Alliances for Solidarity: The Theme for International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB) 2018

May 17, 2018

The global theme for this year’s International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB) is “alliances for solidarity.” With that in mind, the Council for Global Equality wishes to reiterate our deep concerns about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s anti-Muslim, anti-women and girls, and anti-LGBTI record. These are fundamentally out of sync with American values that have traditionally guided U.S. foreign policy.

In solidarity with Muslim American organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Arab American Institute and many other concerned groups including the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League, the Council is alarmed specifically about Secretary Pompeo’s disturbing record of anti-Muslim views and associations. These positions are flatly incompatible with our country’s multiethnic and multicultural basis. They also have an immediate and negative bearing on America’s traditionally unqualified support for human rights and religious freedom. Further, Pompeo has associated himself closely with organizations, leaders and media outlets that hold extremist views, including bias against LGBT and Muslim individuals. These views are far from the mainstream of America and do not represent American values. We consider this extremely dangerous for U.S. foreign policy and our country’s position as a world leader.

In solidarity with women’s rights organizations such as the International Women’s Health Coalition, Center for Health and Gender Equity, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women, the Council is alarmed about Pompeo’s clear rejection of reproductive choice, and has supported both “Mexico City” restrictions on health care funding and legislation that would eliminate funding for the UN Population Fund. These stances coincide with the Administration’s marginalization otherwise of women, and its erasure of sexual and reproductive health and rights information from the State Department’s annual human rights report. How can Mr. Pompeo’s stances on these issues not impact his leadership on gender issues that permeate Department policies and programming?

In solidarity with mainstream human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Council is worried that Pompeo’s public comments and voting record have shown little attachment to human rights – an immediate disqualifier for those of us who believe our country’s reputation and impact are strongest when we stand without question for the fair and decent treatment of all people. Pompeo, together with CIA Secretary-Designate Gina Haspel have supported torture as a legitimate tool in the fight against terrorism. Torture clearly does not comport with America’s democratic ideals.

As an LGBTI organization, we have taken particular notice that Pompeo consistently has debased LGBTI people – as recently as at his confirmation hearing. In those circumstances, can he clearly and fully advocate for the continued integration of LGBTI human rights into our human rights policy?

In answers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged that he will “…ensure that human rights, democracy, and the equal treatment of all persons will remain fundamental to U.S. foreign policy.” We call on him to do just that. The circumstances of LGBTI people around the world requires the United States to remain firmly on the right side of history and hold countries accountable for the grave human rights abuses catalogued, once again, in the State Department’s annual Human Rights Reports released last month. 

On this May 17^th International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and in solidarity with our allies in the Muslim-American, women, and human rights communities, we call on Secretary Pompeo to set aside his anti-Muslim, anti-women, and anti-LGBTI prejudices and commit to the values of equality and freedom for all people in his new role as America’s chief diplomat.

OAS LGBTI Core Group Statement: International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia

Joint Statement

Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs

Washington, DC

May 17, 2017

Today, on May 17, the members of the OAS LGBTI Core Group (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, United States and Uruguay) are proud to join other governments and civil society organizations from around the world to celebrate the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT). This year, the IDAHOT is an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of families and highlight the challenge faced by LGBTI children and parents.

There has been much progress in the Americas since this day was first celebrated in 2004. We are proud to see countries of the hemisphere have taken concrete steps toward the elimination of discrimination against LGBTI persons in the past year. Education, awareness-raising and dialogue have helped tremendously in addressing stereotypes and prejudice against LGBTI persons and we encourage all countries of the hemisphere to continue these efforts.

However, as the Inter-American Human Rights Commission highlighted recently, LGBTI persons are still too often victims of discrimination and violent hate crimes based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. They are often subjected to extreme hate-motivated violence, arbitrary arrest and related killings. Moreover, in some countries of the Americas, consensual same-sex conduct between adults is still criminalized.

We understand and respect that countries are at different stages of acceptance and engagement on this issue. However, we should never forget that the human rights of all persons are universal and indivisible, and these include the human rights of LGBTI persons.

We believe that May 17 is a day we can all come together and continue our dialogue and collaboration with all OAS member states and civil society organizations to help bring an end to discrimination and violence against LGBTI persons.

