UNAIDS Caribbean: All human beings are born free and equal

Excerpt of statement by Dr. César Núñez, UNAIDS Latin America and Caribbean Regional Support Team Director:
[IDAHOT] comes at a critical time for Latin America and the Caribbean. This year the world started its 15-year journey toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals with their emphasis on dignity, equality and security for all. Yet recent events in the region demonstrate that entire communities remain degraded, discriminated against and excluded.

[...]Here’s an idea of the fallout. According to UNESCO almost half of LGBT students in Latin America do not finish secondary school. Global AIDS Response Progress Report data show that in some countries HIV rates among men who have sex with men and transgender women are as much as twenty times the national average.  Globally, there were more than 1300 reported killings of transgender people between 2008 and 2013. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights notes that four of every five such murders occurred in this region.

Discrimination increases the vulnerability of entire communities by driving them away from life-saving services like health. Our words, actions and attitudes really do hurt. We have learned over the last three decades that HIV is not just about sex. Social exclusion, gender-based violence, poverty, unemployment and unmet health needs are among the contributing factors. Read his full statement via UNAIDS Caribbean

IDAHOT 2016: Media Statement

Once again this year, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia truly deserves its title of a "Global Celebration of Sexual and Gender Identities". Beyond the rather narrow notions of "Homo", "Trans", "Bi"; the day offers a fantastic display of diversity, which mirrors the many facets of human sexualities and gender identities and expressions.

All over the world, advocates and their allies are fighting for what matters most to them: the right to be free from criminalisation, persecution, stigmatisation. Sometimes the right simply to live, as in many countries people have to fear for their lives.

This year specifically, we are seeing the "fault-line" deepening between places where activism is increasing and those where it is repression that is on the rise.  Read about this year's activities via IDAHOT

Why We Fight

For International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), the United Nations asked LGBTI people around the world to film a short clip of why they fight and why they stay strong.

 LGBTI people from 21 countries around the world explain why they fight for equality For International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), the United Nations asked LGBTI people around the world to film a short clip of why they fight and why they stay strong.  Some, like India and Lebanon, are fighting for decriminalization. But for many more from Japan to Jamaica, the UK to United States, many said they are fighting for love, for acceptance and for people to be themselves.

Some, like India and Lebanon, are fighting for decriminalization. But for many more from Japan to Jamaica, the UK to United States, many said they are fighting for love, for acceptance and for people to be themselves. Read more via Gay Star News 

Digital Pride: The first online, global Pride festival

The LGBTI Pride movement is going fully online for the first time with a new global event – Digital Pride.
Created by Gay Star News, the Digital Pride festival was the first Pride anyone, anywhere in the world can join in – all they need is a smartphone, computer or tablet.

Live-streamed video discussions on topics ranging from identity and isolation to international LGBTI rights. Celebrities, politicians, activists and YouTube stars will be joining in with video messages and the world’s leading social media channels will help amplify the message of LGBTI love.

Scott Nunn, Gay Star News director, said: ‘For a lot of people going to a Pride is not an option. They could risk their lives by trying to be open and proud about who they are. ‘The LGBTI community connects digitally more than any other way and we have used our power online to accelerate change around the world.  Read more and check out the discussions via Gay Star News

South Africa: Student movement splinters as patriarchy muscles out diversity

It was a shocking series of images: a young woman - Thenjiwe Mswane - being violently handled by a group of young men. Mswane was part of a largely feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+) student group. They had gathered at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand to protest against the exclusion and marginalisation of groups and members of the #FeesMustFall movement from a recent campaign. She was attacked by other members of the #FeesMustFall movement after she'd confronted them with her group's concerns.

In 2015 South Africa's student movement was an impressive force. But cracks are appearing along party political, ideological and class lines. More recently the question of gender, and the equality of LGBTIQA+ individuals, have come to the fore.

A strident fringe at universities, with limited but vocal support off campuses, asserts that addressing the equality of women and the marginalisation of LGBTIQA+ people is a "distraction" from the unity of black struggle and that it must wait until after some mythical revolution. Others, also enjoying some support in wider society, insist that the equality of women and LGBTIQA+ people must be part of any genuinely radical action.  Read more via the Conversation

Albania: Supporting the 5th Tirana Gay (P)Ride

The most important LGBTI pride event in Albania marks this year its 5th anniversary and many courageous Albanians from Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia are sending their public support through photos of the hashtag ‪#Kurajo (meaning Courage).

Aleanca LGBT and ProLGBT, two main organizations for LGBTI rights in the country are posting each days these photos which in turn are becoming viral in social media.

