Human Rights Watch

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Human Rights and Sexuality Education Protects Schools

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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 […]

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Landmark Ruling on Trans Rights in Poland

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In a significant step toward affirming the rights of transgender people in Poland, the country’s Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling that eliminates the requirement for trans people to involve their parents in gender recognition proceedings. Until now, transgender individuals – whether child or adult – seeking to change their gender marker on official documents were required to sue their parents. This was due to a convoluted legal claim that there needs to be two opposing parties in any civil action, which seeking to change a gender marker is classified as. This added unnecessary distress and legal complexities, including for trans people whose […]

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Olympics: Presidential Candidates Need to Step Up on Rights

(Amsterdam) – Candidates for the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) failed to adequately address human rights and good governance in documents outlining their proposed programs, in advance of March elections, the Sport & Rights Alliance said today. “The International Olympic Committee affects the lives of millions of athletes, workers, fans, journalists and communities worldwide,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “It is essential for candidates who want to oversee global sport to make clear that they will uphold the IOC’s human rights framework, commitments and responsibilities, and commit to meeting with stakeholders and operating with transparency and […]

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California Initiated Intersex Rights. Now It Needs To Step Up Protections For Intersex Kids At Birth.

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In the face of anti-trans legislation sweeping the country over the past four years, California stepped up to protect trans people and in particular trans youth. In 2022, the state became the first in the nation to create a sanctuary for transgender youth seeking gender-affirming medical care. But with President Donald Trump issuing an anti-trans executive order on his first day in office, California will need to bolster its legal efforts to protect these vulnerable youths further. Nowhere is that protection more lacking than for intersex kids at birth and in early childhood. Intersex children are born with chromosomes, gonads, hormone function or internal or […]

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Trump Administration Moves to Reject Transgender Identity, Rights

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Within hours of returning to power Monday, United States President Donald Trump issued a stunningly broad executive order that seeks to dismantle crucial protections for transgender people and denies the validity of gender identity itself. The new order withdraws a range of executive orders issued by former President Joe Biden, including those allowing transgender people to serve in the military, advancing the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, and interpreting federal sex discrimination protections in domains like education, housing, and immigration to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The order states that the US government will recognize only two sexes, […]

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Ecuador High Court Upholds Rights of Trans Student

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Ecuador’s Constitutional Court recently made public a ruling upholding the rights of a transgender girl whose private school in Santa Elena failed to support her during her gender transition. The court ordered comprehensive remedies after finding that the school discriminated against the girl, failed to act in accordance with her best interests, and violated a wide range of other rights, including her right to education. In its ruling, the court refers to the girl as C.L.A.G in order to protect her identity. In 2017, C.L.A.G.’s parents sought the school’s support, requesting psychosocial assistance and gender diversity training for the school’s staff. While […]

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Colombia Charges Former FARC Leaders with Child Recruitment

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Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Juridicción Especial para la Paz, JEP) has charged six former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) guerrillas with war crimes for the forced recruitment and use of 18,677 children from 1971 to 2016. In addition to forced recruitment, the charges encompass torture, killings, reproductive and sexual violence, and targeted violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children. The JEP, a transitional justice mechanism created by the 2016 Peace Accordsbetween the Colombian government and the FARC, is tasked with trying crimes, including crimes under international law and grave human rights violations, committed during Colombia’s armed conflict. […]

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Witness: “It Took Me Over 30 Years to Come Out. I Stopped Crying.”

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Few older Africans participate openly in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movement. But Francisca Ferraz, 53, known as “Yaa Sissi,” aims to change that. Yaa Sissi, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland, is a pioneering voice in her community. Born in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, to a Portuguese father and a Congolese mother, Yaa Sissi moved to Geneva in 2008, where she raised her two daughters, now 25 and 21. There, early in 2023, she founded Afro LGBT, Geneva’s first LGBT rights association focused on those of African descent. Today, Afro LGBT creates a safe space for […]

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Dangerous Setback for Minority Rights in South Korea

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South Korea’s commitment to equal rights has suffered a dangerous setback with the appointment of Ahn Chang-ho as chairperson of the government’s National Human Rights Commission of Korea. A former Constitutional Court justice, Ahn has drawn widespread criticism for his opposition to antidiscrimination protections, particularly for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Ahn has taken several deeply troubling positions over the years, including opposing comprehensive sexuality education in public schools, claiming antidiscrimination protections spread HIV/AIDS and anal cancer, and suggesting that homosexuality could lead to a communist revolution. At his confirmation hearing, Ahn reiterated many of these views, casting minority rights as a threat to the viewpoints of the […]

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Experts Urge End to Nonconsensual Intersex Surgeries

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Teams of prominent scientists and ethicists have called for the end of medically unnecessary nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children in two new papers.   On the heels of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s first-ever resolution affirming the rights of intersex people, the papers signal growing international resolve to address rights violations experienced by people born with variations in their sex characteristics, sometimes called intersex traits.   Since the 1950s, surgeons have conducted irreversible and medically unnecessary “normalizing” operations on intersex children, such as procedures to reduce the size of the clitoris, which can result in scarring, sterilization, and psychological trauma. Intersex advocacy groups, as well as […]

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