In its review of the United States’ record on civil and political rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) condemned a flood of discriminatory state legislation restricting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
The United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992. Every four years, the HRC reviews laws and policies in countries that have ratified the treaty to evaluate where they are in compliance with the treaty and where they fall short. The review of the US was postponed during the Covid-19 pandemic, making this the first review of the US in nine years.
In advance of the review, released on November 3, the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, the University of Miami School of Law Human Rights Clinic, and partner organizations submitted a report to the committee identifying how Florida and other US states have aggressively rolled back LGBT rights in recent years.
Among the worrying US laws are those restricting access to gender-affirming care and prohibiting transgender children from participating in school sports or using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. Also concerning are laws banning books as well as prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBT people, and their families in schools.
As our groups noted, these laws jeopardize a range of civil and political rights, including rights to nondiscrimination, expression, information, privacy, security of the person, life, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
In its concluding observations, the committee expressed concern about laws limiting transgender people’s access to healthcare, athletics, and public accommodations, and restricting discussions of race, slavery, sexual orientation, and gender identity in schools. It underscored the prevalence of discrimination against LGBT people in the US, including in housing, employment, correctional facilities, and other domains. The committee also condemned derogatory speech aimed at LGBT people, including from public officials, and violence against LGBT people and members of other minority groups.
The Committee’s findings should be a wake-up call for state and federal lawmakers in the United States. Amid an aggressive backlash, state lawmakers should stop actively undermining US human rights obligations and repeal discriminatory laws, and the federal government should both enact comprehensive legislation to safeguard LGBT people’s rights and enforce existing civil and human rights guarantees.
A Japanese family court has ruled that the country’s requirement that transgender people be surgically sterilized to change their legal gender is unconstitutional. The ruling is the first of its kind in Japan, and comes as the Supreme Court considers a separate case about the same issue.
In 2021, Gen Suzuki, a transgender man, filed a court request to have his legal gender recognized as male without undergoing sterilization surgery as prescribed by national law. This week the Shizuoka Family Court ruled in his favor, with the judge writing: “Surgery to remove the gonads has the serious and irreversible result of loss of reproductive function. I cannot help but question whether being forced to undergo such treatment lacks necessity or rationality, considering the level of social chaos it may cause and from a medical perspective.”
In Japan, transgender people who want to legally change their gender must appeal to a family court. Under the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Special Cases Act, applicants must undergo a psychiatric evaluation and be surgically sterilized. They also must be single and without children younger than 18.
In 2019, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that stated the law did not violate Japan’s constitution. However, two of the justices recognized the need for reform. “The suffering that [transgender people] face in terms of gender is also of concern to society that is supposed to embrace diversity in gender identity,” they wrote. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a trans government employee using the restrooms in accordance with her gender identity. Her employer had barred her from using the women’s restrooms on her office floor because she had not undergone the surgical procedures and therefore had not changed her legal gender.
The current case before the grand chamber of the Supreme Court asks the justices to eliminate the outdated and abusive sterilization requirement.
Two lower courts in Nepal have denied a couple recognition of their marriage, in defiance of the Supreme Court’s recent interim order to register same-sex marriages while legislative change is pending. The couple – Maya Gurung and Surendra Pandey – are considering seeking redress at the Supreme Court.
Gurung, a transgender woman who is legally recognized as male, and Pandey, a cisgender man, held a Hindu wedding ceremony in 2017, and first attempted to register their marriage in June at the Kathmandu District Court, following the Supreme Court’s order. When that court rejected their registration, saying it did not need to recognize a couple that was not one legal male and one legal female, they appealed to the Patan High Court.
In their ruling, the high court judges said that because the Supreme Court order named the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, it was the responsibility of the federal government to change the law before the lower courts could register such marriages.
Nepal’s civil code currently only recognizes marriages between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court attempted to rectify that by ordering the creation of an interim registry for nontraditional marriages until parliament changes the law. The two lower courts are now reversing the logic by claiming that the national law must be changed first.
