The British government’s policy on birth registration “is outdated and discriminatory” against LGBT+ people and their children, a new petition states.
Currently, the children of many queer and trans parents face a lifetime of disadvantage because birth registration policy doesn’t legally recognise their family structure. This means these children have inaccurate birth certificates, putting them at risk of discrimination and harassment for their entire lives.
This situation is particularly acute for families where one or more parents are trans or non-binary: as PinkNews reported last month, an archaic UK law from the 1950s insists whoever gives birth to a baby can only be recorded as the mother on the birth certificate.
“UK birth registration is outdated and discriminatory,” says a petition calling on the government to equally recognise LGBT+ parents, which has been signed by more than 2,000 people.
The petition continues: “Birth certificates should record legal parenthood. Parents need the choice to register according to their legal gender or gender neutrally. The gender neutral ‘parent’ label should be available to anyone to choose.
“All legal parents, including through surrogacy, must be recognised from conception and allowed to register on their child’s birth certificate.”
The petition is part of a campaign by trans dad and journalist Freddy McConnell, who lost a four-year legal battle to be named his child’s dad on their birth certificate.
McConnell is now planning to give birth to his second child abroad, in Sweden – where trans men who give birth can be listed as parent or father – so that his baby will have an accurate birth certificate. This journey will be documented by filmmakers as part of the campaign for equal recognition for LGBT+ families in the UK.
You can support the campaign for equal recognition for LGBT+ parents by signing the petition here and donating to the crowdfunder for documentary My Trans Family here.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Bulgaria must issue identity papers to the child of a same-sex couple.
The European Union’s (EU) top court has ruled that Bulgaria must issue identity papers to a child of same-sex parents, and that all EU nations must respect such families.
The ruling came after authorities in Bulgaria refused to issue a birth certificate for a child, named Sara, who was born in 2019 to a married same-sex couple: Bulgarian born Kalina Ivanova and Gibraltar-born Jane Jones (not their real names).
Sara was born in Spain, but she couldn’t be considered for Spanish citizenship as neither of her mothers was a citizen of the country. Jones then applied for Sara to be a UK citizen, but this was denied as Jones was born in Gibraltar and not in the UK. As such, she couldn’t pass on her citizenship to her child.
Bulgaria denied Sara citizenship as the country doesn’t recognise same-sex marriages. It noted that the current model of birth certificates in Bulgaria only has one box for “mother” and another for “father”, and “only one name may appear in each box”.
As a result, Sara was left with no documentation of any kind, which posed a significant risk to her ability to access health, education and social security. It also prevented her family from leaving Spain.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled on Tuesday (14 December) that Bulgaria’s refusal to issue identity documents could hinder the “child’s exercise of the right of free movement and thus full enjoyment of her rights as a Union citizen”.
The court ruled that Bulgaria must recognise the Spanish birth certificate that was issued to Sara, which lists both her mothers as her parents, but does not need to issue a Bulgarian birth certificate. It stressed that all member states must “recognise that parent-child relationship in order to enable [the child] to exercise, with each of her parents, her right of free movement”.
The CJEU asserted that Bulgarian authorities must issue an identity card or a passport to Sara. The court added all other EU member states must recognise these identity papers to allow Sara freedom of movement alongside her parents.
Jones and Ivanova said in a statement with IGLA-Europe that they are “thrilled” by the court’s decision and “cannot wait to get Sara her documentation”.
“It is important for us to be a family, not only in Spain but in any country in Europe and finally it might happen,” they added. “This is a long-awaited step ahead for us but also a huge step for all LGBT families in Bulgaria and Europe.”
Arpi Avetisyan, head of litigation for IGLA-Europe, said the CJEU’s judgment is a “true testament” to the EU being a “union of equality”.
Avetisyan added the group looked forward to seeing more “rainbow families enjoying their right to freedom of movement and other fundamental rights on equal footing to anyone else”.
“It is important that the judgment is implemented imminently, not only for baby Sara and her family, but also for other families facing similar struggles across the EU,” Avetisyan said.
