness of lobbying and advocacy activities done in advance of the review.

The second week of October 2010 saw the meeting of the CEDAW Committee in Geneva to consider the reports of various countries - including that of Uganda. Kasha N. Jacqueline, the Executive Director of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG), an organization that fights for the rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Uganda, attended that session along with an IGLHRC staff person, human rights activists from Uganda, Malta, and the Czech Republic, and several staff of the Malaysian NGO, International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific. These activists had the opportunity to engage in an interactive dialogue with the CEDAW Committee, presenting the key issues of their shadow reports and answering further questions the Committee had about their States’ human rights records.

Kasha spoke of the many violations and recommendations included in the FARUG shadow report, particularly noting the explicit exclusion of sexual minorities from the Ugandan Equal Opportunities Commission. However, she also brought to the Committee’s attention violations that had occurred only days before--when a Ugandan tabloid, “Rolling Stone,” printed a list of the names, pictures, and contact information of “known homosexuals,” including members of FARUG, with the headline “Hang Them.” As a result of that publication one of FARUG’s members, who had also contributed to the CEDAW shadow report, had been attacked at her house and on the street with stones being thrown at her.

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people in Asia and the Pacific Islands experience extra-judicial killings, torture, violence and rape, as well as discrimination in employment, education, housing and health services. These are the preliminary findings of the Advisory Council of Jurists (ACJ) of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF) that met August 3-5, 2010 in Bali, Indonesia. This independent body of legal experts has found that at least 17 API governments1 have failed to provide protections for LGBT people because their national laws, policies and practices are inconsistent with international human rights law.

In response to these realities for LGBT people in the region, the APF has begun the process of addressing discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as a legitimate human rights issue requiring the attention of its member institutions that are National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). The fact that protecting the human rights of LGBT people has captured the attention and become a focus for the APF is pleasantly surprising. Surprising because, only three countries in the region have laws providing explicit protection of LGBT human rights2, while nineteen countries still have laws that criminalize consensual homosexual relations3. Many of the NHRIs that are members of the APF have never discussed – let alone considered – sexual orientation and gender identity as a human-rights issue. In fact, many state officials in the region view non-heteronormative sexual orientation and gender identity as anti-religious and counter cultural.