Nepal’s Supreme Court has a globally-recognized record of rulings upholding the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, although implementation has been piecemeal. In 2007, the court ordered the government to form a committee to study same-sex marriage. In 2015 that committee recommended the government “grant legal recognition to same-sex marriage on the basis of the principle of equality.” However, successive governments failed to bring legislation to the parliament, leading to further court rulings. Earlier this year the court ordered the government to recognize the marriage of a Nepali man who had married a German man.
Today, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a ruling in the case of Maxim Lapunov, the only victim of Chechnya’s vile 2017 anti-gay purge who dared seek justice for the torture he suffered at the hands of local law enforcement. The court found Lapunov was “detained and subjected to ill-treatment by State agents,” which “amounted to torture” and was perpetrated “solely on account of his sexual orientation.”
Lapunov took his case to the European Court in May 2019 because the Russian authorities had failed to investigate his assault. Despite great personal risk, Lapunov had been eager to cooperate with Russia’s investigative authorities through the assistance of his persistent lawyers from the Committee Against Torture, a leading Russian human rights group.
I first met Lapunov nearly six years ago, when I moderated a news conference in Moscow at which he publicly told his story for the first time. Lapunov, then 30, described to a roomful of journalists how he had been rounded up and tortured along with dozens of others. His hands shook as he detailed the horrific experience. He stopped several times to regain composure but kept going.
A Russian from Siberia who had traveled to Chechnya for work, Lapunov did not have to face what every Chechen man caught in the purge feared: being targeted by his own relatives or exposing his entire family to overwhelming stigma because of his homosexuality. His captors threatened to kill him if he spoke out, but he refused to be silent. “We all have rights …,” he said at the news conference. “If we just let it be [in Chechnya],… we’ll never know whose son or daughter will be taken next.”
At the time, Russian authorities claimed they could not investigate the purge because no victims stepped up to testify. When Lapunov provided his staggering testimony, they still failed to investigate. In early 2019, Chechen police rounded up and tortured more men because of their presumed sexual orientation. Realizing they would never get the Russian authorities to do their job and investigate, Lapunov and his legal team filed their complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. Today, they won.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia lost its Council of Europe membership and there is no hope that the Russian authorities will implement this ruling anytime soon. Yet it sets the record straight. This, I hope, will serve to support all survivors of the purge.
On Saturday Jordan’s king approved a draconian cybercrime law that was rammed through parliamentand is significantly worse than its antecedent. The law jeopardizes rights online and offline, including free expression and the right to privacy, and contains vague provisions that could target marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
The 2023 Cybercrime Law, under articles 13 and 14, punishes the production, distribution, or consumption of “pornographic content,” which is undefined, and content “promoting, instigating, aiding or inciting immorality,” with at least six months’ imprisonment and a fine. These provisions could target digital content around gender and sexuality, as well as individuals who use digital platforms to advocate for the rights of LGBT people.
The law also threatens the right to anonymity under article 12 by appearing to prohibit use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), proxies, and Tor, which many LGBT people use to shield themselves online, effectively forcing individuals to choose between keeping their identity secure and freely expressing their opinions.
A Jordanian LGBT rights activist told me the new law will “destroy all forms of LGBT expression online” and intensify “interference in people’s private lives.”
Jordanian authorities’ use of cybercrime laws to target LGBT people, intimidate activists, and censor content around gender and sexuality is not new. In a 2023 report, Human Rights Watch documented the far-reaching offline consequences of online targeting against LGBT people, including in Jordan, where LGBT people said they felt unable to safely express their sexual orientation or gender identity online, and that LGBT rights activism has subsequently suffered.
A gay man from Jordan whom I interviewed for the report was sentenced to six months in prison in 2021 based on a provision in the 2015 cybercrimes law that criminalized “promoting prostitution online,” after he went to the authorities for protection from online extortion. Another gay activist said Jordan’s intelligence agency summons him for interrogation whenever content around LGBT rights in Jordan is shared on social media.