U.S. Department of State Commemorates International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT)

Repost from U.S. Department of State

John Kerry, Secretary of State
Washington, DC

On International Day Against Homophoia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, we stand in solidarity with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons worldwide. We celebrate the progress made to advance a world where all persons are respected and can live free from fear and discrimination. And today we reaffirm our belief all persons are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The United States is unwavering in our commitment to advance full equality for LGBTI individuals everywhere. We recognize there is still much work to be done. As American civil rights leader Fredrick Douglass famously said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Last February, I was honored to appoint the first ever Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons, Randy Berry. In his first year, Special Envoy Berry has traveled to over 40 countries, discussing the human rights of LGBTI individuals with senior government officials, and bringing together the faith and business community, in recognition that we all have a role to play in advancing equality.

Around the world, U.S. embassies and consulates work closely with LGBTI communities in support of equality. We integrate respect for the rights of LGBTI persons throughout our assistance programs. Through the Global Equality Fund, we provide direct support to LGBTI civil society organizations to enable them to produce social change.

Here at home, we know that when communities exclude, we do not—cannot—reach our full potential. When people are arrested, harassed, or even killed, just for being who they are or expressing whom they love, we all suffer. So our work is not over.

On this day—and every day—let us redouble our efforts to create a more just and fair world for all. Onward.

LGBT and Intersex Youth Issues in Development

In honor of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT), the Council for Global Equality is pleased to release the report from the 2014 Conference to Advance the Human Rights of and Promote Inclusive Development for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Persons. The conference was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and USAID, with support from the Council for Global Equality.

The theme for this year’s IDAHOT events is “Stand with LGBTQI Youth: Fight for visibility, respect and equality.” Here in the United States, studies show that over 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBT. Across the world, similarly startling statistics reveal the disproportionate vulnerability that LGBT and intersex youth face due to bullying in schools and online, abuse and expulsion from home, forced marriages, denial of health services, discrimination at work, and increased risk of suicide and depression. Children born with intersex conditions are still misunderstood and inappropriately treated by doctors around the world in irreversibly harmful ways.

Younger LGBT and intersex members of our communities deserve our particular attention on this day. That attention should be more than symbolic or rhetorical. Our suggestions are:

• participate in the youth-sponsored thunderclap (just learning about a thunderclap is a dive into youth culture!);
• audit your own work or organization’s work to think about how you are addressing the needs of youth;
• read our report with an eye to how donor investments in equality for LGBT and intersex people can address the issues that our younger citizens face; and
• call on the U.S. government to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the world’s most-ratified human rights treaty and provides important, age-based understandings of the rights of LGBT and intersex youth!

President Obama took a very important step earlier this year, publicly calling for a ban on “conversion therapy” for LGBT minors. This unprecedented move by a head of state in support of LGBT youth complements many positive developments by the Obama administration to combat bullying in schools, LGBTQ youth homelessness, and to promote acceptance in families.

In honor of this IDAHOT day and its youth focused theme, we call on the President to do all that his administration can do to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States is one of only two countries in the world that have yet to ratify the Convention, together with the government of Somalia. It’s time for our country to get on the right side of history – we owe it to America’s youth.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children “should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.” As we think about LGBT and intersex youth on this year’s IDAHOT day, we call on our government to commit to this treaty obligation, but also to commit resources to this important goal, as it did during the donor conference on inclusive development.

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

This week we join with the worldwide LGBT community in celebrating IDAHOT – the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Celebrated on May 17 – the 1990 date when the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its International Classification of Diseases – IDAHO is a call to conscience that the rights of LGBT people around the world remain under attack. For many LGBT communities worldwide, celebrating Gay Pride isn’t an option, or comes with great risk to personal safety and security. Being openly LGBT, in fact, can be an invitation to harassment and abuse, and even death. Here in the U.S., IDAHO can bring back the awareness that sexual orientation and gender identity are not only to be celebrated, but also require us to defend our rights. We can use IDAHO to redouble our commitment to ensure respect, fairness, and equality for LGBT people every where.

Resources:

Visit Day Against Homophobia for a list of events by country

Joint Statement by U.S. Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Tom Malinowski and Finnish Ambassador to the United States Ritva Koukku-Rondeon the Occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Secretary of State, John F. Kerry’s Statement “Commemorating International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia“

Joint Statement by UN human rights experts, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media

Statement by the President on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Visit Human Rights Watch “African Voices Celebrate LGBT Equality” webpage.

Join ORAM’s Thunderclap campaign for IDAHOT 2014

Read HRC’s Op-Ed “Equality at Home and Abroad“ and the inaugural issue of “Equality Rising“

President Obama Comments on Yesterday’s DOMA Supreme Court Ruling

President Obama’s remarks at a joint press conference in Senegal, where after speaking about yesterday’s Court decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), he addressed the treatment of LGBT people in Africa.

