Our Work
Global Programs
Our global programs support innovative advocacy and use our collective might to carry the voices of activists to advance equality and help end discrimination.
Global LBQ Program
The Global LBQ Program is Outright International’s initiative to support lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) communities worldwide. The program accomplishes this through advocacy, research, grant-making, increased visibility, and strengthening leadership capacity.
Key Points
- LBQ people face multiple forms of discrimination that limit access to education, work, healthcare, and safety.
- Outright is LBQ-founded and LBQ-led, with over 30 years of work advancing LBQ rights and visibility worldwide.
- The organization believes LBQ equality is essential to full gender and LGBTIQ equality.
Program Highlights
LBQ people confront compounding forms of discrimination, including misogyny, homophobia, and heteronormativity. Power dynamics and social norms expose them to a unique set of human rights violations, including particular risks of violence and discrimination in accessing education, health care, housing, employment, and family formation. Data on the experience of LBQ people is scarce, which negatively impacts the visibility of LBQ issues and their relevance in advocacy agendas. Consequently, the rights and issues of LBQ people are radically underserved and under-resourced, and LBQ people remain underrepresented in leadership roles.
Outright believes that a strong LBQ movement is essential to advancing human rights for all LGBTIQ people and improving all women's lives.
Outright International is an LBQ-founded and LBQ-led organization, and it has been intentional about having LBQ women at the highest levels of leadership, which has informed our initiatives throughout the organization’s history and continues to do so today.
Our commitment to LBQ issues and LBQ visibility is reflected in decades of programming, research, and campaigns that support and prioritize LBQ communities.
For three decades, Outright has placed LBQ visibility and advocacy at the center of our mission — through research, campaigns, and programs across every region.
Conversion Practices
In 2019, Outright International, in partnership with three partner organizations – The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs) in Nigeria, galck+, and Access Chapter 2 (AC2) in South Africa – commenced a project to document and end conversion practices, also known as conversion “therapy,” that impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people.
Outright International’s pioneering report, Harmful Treatment: The Global Reach of So-Called Conversion Therapy, exposed that conversion practices aiming to change, divert, convert or suppress the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of LGBTIQ people, including with physical and psychological force, are prevalent across the world.
Program Highlights
- Build a body of knowledge and evidence on conversion practices in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa to ensure localized data on the manifestation of conversion practices in these countries.
- Raise awareness at national, regional, and international levels of the nature and negative impact of conversion practices.
- Build a broad base of support among relevant key actors who condemn these harmful practices and are willing to work towards establishing appropriate protections against conversion practices.
- galck+ is The National SOGIE Umbrella Body, Representing LGBQ Voices Across Kenya. The galck+ has been instrumental in establishing (and re-establishing) working relationships and alliances with Government institutions and Civil Society organizations through which to inspire a society that appreciates diversity and recognizes that everyone has a right to equal opportunities irrespective of their real or perceived sexual orientation, gender, and expression. galck+ envisions a safe and enabling environment for all. A space where the fundamental principles of human rights, equality and non-discrimination and the protection of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Queer are guaranteed; that all Kenyans, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression are accorded their rights and freedoms as guaranteed by the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
- The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs) is a Nigeria-based registered not-for-profit organization working to create a society where human rights are guaranteed regardless of status, identity, orientation and affiliation. We exist to protect, uphold and promote the rights and humanity of all Nigerians through advocacy, empowerment, education, and the provision of safe platforms of convergence. We were founded in 2005 as a response to the discrimination and marginalization of sexual minorities in both HIV prevention programming, human rights protection, advocacy, and mainstream human rights work
- Access Chapter 2 was initiated to promoting the human rights and empowerment of women and girls, and LGBTI+ person in all their diversities, facilitate the participation of civil society organizations at a local, national, regional and international level by creating space and coordinating platforms for engagement on governance, policy and accountability processes and by developing innovative and active empowerment for transformation knowledge for community systems strengthening and build solidarity within civil society and other various sectors.