The new cybercrime law will only exacerbate these abusive practices and expand censorship of free expression. Jordanian authorities should safeguard the rights of everyone, including by protecting freedom of expression online and the privacy of digital communications. The first step is to repeal the 2023 Cybercrimes Law.
Anti-gay remarks made on Saturday by a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon who has recently called for anti-gay violence sparked panic and terror among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, described same-sex relations as a “sexual perversion,” and warned that gay people’s existence is a “threat to society.”
Days before, on July 22, Nasrallah explicitly incited violence against gay and lesbian people. He called for them to be killed, urged people to use derogatory terms to describe gay people and to “collectively face this phenomenon [homosexuality], by all means necessary, without any limits.”
LGBT people, who already face heightened risks in Lebanon, have reported online harassment and death threats following his July 22 speech.
A gay man residing in Beirut’s southern suburbs told me that, following Nasrallah’s remarks, he received a threat on Grindr, which said: “We will find you and expose you one by one. We have your pictures, chats, and numbers, you “faggots.” We have been monitoring this platform and all the data is ready. The zero hour is here.”
Jack Harrison-Quintana, director of Grindr for Equality, the dating app’s advocacy arm, told Human Rights Watch that Grindr took immediate measures to protect users in Lebanon from such threats.
In a 2023 report, Human Rights Watch reported on the far-reaching offline consequences of online targeting against LGBT people, including being blackmailed and outed, family violence, and arbitrary arrests by Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.
Lebanon’s government effectively banned pro-LGBT events, due to an unlawful directive issued in June 2022 by Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi. In November, following a court order to suspend the directive, al-Mawlawi issued a second directive banning any “conference, activity, or demonstration related to or addressing homosexuality.” Since 2017, Lebanese security forces have regularly interfered with human rights events related to gender and sexuality.
Still, activism, including around the rights of LGBT people, will continue in Lebanon. Government and nongovernment actors should uphold freedom of expression and assembly for LGBT people and rights defenders, and not attempt to undermine their fundamental human rights.
In another blow to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Hungary, on July 13, the Hungarian government proposed a bill that excludes transgender women from a women-only pension scheme. The bill is expected to go to parliament in September.
The proposed bill comes on the heels of a court ruling on behalf of a transgender woman, obliging the local authority to recognize the plaintiff as a woman, making her eligible for the women-only pension benefit. The benefit is available to women who have worked 40 years but not yet reached retirement age.
The verdict caused a meltdown in Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. The deputy Fidesz faction leader publicly criticized the judge while pro-government media regurgitated trans- and homophobic messaging. As it has done with previous unfavorable rulings, the government is seeking to amend legislation to sidestep the courts. The proposed bill blatantly discriminates against trans women who have legally changed their gender marker and is another stark example of how the government abuses its power by eroding the rule of law. The bill is also on a collision course with case law by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights, as it flouts common European values. It is another case for why EU member states should sanction Hungary under article 7 of the Treaty on European Union for persistent disregard for the norms and principles upon which the EU is founded.
The anti-trans bill follows a streak of recent anti-LGBT incidents in Hungary. On the same day the government proposed the bill, the Consumer Protection Authority fined Lira, one of the country’s largest bookstores, 12 million Forints (roughly US$36,000) for failing to wrap in plastic foil the British webcomic “Heartstopper” that includes LGBT content. The government body said Lira had breached the 2021 anti-LGBT law prohibiting display of LGBT content to children – a law that the European Commission referred to the CJEU in July 2022 because it violates the fundamental rights of LGBT people.
Amid this anti-LGBT onslaught during Pride month, some 35,000 people took part in the Budapest Pride march on July 15 to defend their rights.