You can read the transcripts from the full press conference here.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, first of all, I think the Supreme Court ruling yesterday was not simply a victory for the LGBT community, it’s a victory for American democracy.  I believe at the root of who we are as a people, who we are as Americans is the basic precept that we are all equal under the law.  We believe in basic fairness.  And what I think yesterday’s ruling signifies is one more step towards ensuring that those basic principles apply to everybody.

When I spoke to Ms. Windsor — 83 years old — and I thought about the 40 years of her relationship and her partner, who is now passed, for her to live to see this day where that relationship was the vehicle whereby more people received their rights and are recognized as a testament to the love and commitment that they have made to each other, that was special.  And that’s just a microcosm of what it meant for families and their children all across America.  So it was a proud day I think for America.

Now, as you point out, there are a whole lot of implications that flow from it, because the Supreme Court did not make a blanket ruling that applies nationally, but rather lifted up the ability of states to recognize the dignity and respect of same-sex marriage, and that the federal government couldn’t negate the decision by those states.  We now have to comb through every federal statute.  And although we hadn’t pre-judged what the ruling had been, I had asked my White House Counsel to help work with lawyers across every agency in the federal government to start getting a sense of what statutes would be implicated and what it will mean for us to administratively apply the rule that federal benefits apply to all married couples.

What’s true though is that you still have a whole bunch of states that do not recognize it.  The Supreme Court continues to leave it up to the states to make these decisions.  And we are going to have to go back and do a legal analysis of what that means.  It’s my personal belief — but I’m speaking now as a President as opposed to as a lawyer — that if you’ve been married in Massachusetts and you move someplace else, you’re still married, and that under federal law you should be able to obtain the benefits of any lawfully married couple.  But I’m speaking as a President, not a lawyer.

So we’re going to be evaluating all these issues and making sure that we work through them in a systematic and prompt way, because now that the Supreme Court has spoken it’s important that people who deserve these benefits know that they’re getting them quickly.  And I know that, for example, Chuck Hagel already mentioned some work that the Department of Defense is doing on that front.  And I think we’re going to be seeing that in all the various agencies.

Now, this topic did not come up in the conversation that I had with President Sall in a bilateral meeting.  But let me just make a general statement.  The issue of gays and lesbians, and how they’re treated, has come up and has been controversial in many parts of Africa.  So I want the African people just to hear what I believe, and that is that every country, every group of people, every religion have different customs, different traditions.  And when it comes to people’s personal views and their religious faith, et cetera, I think we have to respect the diversity of views that are there.

But when it comes to how the state treats people, how the law treats people, I believe that everybody has to be treated equally.  I don’t believe in discrimination of any sort.  That’s my personal view.  And I speak as somebody who obviously comes from a country in which there were times when people were not treated equally under the law, and we had to fight long and hard through a civil rights struggle to make sure that happens.

So my basic view is that regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, when it comes to how the law treats you, how the state treats you — the benefits, the rights and the responsibilities under the law — people should be treated equally.  And that’s a principle that I think applies universally, and the good news is it’s an easy principle to remember.

Every world religion has this basic notion that is embodied in the Golden Rule — treat people the way you want to be treated.  And I think that applies here as well.

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

This week we join with the worldwide LGBT community in celebrating IDAHO – the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

IDAHO is less known in the U.S. than in many other countries around the world. Here in the U.S., LGBT communities have a greater focus on Gay Pride, a series of parades, concerts and other events, usually held in June, aimed at celebrating the unity and diversity of the LGBT movement. Pride reflects the heightened sense of LGBT community awareness and identification that has grown in the U.S. since the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969. It equally celebrates the “coming out” movement that continues to change our country’s understanding of LGBT fairness in such positive ways.

IDAHO carries a different focus. Celebrated on May 17 – the 1990 date when the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its International Classification of Diseases – IDAHO is a call to conscience that the rights of LGBT people around the world remain under attack. For many LGBT communities worldwide, celebrating Gay Pride isn’t an option, or comes with great risk to personal safety and security. Being openly LGBT, in fact, can be an invitation to harassment and abuse, and even death. Here in the U.S., IDAHO can bring back the awareness that sexual orientation and gender identity are not only to be celebrated, but also require us to defend our rights. We can use IDAHO to redouble our commitment to ensure respect, fairness, and equality for LGBT people every where.