The IGLA-Europe said the ruling also solidified European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s comment that: “If you are a parent in one country, you are parent in every country”.
The resolution declared that queer people “everywhere in the EU should enjoy the freedom to live and publicly show their sexual orientation and gender identity without fear of intolerance, discrimination or persecution”.
Von der Leyen tweeted her support for the resolution, saying that “being yourself is not an ideology”.
She wrote: “No one can ever take it away. The EU is your home. The EU is a #LGBTIQFreedomZone.”
After four years of debate, New Zealand has unanimously passed a self-ID bill for trans people, voting “in favour of inclusivity and against discrimination”.
The self-ID bill was introduced in 2018, and was finally passed by New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday (9 December) after its third reading.
It will remove the requirement for medical intervention to change legal gender marker in favour of a “statutory declaration”.
The changes will come into force in 18 months time, allowing for consultation with the LGBT+ community on how the process should work, how young people can access correct gender markers, and how to be inclusive of non-binary people and different cultures.
According to the NZ Herald, Green Party MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, a cisgender lesbian and longtime trans ally, said: “This bill recognises that those who need to amend their birth certificate can do so, that the courts do not have the right to make that choice for them, that parents do not have that right, that cisgender people who don’t even know them or care about them do not have that right.”
“As a takatāpui, cis-lesbian fem ally to our takatāpui, trans and intersex non-binary whānau, I am very proud to commend this bill to the house,” she continued.
Internal affairs minister Jan Tinetti described the passing of the bill as “a proud day in Aotearoa’s history”, and added: “Parliament has voted in favour of inclusivity and against discrimination.”
She said that trans folk and those who supported the bill had been “hurt, mocked, belittled and discriminated against” during the course of the years-long debate, and continued: “A lot of discussion was aimed at trans women. As a cis woman I am proud to stand alongside my sisters.
“Trans misogyny is still misogyny… We are changing legislation that is truly a step closer to an inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Keep proudly being you.”
Lagging shamefully behind New Zealand, in the UK, self-ID for trans folk seems like a distant dream.
While the Tory government conducted research as far back as 2018 showing broad public support for reform of the gender recognition, under Boris Johnson, the government announced last year that it was scrapping plans for reform completely.
Canada this week banned conversion therapy, a debunked treatment that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
A bill making it a crime to subject Canadians of any age to the discredited practice became law Wednesday after Canada’s Parliament passed the measure this month.
“It’s official: Our government’s legislation banning the despicable and degrading practice of conversion therapy has received Royal Assent — meaning it is now law. LGBTQ2 Canadians, we’ll always stand up for you and your rights,” Canadian President Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/M7hDVJs?_showcaption=true&app=1
The Canadian law is the latest instance of a growing global effort to eradicate conversion therapy, a practice that ranges from religious counseling to electric shock therapy and has been associated with “severe psychological distress.”
Canada’s ban follows that of Germany, Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan. Some of the nations, such as Germany, have passed bans exclusively for minors, whereas others, like Malta, have passed bans for all citizens.
In the United States, 20 states and the District of Columbia have restrictions in place for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. Three states — Florida, Alabama and Georgia — are in a federal judicial circuit with an injunction that blocks conversion therapy bans.
In addition to Canada, France’s Senate voted in favor of legislation this week that would also criminalize the practice, with prison sentences of two to three years and fines up to $50,000.
In 2019, the American Medical Association voiced its support for state and federal efforts to ban conversion therapy, saying that it “has no foundation as scientifically valid medical care and lacks credible evidence to support its efficacy or safety.”
And last year, the United Nations called for the practice to be banned internationally and released a detailed report on the practice’s global implications.
“The attempts to pathologize and erase the identity of individuals, negate their existence as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or gender diverse and provoke self-loathing have profound consequences on their physical and psychological integrity and well-being,” the report stated.
LGBTQ advocates hailed the Canadian law’s passage.
“To the survivors who have fought for years for a safer, more equal future: thank you and congratulations. This is your moment,” No Conversion Canada, a Canadian nonprofit coalition to end conversion therapy, wrote on Twitter this week.