Instead of discriminating and fueling intolerance, parliament should redouble efforts to protect the basic human rights of everyone in Hungary, including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. If they instead adopt this bill, the European Commission should immediately launch infringement proceedings.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines face bias-motivated violence and discrimination in their daily life, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The authorities should repeal the country’s colonial-era laws that criminalize consensual same-sex conduct and pass comprehensive civil legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The 58-page report, “‘They Can Harass Us Because of the Laws’: Violence and Discrimination against LGBT People in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,” exposes the physical and verbal assaults, family violence, homelessness, workplace harassment, bullying, and sexual violence that sexual and gender minorities face under the shadow of discriminatory laws. Those responsible for mistreatment include people close to LGBT people – family members, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and teachers – as well as strangers and police officers.
“The criminalization of gay sex gives tacit state sanction to the discrimination and violence that LGBT people experience in their daily lives and compels many to look abroad to live freely and fulfill their dreams,” said Cristian González Cabrera, LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The lack of public policies in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines acknowledging the needs and capacities of LGBT people has furthered their social and economic marginalization, barring them from contributing fully to society.”
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is one of six countries in the Western Hemisphere that still criminalizes gay sex. It punishes “buggery,” or anal sex, with up to 10 years in prison and “gross indecency with another person of the same sex,” with up to 5 years. These laws single out consensual gay sex in the “sexual offences” section of the criminal code that is otherwise reserved for crimes like rape, incest, and sexual assault. While there have been no recent reported convictions on the basis of these criminal provisions for consensual gay sex, the laws stigmatize LGBT people and create an obstacle to full equality.
The other countries in the region that still criminalize gay sex are Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia.
Human Rights Watch conducted most of the 30 interviews for this report during a research trip to Saint Vincent in October 2022. Human Rights Watch conducted additional remote interviews, reviewed documentary evidence and a range of secondary sources, and carried out legal analyses in early 2023.
Archaic laws outlawing consensual same-sex conduct, although dormant, contribute to a climate in which discrimination and violence take place with impunity. As a 25-year-old gay man from Saint Vincent told Human Rights Watch, “People feel they can harass us because of the laws. If people are having an argument, that’s [their] justification for homophobia. They say it’s the laws, that it’s illegal.”
Nearly all LGBT people interviewed reported at least one recent incident of physical or verbal abuse, threats, sexual violence, or harassment. Some had sought police assistance, but in most instances, the authorities were not helpful, and in some cases they were openly discriminatory towards them, those interviewed said.
Most of the LGBT people interviewed said their family members had physically and verbally abused them. For many, family violence deprived them of a social safety net, sometimes leading to a precarious life, including homelessness. Some said that family rejection was often couched in moralistic terms, echoing the homophobic rhetoric preached in some churches, which are a cornerstone of social life and shape social attitudes in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
For LGBT job seekers, employment discrimination is common. While unemployment is generally high in the country, LGBT people face additional barriers. Many people interviewed said they were not hired, or they had been fired explicitly because of their sexual orientation. Some lesbian and bisexual women interviewed said they faced sexual harassment in the workplace because of their sexual orientation, gender, or both.
At school, most of those interviewed had experienced stigma and discrimination from teachers and fellow students. Most also endured physical and verbal bullying, which led some to leave school early, setting them on a path to economic and social marginalization. For some, bullying was often accompanied by sexual harassment and violence.
Every LGBT person interviewed said they wished to leave the country and envisioned their future abroad due, in part, to the homophobic or transphobic violence and discrimination in the country.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has ratified international human rights treaties that obligate the government to protect the rights of everyone, including LGBT people, to life and security, freedom from ill-treatment, non-discrimination, housing, work, and education. Consensual sexual relations are protected under multiple rights, including the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to privacy, and the right to protection of the law against arbitrary and unlawful interference with, or attacks on, one’s private and family life and honor.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines should repeal the buggery and gross indecency provisions in the criminal code and pass comprehensive civil anti-discrimination legislation that includes protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The National Prosecution Service and the National Security Ministry should develop policies to ensure prompt, thorough, and independent investigations into crimes and discrimination against LGBT people and hold those responsible accountable, including law enforcement officers. Ministries responsible for labor and education should initiate public campaigns to educate employers, educators, and the general public on the basic human rights of LGBT people.
