The Urgency of the LGBTQI Refugee Crisis

March 9, 2022 – Six months ago, the Council for Global Equality, along with five of its members and allies, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to express concern for Afghanistan’s LGBTQI people in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover. In particular, CGE and its allies released a Ten-Point Plan to Protect LGBTQI Afghan Refugees that called on the Biden Administration to protect and safely resettle LGBTQI Afghans who face death sentences under Taliban rule.

Now, as we write, the eyes of the world are, appropriately, on Ukraine. With 2 million refugees having fled Ukraine as of this writing, CGE and its partners are reminded of the ever-present threat of displacement for the LGBTQI community in situations of conflict or humanitarian crisis. The Council for Global Equality is now cataloguing the most pressing concerns facing LGBTQI refugees escaping the war in Ukraine. Once again, they are substantial.

The Ukrainian crisis is the latest example that demonstrates the urgency of addressing the needs of the most marginalized within the world’s refugee and asylum systems, but far too often, policy changes are too slow to bring LGBTQI refugees to safety. Closer to home, the refugees waiting in dangerous conditions in Mexico to seek asylum in the United States are yet another all-but-forgotten reminder of our failure to protect the most vulnerable refugees at our own door.

Despite the rapidly worsening emergency in Ukraine and the ongoing crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Afghanistan because solutions being piloted there could help LGBTQI refugees elsewhere.

Indeed, the concerns expressed six months ago for the safety and security of Afghan refugees, unfortunately, proved accurate. A January 2022 report, “Even If You Go to the Skies, We’ll Find You,” from Human Rights Watch and OutRight Action International, drew upon interviews with 60 LGBTQI Afghans conducted after the Taliban took power.

Many of those interviewed reported being attacked, sexually assaulted, or directly threatened by members of the Taliban because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Others reported abuse from family members, neighbors, and romantic partners who now support the Taliban or believed they had to take action against LGBTQI people close to them to ensure their own safety. Some fled their homes from attacks by Taliban members or supporters pursuing them. Others watched as lives they had carefully built over the years disappeared overnight and found themselves at risk of being targeted at any time because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

We welcome the Biden Administration’s support for some of the recommendations enumerated in the Ten-Point Plan. These include opening opportunities for direct NGO referrals into the U.S. refugee program and an innovative new community sponsorship program to allow local groups to sponsor refugees and support their resettlement. But these programs are just in pilot phases and have not yet provided direct pathways to safe resettlement in the United States. The State Department also has played an important role in securing creative referral pathways into other countries that have explicitly committed to resettling LGBTQI Afghans.

However, given the finding of the report from HRW and OutRight, and given the discrimination and barriers to freedom of movement that they face, it is likely that many LGBTQI Afghans will not benefit from the limited humanitarian assistance available, rendering their situation even more precarious.

We continue to call on the Biden Administration to prioritize the direct admission of LGBTQI Afghans and other particularly vulnerable LGBTQI refugees into the U.S. refugee resettlement program. This includes providing and effectively implementing explicit “Priority 2” (P-2) access to the U.S. refugee program for highly vulnerable populations of LGBTQI individuals fleeing persecution. This P2 status also will allow LGBTQI Afghan refugees access to newly streamlined refugee processing programs.

We also are aware that those organizations responding to the ongoing needs of LGBTQI refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Northern Triangle, and other countries who have fled to neighboring countries have pointed to increased pressures on food security, mental health services, and secure shelter. We request that the Administration coordinate with international aid agencies to ensure that all humanitarian aid funding for refugees in transit countries be inclusive and accessible for LGBTQI individuals. Additionally, given that refugee camps and shelters in transit countries harboring most of the world’s refugees are not safe for LGBTQI persons, additional efforts are urgently needed to address safety and security, while expediting refugee processing to provide durable resettlement to safer countries including the United States.

This moment calls for an immense commitment to bring the most vulnerable in dangerous situations to safety. These steps will benefit refugees from all regions, whether in Ukraine, Syria, or at our southern border with Mexico. We repeat our call for the United States to increase and prioritize its immediate, medium-term, and long-term efforts on behalf of the safety and security of the LGBTQI community in Afghanistan, while also addressing the similarly urgent needs of LGBTQI refugees everywhere.