Chile’s Congress passed a law to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, in a milestone for the conservative South American nation after a decade-long legal battle and with the country delicately poised ahead of a crossroads election this month.
“Today is a historic day, our country has approved same-sex marriage, one more step forward in terms of justice, in terms of equality, recognizing that love is love,” Minister of Social Development Karla Rubilar said after the vote.
Chile’s Senate and lower house of parliament both voted heavily in favor of the bill on Tuesday, which had previously been partially approved in November before the Senate sent it back to a committee to clarify ambiguities.
Current President Sebastian Pinera, who will leave office in March, has backed the bill and is expected to sign it into law.
The vote culminates a process that began in 2007, when then-President Michelle Bachelet pushed Congress to pass a same-sex law. Chile is now poised to join 30 other countries where same-sex marriage is legal — including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay in Latin America — according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“It is hard to believe that today we are taking this step,” said Rolando Jimenez from LGBTQ rights group Movilh, one of the major backers of the bill and which helped spearhead Chile’s push to legalize same sex marriage for more than a decade.
Chile will elect a new president on Dec. 19, choosing between progressive Gabriel Boric and social conservative Jose Antonio Kast, a practicing Catholic. The two offer wildly different visions for the country’s future.
While Kast disagrees with same-sex marriage, he had said he would have signed the bill into law anyway had it been passed by Congress during a potential presidency of his.
Chile has long had a conservative reputation even compared with its deeply Catholic Latin American peers. Still, a strong majority of Chileans now support same-sex marriage and Chileans have shown signs of moving left on social and cultural issues in recent years.
Civil unions have been permitted in Chile since 2015, which affords same-sex partners many but not all the benefits of married couples, like the right to adoption.
There has been an alarming surge in the number of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes recorded by UK police forces since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
According to new figures, after lockdown restrictions were eased this summer, anti-LGBT+ hate crime numbers soared to the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.
Between January and August this year, at least 14,670 homophobic hate crimes were recorded in the UK. During the same period in 2020, there were 11,841, and the first six months of 2019 saw 10,817.
The third national lockdown began in January, 2021, and from January to April there were an average of 1,456 homophobic hate crimes reported per month, and 208 transphobic hate crimes.
As lockdown restrictions eased, this figure soared to 2,211 homophobic incidents per month from May to August, and 324 transphobic ones.
This year, reports of violent anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in the UK have felt endless.
Manchester and Liverpool have faced waves of homophobic attacks over the last year.
Stonewall told LBC that even these shocking figures do not show the terrifying full picture of UK hate crimes because of under-reporting.
Stonewall’s associate director of policy and research, Eloise Stonborough, added: “LGBT+ people have struggled throughout the pandemic, with many not having access to vital support networks and spaces during lockdowns.
“It’s always worrying to see an increase in anti-LGBT+ hate crime, particularly at a time when our communities were more isolated than ever.”
Leni Morris, the chief executive of the LGBT anti-violence charity Galop, told The Guardian: “What we saw in the pandemic was LGBT+ people experiencing forms of abuse and violence that were either exacerbated by the pandemic itself or caused by it.
“We have some people who were victims of abuse and attacks because of being blamed for the pandemic itself, either because perpetrators thought the pandemic was an act of God – because of the existence of LGBT+ people – or because of the community’s association with the last major pandemic in people’s minds, and that’s the HIV/AIDS pandemic.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has promised that police will “always pursue action against perpetrators of hate crime where there is the evidence to do so”, but admitted that as many hate crime offences move online, prosecution has become increasingly difficult.
The South African government has taken important steps but did not provide adequate funding for shelters and other services for gender-based violence survivors during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many survivors have been made more vulnerable in the context of Covid-19.
The South African government has acknowledgedhigh rates of gender-based violence both during and before the pandemic. But South African experts told Human Rights Watch that despite promises – including in a National Strategic Plan – to address gender-based violence and femicide, the government has still failed to provide necessary funding for shelters and other services. Efforts should be made to improve access for marginalized people, including sex workers; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people; and undocumented survivors.