We are joined in that support with LGBT community organizations around the world, and we are proud that the White House, the Department of State, and a range of other foreign affairs agencies are supporting the cause of LGBT human and civil rights. We are also proud that many U.S. embassies around the world mark IDAHO and celebrate Pride as a sign of our country’s solidarity and support.

Related Content from our Organizational Council Members:

Amnesty International: Activists worldwide target homophobia in Jamaica, Ukraine and South Africa

Freedom House: International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013

Human Rights Watch: LGBT Rights: The 2013 ‘Hall of Shame’ and Reflecting on the pursuit of equality and non-discrimination on LGBT Day

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission: IDAHO 2013: Documenting Violence Against LBT People in Asia

Cameroon: Rights Abuses in ‘Homosexuality’ Prosecutions

Human Rights Watch has released a 55 page report titled “Guilty by Association: Human Rights Violations in the Enforcement of Cameroon’s Anti-Homosexuality Law,” which documents 10 case studies of arrests and prosecutions under article 347 bis of Cameroon’s penal code, which punishes “sexual relations between persons of the same sex” with up to five years in prison. The report finds that most cases are prosecuted with little or no evidence.

Visit Human Rights Watch to download the report as well as to read a summary of the report.

Ambassador Robert P. Jackson, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon released this statement to the Cameroonian press as a response to the report.

We commend Cameroon for its ongoing efforts to enhance socio-economic development and modernize its economy, as outlined in the Vision 2035 strategy.  We consider these goals to be fully achievable and well within Cameroon’s reach.  Just as achieving these goals will be a national accomplishment, undertaking them must be a national effort, involving the full participation of every Cameroonian.  It follows that in order for every citizen to make a meaningful contribution, he or she should enjoy the full measure of his or her fundamental freedoms, as guaranteed in the universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As we approach the International Day Against Homophobia (“IDAHO”), we would like to underscore that human rights pertain to all persons, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or other differences, including sexual preferences.  Under no circumstances in this day and age should hate crimes, violence, or discrimination be socially acceptable or legally permissible.  Imprisoning people on the basis of unproven accusations or text messages violates the freedoms guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  A pluralistic society can only thrive when each member acknowledges and respects the diversity within it. Incidents of torture and physical abuse, as documented by Human Rights Watch, are a sobering reminder of the work that remains to be done if we are to achieve, in practice, what we so often propose, in theory:  “On Est Ensemble.”

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

IDAHO is celebrated worldwide to commemorate the date, May 17, 1990, when homosexuality was removed from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization.

The Council for Global Equality is commemorating this day with the release of our NGO guide – Accessing U.S. Embassies: A Guide for LGBT Human Rights Defenders.

Council Releases NGO Guide to Human Rights

In Recognition of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO):

Washington, DC – May 17, 2012 – The Council released a new NGO guide, Accessing U.S. Embassies: A Guide for LGBT Human Rights Defenders, to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO).

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The guide highlights the various diplomatic tools that U.S. embassies use to advance a range of human rights and development objectives, from diplomatic “démarches,” to support for LGBT refugees to the drafting of the annual human rights report that is required of every U.S. embassy.  It also looks at various opportunities that exist for U.S. embassies to support, both technically and financially, LGBT advocates in host countries.

The guide recognizes that U.S. embassies around the world have traditionally reached out to civil society organizations and local human rights defenders to support a broad human rights agenda.  Until recently, however, U.S. embassies rarely included LGBT civil society organizations or defenders in their outreach.  That has now changed, and U.S. embassies are reaching out to local LGBT groups to learn more about the human rights abuses that LGBT communities experience, and to explore opportunities to partner with civil society to address those abuses.

The guide points out that U.S. embassy support for the human rights and human dignity of LGBT communities reflects, in part, America’s attempt to promote fundamental freedoms of speech, assembly and expression.  As such, the guide helps human rights defenders in other countries ground their requests in language that relates back to freedoms rooted in America’s Constitution, and that enjoy strong bipartisan support even amid other debates in Washington.

While focusing on the needs of one particularly invisible and at-risk group of human rights defenders, the Council also uses the guide to paint a broad justification for the inclusion of LGBT groups in U.S. human rights policy.   When U.S. embassies use the diplomatic, economic and political tools that are available to them to promote the rights and social inclusion of marginalized communities, including LGBT individuals, they stand firmly for human rights, but they also help foster tolerant, democratic and diverse societies that make better diplomatic allies and stronger economic partners over the longer term.