“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines should move closer to equality by recognizing and protecting sexual and gender diversity, thereby strengthening the rule of law for everyone,” González said. “It should also shake off relics of its colonial history and contribute to making the Western Hemisphere free of laws that punish people for whom they choose to love.”
In January, Italy’s right-wing government ordered state agencies to cease registration of children born to same-sex couples. Now they’ve taken it a step further: a state prosecutor in northern Italy has ordered the cancellation and re-issuance of 33 birth certificates of lesbian couples’ children, endangering access to medical care and education.
Non-gestational mothers are receiving letters informing them that they are being retroactively removed from their children’s birth certificates. New birth certificates are being issued listing the name of only one of the child’s mothers.
In February, Human Rights Watch released the first global report on violence and discrimination against lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ+) women, which found access to fertility treatment and the rights of non-gestational lesbian mothers were two of the top concerns for LBQ+ activists across 26 countries. In January 2022, a United States court removed lesbian mother Kris Williams from her child’s birth certificate, replacing it with the name of the sperm donor, who petitioned for custody. In December 2022, a Japanese draft law proposed prohibiting doctors from providing fertility treatment to any woman not married to a man.
In Italy, lesbian couples cannot access fertility treatment, same-sex couples cannot marry, and the law does not explicitly regulate whether same-sex parents can both be registered. Many lesbian couples go abroad for fertility treatment and even to give birth, then bring home their child’s birth certificate for registration with the local municipality. Italy’s recent moves attack this already expensive, precarious, and difficult path to legal parenthood.
In interviews I conducted for the 2023 investigation, queer women’s concerns about parental rights often superseded hallmark LGBT rights issues, like marriage equality or the decriminalization of same-sex conduct. Lesbians want to create and protect their families, regardless of if, when, and how the government decriminalizes their lives and recognizes their relationships.
The right to create a family is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the European Convention on Human Rights – all of which Italy has ratified.
Italy should immediately reinstate the women removed from their children’s birth certificates and drop its ban on the registration of children born to same-sex couples. Authorities should pass inclusive parental recognition bills that explicitly recognize the legal parenthood of non-gestational lesbian parents.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in Cameroon are all too aware of homophobic rhetoric and violent attacks against them. This has been highlighted once again in the outpouring of vitriol before a scheduled visit by Jean-Marc Berthon, the French ambassador for the Rights of LGBT+ Persons.
Berthon was due to visit Cameroon later last month for an event on gender and sexuality hosted by the French Institute in Yaoundé, the capital. Cameroon’s government officially registered its objection to the visit, and Foreign Minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella said in the media that the visit would contravene Cameroonian law, which forbids consensual same-sex relations.
The visit was then cancelled.
Since the visit was announced, many people have called for mob justice and violence against LGBT persons on social media. Some government and political officials, as well as public figures, referred to LGBT people as “against nature,” “an anomaly,” “vampire citizens,” “destructive of the family,” “destructive of the state,” or as using “satanic and demonic practices.” In addition to this online hatred, people perceived as LGBT live with constant threats of harassment and physical violence every day.
Tamu (not their real name), an LGBT activist living in Yaoundé, told me, “The situation is very tense. People are scared. Everywhere you go you hear: ‘We have to burn them all.’ … There are young [LGBT] people calling me from everywhere. They don’t know what to do.”
The foreign minister claimed that there are no LGBT people in Cameroon, which is patently false. LGBT groups exist in Cameroon and several even manage to work with the government on initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS. But Cameroon has a dismal track record on upholding the rights of LGBT people. Security forces have failed to protect LGBT people from violence and in some instances have been responsible for acts of violence, or complicit in them. The Cameroonian government should unequivocally condemn violence and incitement to violence against LGBT people, investigate such crimes against LGBT persons, and bring those responsible to justice.