“South Africa is facing a situation in which survivors have been locked down with abusers, and they need economic security to free themselves from their abusers, all during a very tight job market and a period of food insecurity,” said Wendy Isaack, LGBT researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Key services such as shelters have been under huge stress for months because of pandemic-related problems and costs and long-standing difficulties like late payment of funds in some places and patchy government support.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed staff at seven shelters spread across the country and six other frontline organizations working directly with victims to prevent gender-based violence or provide emergency support to survivors. Human Rights Watch also interviewed activists and other experts from 12 organizations working to end this violence. Human Rights Watch made unsuccessful attempts to interview or obtain feedback from South Africa’s Department of Social Development (DSD), which oversees shelter services.
Those interviewed said that the biggest problem was a lack of adequate government funding to help overwhelmed nongovernmental organizations providing direct support to victims, including shelters, cope with the pandemic.
The DSD should finalize its draft Intersectoral Shelter Policy as a matter of urgency, and all government agencies involved should carry out planned improvements.
Immediate-, medium- and long-term impacts from South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdowns have increased the risk for women and girls of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence. Human Rights Watch research with frontline workers in South Africa suggests that this risk may be greater for additionally marginalized people like black lesbians, transgender men and women, sex workers, and older women, as well as refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants.
Those interviewed said that domestic violence victims living under lockdown were cut off from others who might help them, giving them no respite from partners or family members beating, raping, or psychologically or verbally abusing them.
Government support to shelters during the Covid-19 pandemic appeared to vary enormously among provinces. Some shelters described firm relationships and public health guidance and other support from the provincial DSD staff. Shelters in the Western Cape, for example, said that the agency provided guidance, solidarity, and personal protective equipment (PPE) and that funding for shelters arrived on time.
In other places, though, funding was late. The National Shelter Movement of South Africa, a nonprofit organization with about 78 shelters under its umbrella, said that some staff even had to take personal loans to pay expenses. The South African government did promote a hotline for victims it had set up in 2014, but civil society members said it sometimes provided confusing or out-of-date information and that it was hard for some victims to use because they were afraid their abuser would hear them.
Commentators have said that the South African government worked to keep services open for the survivors. But experts criticized the South African government, saying it was too late to acknowledge the impact of strict lockdowns and had not provided adequate public information about shelters and services to make clear that domestic violence victims could leave their homes to get help.
Frontline workers said that many people, perhaps especially among vulnerable populations, were further endangered by the sudden loss of jobs, incomes, or housing. Sex workers, in particular, were forced to leave brothels and to take greater risks to make ends meet as the work dried up, sex worker rights groups said. Research by Human Rights Watch in 2018 found that female sex workers are especially vulnerable to violence in South Africa, in part because their work is criminalized.
Frontline workers also said that loss of income and lack of food security made undocumented migrants even more dependent on abusive partners and less likely to leave them. Human Rights Watch researchfound that the government’s Covid-19 aid programs, including food parcels during national lockdown, overlooked people with disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, and many LGBT people.
Shelters vary in whether they accept undocumented migrant survivors. South African law prohibits sheltering immigrants without documentation but allows for emergency humanitarian support for undocumented people. The exception is not clearly defined, and some shelters fear liability for violating the law. South Africa has one shelter designed for LGBT survivors, the Pride Shelter in Cape Town. Though other shelters accept them in theory, experts said that more funding, training, and skills building is needed to counter discrimination and bias in the shelter space, provide tailored services, and raise awareness about availability of shelter services among marginalized populations.
The pandemic and lockdowns temporarily affected or made impossible some important in-house services in shelters, such as some forms of counseling and job training, Human Rights Watch found. Job opportunities for clients evaporated. Shelters were unable to carry out normal in-person outreach activities to raise awareness about their services as well as fundraising activities to support themselves or supplement government grants.
Perhaps because of uncertainty and isolation, several shelter workers said they felt that anxiety and depression among clients increased. Staff also had to make significant changes to how they worked, they and experts said, for example, working week-long shifts rather than going home every day, and there were many reports of burnout among shelter staff.
