Cristian González Cabrera

This week Brazil is hosting the 4th National Conference on the Rights of LGBTQIA+ People, an ambitious effort to chart new directions for public policy on equality and inclusion. Beyond its national scope, the conference underscores Brazil’s reemergence as a key voice in global equality debates. And as many countries, including in the Global North, roll back support of LGBTQIA+ rights, the conference shows how the Global South can lead in renewing commitment to equality and human rights. The conference seeks to convene government, civil society, and grassroots actors from across Brazil and shape a new National Plan for the Promotion of Human Rights […]

A legal change could help make schools safer for children in 2025. In December, the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (CNMP) issued a groundbreaking recommendation that highlights the fundamental role of human rights education and comprehensive sexuality education in promoting safer schools in Brazil. In it, the CNMP, the national body that oversees the country’s prosecutors in Brazil, offers detailed guidelines for tackling school violence and emphasizes the importance of combating structural racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination. Crucially, it also defends teachers’ freedom to educate students about these topics. The recommendation comes at a crucial moment, as human rights and […]

A federal court of first instance in Mexico recently ordered the Guanajuato State Congress to create a rights-respecting legal procedure so that transgender people can modify their identity documents to accurately reflect their gender identity. The ruling is a result of litigation initiated by Amicus DH, a Guanajuato-based LGBT rights organization that represents trans people pursuing legal recognition of their identity. Under the state’s current system, they must file a lawsuit (a juicio de amparo) to enjoin the state’s civil registry to modify their documents, which can be a lengthy and expensive legal process. The court’s ruling orders Guanajuato’s congress to create […]

January 24 is the International Day of Education, which celebrates the key role that education plays in ensuring peace, development, gender equality, and human rights. For this year’s celebration, however, there is a dark stain on Peru’s education record: Law No. 31498, which purports to “promote the quality of educational materials and resources.” Congress passed this law in May 2022 effectively giving publicly registered parental organizations supervisory and veto powers over the Education Ministry’s learning materials for early childhood, primary, and secondary schools. These organizations can provide input about, for example, whether the materials respect “the religious liberty and moral convictions” of […]

The “New Ideas” government of President Nayib Bukele appears to be ignoring the potential of sexuality education to foster understanding and reduce violence against sexual and gender minorities. This is not an innovative approach, but rather an antiquated, prejudiced idea. El Salvador’s Education Ministry recently fired the director of the National Institute of Teacher Training and announced a “restructuring” of that institution. The reason? The Institute had greenlit a segment of Let’s Learn at Home—a remote education television show initiated during the pandemic—that explained the concept of sexual orientation. The ministry said the information was not “in adherence with [Salvadoran] reality.” Subsequently, the Institute’s website became inaccessible and currently displays an error message. The segment, […]

From the North American tundra to the South American Patagonia, an estimated 852 million people live in countries with marriage equality. Despite these high numbers, the Americas have a way to go before becoming a true beacon for same-sex couples. Countries with marriage equality should harness their remarkable advances thus far and urge the rest of the region to join the America’s growing marriage equality bloc. Canada became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to enact legislation recognizing same-sex marriages nationwide in 2005, after the Netherlands, which was the first to do so in the world in 2001. South American countries followed suit, with Argentina in […]