- Pathways for Eliminating Conversion Practices: In recognizing the urgent need to respond to these harmful practices, Outright has carried out initiatives to contribute to the ongoing global efforts to challenge conversion practices. One of those initiatives was the convening of a series of expert meetings on pathways for the elimination of conversion practices. Through these meetings, we brought together LGBTQ activists, survivors of conversion practices, academics, legal professionals, medical and mental health practitioners, human rights experts, and faith leaders to identify a set of advocacy recommendations that could be used in a variety of settings to challenge conversion practices at local, national, regional, and international levels. This toolkit is informed by the knowledge and expertise of 111 experts from 40 countries who participated in global and regional consultations that Outright convened in 2021. The toolkit sets out some of the most effective advocacy strategies that have been implemented, as well as those actively being considered by various partners globally. These strategies can be used to address conversion practices everywhere. The content of this toolkit will also be valuable to anyone who wants to expand their understanding of advocacy to challenge conversion practices and how these strategies can be applied.
- Converting Mindsets, Not Our Identities: Although conversion practices have been well-documented over the last five decades in North America and Australia, no in-depth study has been undertaken to characterize the nature and extent of these damaging, degrading practices in any African country. The three research reports (galck+ report, The Initiative for Equal Rights report, AC2 report) that emerge as part of this project fill the knowledge gap by providing substantial data on conversion practices in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and contribute much-needed evidence of harm to inform advocacy interventions to curtail these practices.
- The Global Reach of So-Called Conversion Therapy: This report draws on data from an extensive literature review, the first-ever global survey on the topic, and in-depth interviews with experts and survivors from various countries. In most countries around the world, discrimination, violence, and oppression based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics persist within families, faith communities, and societies at large. A manifestation of this ongoing rejection is that LGBTIQ people are considered disordered and therefore in need of “cure,” “repair,” or counseling to regain their presumed heterosexual, cisgender identities. The term “conversion therapy” is most widely used to describe this process of cis-gender, heteronormative indoctrination— that is, attempting to change, suppress, or divert one’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The term, however, suggests that treatment is needed for a disorder and that people can be converted to cisgender heterosexuality through such “treatment.” Neither is true.
Global Trans Program
Outright International’s Global Trans Program works with trans activists and advocates to support global movement building through research, advocacy, and funding.
Our goal is to increase visibility and meaningful engagement for trans people everywhere. Outright has long prioritized inclusion and centering trans activism, issues and voices.
Program Highlights
- Build relationships across the global trans community and other stakeholders to foster relations and guide and set working parameters.
- Through grants, assist trans organizations and activists who are under-resourced.
- Create regional learning institutes aimed at cultivating strong, confident leaders to provide sustainability for the movement.
- Facilitate discussions, litigation strategies, advocacy, and lobbying to obtain legal gender recognition, inclusive health care, and social services for the global trans and gender diverse community.
For information on our Global Trans Program, please reach out to our Senior Advisor of the Global Trans Program, Rikki Nathanson, who works to build on these values while ensuring the visibility of all gender identities and gender expression in our programming.
Inclusive Development
Outright International works for better LGBTIQ lives. International development includes programs and policies to help people around the world thrive through improvements in health and well-being, education, livelihoods, civic and political participation, and other important dimensions of human development.
Each year, wealthy countries provide over $200 billion in overseas development assistance to support these programs, in addition to $230 billion in financing by multilateral development banks. Outright seeks to ensure LGBTIQ people are included in all international development activities. We advocate and work in partnership with others to ensure that development policies and programs recognize the unique needs of LGBTIQ people and respond in ways that improve LGBTIQ development outcomes. Outright supports innovative programs and research to identify how governments and the private sector can support LGBTIQ people as full and equal participants in the economy. In addition to the programs listed below, Outright’s program to improve democracy, increase the effectiveness of LGBTIQ civil society actors, and ensure LGBTIQ inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals also contribute to inclusive development.