Inconsistent government support for the shelters is not a new problem. The Heinrich Böll Foundationfor example, together with the National Shelter Movement, has long noted that shelters are “chronically underfunded,” and that funding is also highly variable between and within provinces. A 2019 report on the state of shelters by the Commission for Gender Equality, an independent government watchdog body, found “grossly inadequate and misaligned” funding for shelters from the agency and late payments in some provinces.
Ongoing sensitization and skills training for shelter staff to prevent discrimination against LGBT people, sex workers, or undocumented African non-nationals and to ensure tailored services are available is important, Human Rights Watch said. The DSD should also ensure that all shelters accept undocumented survivors and know how to assist them with immigration procedures.
“The government of South Africa has been addressing gender-based violence during the crisis over the past year,” Isaack said. “But a large-scale and fully resourced effort will be needed to ensure the Covid-19 crisis and its fallout over the next years doesn’t result in South Africa’s rates for gender-based violence worsening further.”
For more information about gender-based violence in South Africa and the impact on shelter services, please see below.
Gender-Based Violence in South Africa
South Africa’s president has characterized gender-based violence in South Africa as a “second pandemic,” after the coronavirus. Statistics, including police reports, are worrying but incomplete, both because of problems with data collection and because victims often do not report abuse. Despite the lack of accurate statistics, it is evident that the rates are high, both for women and for LGBT people.
It is also not yet clear to what extent gender-based violence increased during the Covid-19 lockdowns. An analysis by the Heinrich Böll Foundation released in August 2021 found that various data, including police reporting, a government helpline, and hospitals, did not provide a clear indication that rates had increased, but said that more research was needed. Several people interviewed said that they thought rates increased, and experts and frontline workers widely agreed that the pandemic created additional vulnerabilities.
In September 2021 parliament passed three linked bills amending relevant laws. One, the Domestic Violence Amendment Act, should make it easier for victims to get protection orders.
There is political will to address the crisis, but adequate funding has long been a problem, Human Rights Watch found. The National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide attributed the high rates of gender-based violence to South Africa’s history of violence and apartheid, but also to government underinvestment in solving the problem. Others have also concluded that budgetary constraints and lack of cooperation among government departments have undermined progress. Victims lack support when attempting to report violence and lack adequate access to courts and to shelters. The experts interviewed said that the pandemic worsened these problems.
The Commission on Gender Equality’s March 2020 submission to the United Nations committee that oversees states’ compliance with Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women detailed the situation just prior to the pandemic and lockdown. It said that while there was “political willingness to lead national efforts to deal with gender-based violence”, in practice, funding and implementation of a pre-Covid-19-era Emergency Response Action Plan was “still unfolding.” Despite promises of more support, the commission said that even before the pandemic, a lack of government funding had meant the shelters were forced to close, police were undertrained, and medical services for rape survivors were lacking.
The National Strategic Plan is the result of years of activism by South African civil society, including demonstrations in August 2018 that triggered a Presidential Summit Against Gender-Based Violence. Drafted by government and activists, the South African cabinet has also approved the plan. However, it is difficult to track how the plan is being funded. In February 2021 in response to government efforts, the private sector pledged a total of 128 million South African Rand (R, about US$8.1 million) to fight gender-based violence.
Government financial support to shelters and services for survivors is an important part of meeting human rights obligations to address gender-based violence. The National Plan’s Pillar 4, “Response, Care Support and Healing,” and Pillar 5, “Economic Empowerment” tasks the DSD with increasing funding for shelters and services at shelters, and to increase access to shelters and interim housing for all victims, including LGBT people, sex workers, undocumented immigrants, older women, and women with older children.
Covid-19 and Economic Insecurity
The abrupt change in economic activity caused by the pandemic and response had a profound impact on many South African’s economic security. Interviewees said that certain marginalized populations, in particular, African LGBT asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, and sex workers, already more at risk of violence, experienced a significant drop in food security and loss of income. This compounded their risk, especially for those who were forced into homelessness.
