Immigration Equality Hails New Government Training Module

Repost from Council Member: Immigration Equality

For Immediate Release

January 24, 2012

Contact: Steve Ralls (202) 347-7007 / sralls@immigrationequality.org

Immigration Equality Hails New Government Training Module for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Intersex Asylum Claims USCIS Guidance is First Comprehensive LGBTI Training Guide for Asylum Officers

Washington, DC – Immigration Equality, a national legal aid and advocacy organization, hailed today’s release of a newly-created training module, “Guidance for Adjudicating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Refugee and Asylum Claims” by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The guidance, which follows two years of coordination between USCIS and Immigration Equality, instructs asylum officers on substantive aspects of the law and highlights the unique difficulties that LGBTI claimants may experience in articulating their claims for asylum.

Community Call with Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Baer

Join the Council for Global Equality on January 26 at 12 PM (EST) for a community briefing call with Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Baer, who will discuss the impact of Secretary Clinton’s historic speech last month at the UN in Geneva on human rights for LGBT communities everywhere.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Baer will discuss the ways in which the State Department is working with U.S. embassies and consulates to highlight the speech and implement a new Presidential Memorandum, issued by the White House on the same day, that directs all U.S. “agencies engaged abroad to ensure that diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.”

To RSVP for this call please click here.

Achieving an AIDS-Free Generation for Gay Men and Other MSM

Download Reports in PDF format below

• Full Report
• Executive Summary

For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
Cub Barrett, Program Communications Manager
(212) 806-1602

NEW YORK, January 18, 2012—Funding to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS consistently fails to reach programs designed to control the disease among gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a new analysis released Wednesday by amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Center for Public Health and Human Rights (CPHHR) at Johns Hopkins University. The report finds that resources dedicated to addressing the epidemic among MSM are grossly insufficient, and that funding intended for this population is often diverted away from MSM-related services.

Despite Obama Administration leadership in setting bold new targets to tackle global AIDS and highlight the human rights of MSM and other sexual minorities, U.S. government aid intended to prevent and treat HIV infection among MSM continues to encounter obstacles throughout the world.

The new report, “Achieving an AIDS-Free Generation for Gay Men and Other MSM,” provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of HIV-related funding and programming for this population. Focusing on eight countries, the report finds that national governments have failed to adequately tackle the epidemic among MSM. The findings are especially dire in countries that criminalize MSM. In those settings, governments spend fewer resources on HIV-related health services for MSM, do less to track and understand the epidemic, and are more likely to repurpose donor funds intended to fight the epidemic among MSM.

Honduras is test of new U.S. policy on gay rights

Photo: Johny Magallanes / MCT

Repost from the Miami Herald

by Tim Johnson

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — From U.N. chambers to the halls of the State Department, global pressure on countries to protect the rights of gay and transgender people is rising.

For Josue Hernandez, the new emphasis can’t come fast enough.

The 33-year-old gay activist bears the scar of the bullet that grazed his skull in an attack a few years ago. He’s moved the office of his advocacy group four times. Still, he feels hunted in what is arguably the most homophobic nation in the Americas.

“We are in a deplorable state,” Hernandez said of gays in Honduras. “When we walk the streets, people shout insults at us and throw rocks. Parents move their children away.”

Three months ago, a U.N. report declared that discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — or LGBT — violates core international human rights law. It listed nations where violations are most severe.

Joining a push that originated in Europe, the Obama administration said in December that respect for LGBT rights is now a factor in its foreign policy decisions.

Continue reading this story

United States Issues UN Report on Its Own Human Rights Conditions

On December 30, the United States submitted its fourth periodic report to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights concerning the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is one of the most important human rights treaties that the United States has ratified. In a major departure from a prior Bush Administration report, sexual orientation and gender identity issues featured prominently in this current submission, with an honest and reflective perspective on the state of LGBT rights in the United States. The report chronicles recent progress made to advance LGBT equality at the federal and state levels, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the passage of hate crime legislation, support for a variety of family recognition mechanisms, and the legal recognition of gender identity discrimination in the workplace.

When the United States presented its last report to the Committee on Human Rights in 2006, the U.S. delegation tried to deny the application of longstanding sexual orientation and gender identity protections under the ICCPR, even though the Committee has recognized rights to privacy and non-discrimination for LGBT individuals since at least 1992.  During that 2006 review, a member of the UN Committee noted publicly that the U.S. delegation, which included the head of the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department, demonstrated a lack of awareness of the “longstanding and consistent” jurisprudence of the Committee on these issues.  The UN expert expressed his concern that by denying the existence of these rights under the ICCPR, the U.S. government might suggest that persons of diverse sexual orientations and identities are not fully entitled to the rights to life and privacy under the treaty.  In contrast, by reporting so extensively on LGBT-related concerns in this current UN report, the Obama Administration has now made an unequivocal legal statement recognizing that international law protects the human rights of all individuals, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  Indeed, this is the legal justification for Secretary Clinton’s emphatic assertion that “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights, once and for all.”