Program Highlights
The USAID-funded Alliance for Global Equality (Alliance), led by Outright International (Outright) and implementing partner the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute (Victory), equips key political, civil society, and faith-based stakeholders in target USAID presence countries to lead social change for more inclusive economic growth and democratic participation. As part of this program, Outright’s onward grantmaking and technical support in more than 15 countries focuses on strengthening LGBTIQ movements through building LGBTIQ-led organizational and leadership capacity, economic resilience, and allyship. Link to the description is here.
Outright is also partnering with LGBTIQ organizations in four countries to explore what interventions can improve the employment prospects of LGBTIQ people in the private sector. This project includes an extensive monitoring and evaluation component to help identify successful measures that can be replicated in other countries.
Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) like the World Bank and regional MDBs provide $200 billion annually to governments of low- and middle-income countries, home to an estimated 500 million LGBTIQ people. Outright has three goals in its work.
- In countries that are supportive of LGBTIQ rights, MDB can provide billions of dollars to support government programs that seek to expand economic opportunities for LGBTIQ people.
- In countries that are less supportive of LGBTIQ rights, advocates can seek the implementation of non-discrimination standards according to multilateral development bank policies that prohibit the exclusion of LGBTIQ people from MDB-funded programs.
- MDBs can use their enormous influence to advocate for the inclusion of LGBTIQ people in development policy.
At the World Bank, Outright has advocated for the inclusion of LGBTIQ people in all global practice areas. Outright has also coordinated advocacy to support the request of Ugandan LGBTIQ advocates that the World Bank suspend loans to Uganda as long as the Anti-Homosexuality Act remains in place. To learn more about how you can advocate for LGBTIQ people at the World Bank, take a look at our guide.
At the Asian Development Bank, Outright has coordinated a campaign to include LGBTIQ people in the definition of “disadvantaged and vulnerable groups,” which would trigger a series of safeguard provisions to protect LGBTIQ people against discrimination and exclusion from programs financed by the Bank.
Outright International, in partnership with the Bank Information Center, coordinates the Inclusive Bank Advocacy Network, a network of LGBTIQ advocates seeking inclusion in the programs financed by the World Bank and other multilateral development Banks. The central goal of IBAN is to train and equip advocates with the technical knowledge and skills to work with Bank officials to seek LGBTIQ inclusion. As lending decisions are made at the country level by the Bank’s country officers, LGBTIQ advocates in each borrowing country have the opportunity to work directly with the Bank officials who are responsible for loans. Advocates in wealthier countries can advocate that their country’s representatives on the Bank’s board of directors support an institution-wide commitment to inclusion.
Outright is also partnering with LGBTIQ organizations in four countries to explore what interventions can improve the employment prospects of LGBTIQ people in the private sector. This project, Inclusive Solutions, includes an extensive monitoring and evaluation component to help identify successful measures that can be replicated in other countries. Inclusive Solutions is generously supported by Google.org, Scotiabank Foundation, and The Walt Disney Company.
GLIDE Initiative
The Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Democracy and Empowerment (GLIDE) Initiative is a unique collaboration between Outright International, Synergía – Initiatives for Human Rights and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). GLIDE seeks to stimulate the participation and engagement of LGBTIQ people and organizations in democratic spaces and processes.
The GLIDE Initiative puts LGBTIQ people at the helm of democratic initiatives. It enables LGBTIQ people to participate and influence decision-making to advance acceptance and be a force for addressing exclusionary laws, practices and norms that seek to dismantle democracy and LGBTIQ rights.
Queer Legal Futures
The mission of the Queer Legal Futures program is to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) individuals as architects of a just legal landscape, championing protective laws and policies and advocating for reform through innovative and affirming approaches. We aim to center queer voices in shaping inclusive laws and to challenge oppressive tools that seek to suppress our rights and existence, including discriminatory legal structures and patriarchal norms.
Global Intersex Program
Our Global Intersex Program works with intersex activists and allies to protect and advance the rights of intersex people in their home countries while also supporting the growth of a global movement through capacity strengthening, advocacy, research, and funding. Our goal is to increase visibility, awareness, and inclusion and end human rights abuses suffered by intersex people across the world.
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