“A photo might be nothing, for some people”, wrote in her Facebook Xheni Karaj, a lesbian activist, “but for us a photo means great hope that one day we will finally live a free life without prejudices, without forcing ourselves into double lives and without hiding the person we love! And courage is the thing not only us as LGBTI need, but also our allies”.  Read more and watch via Historia Ime

International Humanitarian Organization releases first-of-its-kind glossary of terminology for LGBT individuals

Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM) has released a first-of-its-kind glossary of terminology to assist humanitarian professionals to communicate with people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. The 124-page glossary, “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression: Essential Terminology for the Humanitarian Sector” contains the most appropriate and culturally sensitive terms for communicating with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in five languages.

In most of the world’s languages, terminology related to the lives of LGBT individuals is limited and often times pejorative. Only a small handful of languages contain substantial culturally appropriate lexicons. This phenomenon is largely a function of the cultures in which these languages developed; until very recently, sexual and gender diversity was taboo in virtually all of the world’s cultures. 

“The development of this ground-breaking glossary of LGBT terminology in five distinct languages is designed to benefit the work of humanitarian and refugee professionals around the globe,” continued Grungras. “By providing professionals with this helpful field guide, it will allow them to better address issues unique to LGBT people, encourage truthful self-disclosure and will hopefully create a greater awareness and understanding of the perspectives of those LGBT people with whom they interface with on a daily basis.”   Read more via MileHighGay

Bangladesh: 'Anyone could become a target’: wave of Islamist killings

There is an eerie feeling out on the streets of Bangladesh. To some of the city’s academics, activists and gay community, Dhaka now feels more dangerous than a war zone, after a spate of machete attacks by Islamist groups, including the murder last week of the founder of Bangladesh’s first magazine for the gay community.

At least 16 people have died in such attacks in the past three years, among them six secular bloggers, two university professors, an Italian priest, two other foreigners working in the development sector, and a prominent gay activist.

“I am more worried now here than I ever was in Afghanistan, where the threats were more of an existential nature,” says a gay American who has spent time in the war-torn country and now lives in Bangladesh. He asked not to be named.

Among his friends to have died were Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent activist – founder of Roopbaan, the country’s only magazine for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – and Mannan’s friend, Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy. Six to seven assailants pretending to be from a courier company forced their way into Mannan’s apartment and hacked the two men to death last week.

Homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh and many members of the gay community were already living in fear of being identified. Now they also have to fear for their lives – and the murders have in effect outed many young people by forcing them to change their daily routine.  Read more via the Guardian

Ukraine: Far-Right homophobic thugs attack LGBT Equality Festival in Lviv

The Equality Festival events planned in Lviv were disrupted and activists effectively – and with violence – driven out of the city.  The police did not detain any of the young far-right thugs in masks who first harassed activists, then surrounded the hotel and attacked a coach with Equality Festival activists.

The LGBT initiative Equality Festival had planned an Equality ‘Quest’ on March 19, as part of various anti-discrimination, pro-tolerance events over the weekend.  The quest was to go around places linked with ideals of equality and freedom within the city. During the early hours of Saturday morning, the Lviv District Administrative Court passed a ruling banning all events in the area where the Equality Festival quest had been planned. Having been forced to give up street events, the organizers hoped to at least hold the exhibition of anti-discrimination posters, film viewings and a literary evening.  

The activists were basically barricaded in the hotel because of the far-right thugs outside.  Then within hours of the Festival beginning, the hotel had to be evacuated due to a bomb alert. Fortunately nobody was hurt, and the activists have now safely left the city. Read more via KHPG

European Parliament demands protection LGBTI refugees, also from ‘safe’ countries

The European Parliament adopted a report on the situation of women refugees and asylum seekers in the EU, paying particular attention to the situation of LGBTI asylum seekers.

The report is a response to the invisibility of female refugees and their concerns in the wake of the steep increase of asylum seekers arriving in Europe. A significant part of the refugees and asylum seekers is LGBTI, who often face specific challenges, which are addressed in the report.

In response to the increased number of asylum seekers, the Commission has proposed establishing a common list of safe countries of origin, which would make it easier to send back asylum seekers coming from these countries. This list would include all Balkan states and Turkey. However, the Parliament recognized that LGBTI people may be subjected to abuse, even in countries which are considered ‘safe’. As such, it concludes, they have a legitimate request for protection. 

Read more via Intergroup on LGBT Rights
 

Australia: Malcolm Turnbull becomes first Prime Minister to attend Sydney Gay Mardi Gras

 More than 12,000 people marched through Oxford Street at the 38th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, drawing some 500,000 spectators.

Not connected to the Catholic holiday, Sydney’s Mardi Gras has its origins, like Pride festivals in America, in an act of violence: In 1978, participants in a sanctioned demonstration were beaten and arrested by police. Almost four decades later, LGBT rights have grabbed the spotlight again, now that England, Ireland and the U.S. all have marriage equality. The issue has become as divisive Down Under as it is in the States—the current Conservative government wants to kick the issue down the road to at least 2017. So while Saturday’s event was an unabashed celebration, it was also a protest. 

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was steadfastly opposed to marriage equality, but his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, became the first sitting PM to attend Mardi Gras. Read more via New Now Next