The report also identifies a number of areas in which LGBT equality has not been achieved, but where the Obama Administration has been stymied by Congress, such as with the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the enactment of federal workplace nondiscrimination legislation. The Council for Global Equality urges that the Administration intensify its work with Congress to prioritize these legal impediments to full equality for LGBT Americans.

This new report represents a positive milestone in efforts to ensure that U.S. laws and practices are in keeping not only with international legal norms, but with our country’s stated commitment to fairness and equal treatment under the law.  The Council welcomes this important report by the United States as yet another example of the Obama Administration’s commitment to America’s LGBT citizens and to the rights of LGBT citizens everywhere.

Kudos to Simpson Miller on gay rights

Repost from The Jamaica Gleaner

This newspaper commends the leader of the People’s National Party (PNP), Portia Simpson Miller, for her mature stand on whether gays could serve in a government she leads and, more broadly, the rights of homosexuals.

Mrs Simpson Miller argued, rightly, that people’s sexual orientation is their business. She doesn’t want to be a voyeur. The pertinent consideration in appointing a Cabinet, therefore, is competence.

By contrast, Prime Minister Andrew Holness waffled, arguing that his “sentiment must be the sentiment of Jamaica”. That, essentially, is homophobic.

But the responsibility of leaders is to lead, not merely to reflect popular sentiment.

In that regard, we welcome the pledge of a PNP administration to review the buggery law and allow a conscience vote on the matter. We urge Mrs Simpson Miller to go further, making the repeal of a law that has no place in the 21st century a platform promise.

Related: Watch Portia Simpson Miller, during a Jamaican Election Debate, address whether or not she would have gay people in her cabinet.

Dignity For All: Reactions from LGBT and Human Rights Organizations

Repost from The Office of Public Engagement

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated the first-ever U.S. Government strategy to direct all federal agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons.

These actions represent a continuation of the Obama Administration’s commitment to safety, justice, and equality for LGBT people everywhere. President Obama expressed this commitment earlier this year at the United Nations General Assembly, when he said “No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere.” And since January 2009, Secretary Clinton has strongly and consistently championed a comprehensive human rights agenda — one that specifically includes the protection of LGBT people.

United Nations releases report “Discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity”

December 15, 2011–The United Nations today released a groundbreaking report, titled simply “Discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity,” by the UN’s leading human rights commissioner.  Recognizing that “governments and inter-governmental bodies have often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, “ the report was requested by the UN’s Human Rights Council in its first-ever resolution last June condemning acts of violence and discrimination against LGBT individuals.  The resolution was introduced by South Africa, with strong support from the United States and a cross-regional coalition of countries.

Today’s UN report is a groundbreaking new compendium of international law.  It makes clear that criminalizing individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is in fact a fundamental denial of their human rights and human dignity.  So, too, are acts of violence and discrimination.  The report emphasizes that “in all regions, people experience violence and discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  In many cases, even the perception of homosexuality or transgender identity puts people at risk.  Violations include – but are not limited to – killings, rape and physical attacks, torture, arbitrary detention, the denial of rights to assembly, expression and information, and discrimination in employment, health and education.”

Hilary Clinton’s landmark Human Rights Day speech

Op Ed by Julie Dorf, Senior Advisor, The Council for Global Equality

As I listened to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s landmark Human Rights Day speech last week before a United Nations audience in Geneva, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I was not alone in wiping tears away during the speech. Many others from our delegation of U.S. and global activists – State Department officials too – were equally touched by the secretary’s words. When it was over, I had never been prouder as an American, as an activist and as a lesbian.

Clinton was at her best. And we were there not only to witness that moment in history, but also because we were an integral part of shifting U.S. policy.

A Changed U.S. State Department

By former U.S. ambassador to Romania  and Senior Advisor to The Council for Global Equality, Michael Guest

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s December 6 Geneva speech on LGBT rights is another high-water mark in the Obama administration’s integration of the human and civil rights of LGBT people into U.S. foreign policy.

Clinton spoke to a diplomatic audience, one that included ambassadors from a range of countries that criminally penalize same-sex relations and relationships. Her message — that LGBT people are humans with inherent and equal value — was framed with reason and wrapped in sensitivity to culture and religion. The references to her own personal journey on this issue, and to that of our country, underscored that fairness for LGBT people is a common cause, not a subject for lecture.

This, of course, confirms a refreshing change of direction for U.S. diplomacy on a previously ignored problem. The U.S. is a latecomer to international efforts to address the horrific abuses that LGBT people suffer around the world, and the need for our voice has never been more acute. The Obama administration has risen to the occasion in numerous examples where LGBT rights have been at stake. Although a good start, these efforts often have carried a catch-up feel, without strategic thought or direction. Clinton’s speech provides that framework and direction.