Human Rights Watch analysis showed that the authorities did not take steps to facilitate support, including from donors, for refugees and asylum seekers whose access to food and other basic necessities were limited during the nationwide lockdown. As far as Human Rights Watch has been able to ascertain, the government did not consult with people from vulnerable and marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities, leaving many at serious risk of Covid-19 infection, hunger, and other harm.
“Things were very bad to be honest – migrant sex workers were told to move out of brothels and safe houses,” a sex worker peer advocate said about her efforts to assist sex workers in a small town in Gauteng province. “We intervened and made agreements [with the owners] like [in one place] – as long as the sex workers were able to pay electricity the owner allowed them to stay. In another brothel [the owner] gave them a few days after we intervened, but eventually they had to go.”
Dudu Dlamini, a sex worker activist, said that “Sex workers had no cash, no income, they were chased out of houses by landlords”. She said that the loss of income often affected three or four dependents. “They couldn’t go home without bringing money, (couldn’t) visit their children.”
Sex work remains criminalized in South Africa, and as a result, the South African Police Service in some places perpetuates abuse by profiling and harassing sex workers. “Lockdown amplified the challenges for sex workers,” said Nosipho Vidima, a sex workers’ rights advocate. “You can imagine if you’re trying to work and there’s no one else in the street because of curfew… sex workers were harassed and arrested by police for being out, because they were known to be sex workers.”
A social worker at People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression, and Poverty (PASSOP), a community-based organization working to defend the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, and non-nationals in Cape Town, said economic insecurity because of the pandemic made it even less likely that their clients, mostly undocumented immigrant LGBT survivors of gender-based violence, would leave abusive partners or report violence. “The majority [of our clients] have lost their jobs [and the need for food and shelter have been those most faced during Covid-19,” he said, adding that the group’s programming had been replaced by proving food parcels and other emergency relief.
“[Even under better times] our clients can’t get work and struggle because they don’t have documents and so have to rely on partners even if they are ill-treated,” he said. He said that at least nine clients were doing sex work to survive, and some had faced police harassment and others violence, and all were more likely to have unsafe sex.
“We did an announcement about our food parcels on the radio as well as our evacuation services and our line blew up,” the codirector from Rise Up Against Gender-Based Violence said. “[Newly homeless people needed] things like buckets to go get water and plastic bags to keep their things in. Especially during the hard lockdown, we had a lot of LGBTIQ people we needed to assist because their families had thrown them out of homes [and] we also did a lot of parcels for non-nationals because there was no assistance for undocumented people.”
Covid-19 Impacts on Gender-Based Violence Shelters
Human Rights Watch found that the pandemic had a significant impact on gender-based violence shelters. The shelters provide refuge from violence and include safe houses that offer temporary accommodation. Crises centers typically offer accommodation for three to six months, and most interviewed by Human Rights Watch also provide counseling, psychosocial and emotional assistance, and life planning, skills building and job training, as well as connections to courts or other government services such as help with protection orders or divorces.
Human Rights Watch did not receive any reports about major Covid-19 outbreaks in shelters, but protecting clients and staff from Covid-19 infection and managing lockdowns strained shelters in many ways. Several shelter workers said that stress and anxiety were greatly heightened for both clients and staff. “We probably worked harder than ever before,” said a senior social worker from a Durban shelter in KwaZulu-Natal. “We had greater levels of anxiety than before among the clients.”
One social worker said that a client and a worker, a cleaner at her shelter, had died of Covid-19, causing anxiety and distress among both staff and clients. “It was a roller coaster,” she said.
Clients at shelters had to self-isolate, especially new arrivals, meaning they lost out on solidarity and community, made worse by restrictions against visitors or making trips outside of the shelter. At one Gauteng shelter, for example, new clients had to self-isolate for 14 days. “It was a very traumatic time,” said a social worker at the shelter. “I’ve never spoken or debriefed about it, but it was frustrating and depressing and not just for the clients here but also for the staff.”
Two other senior shelter workers said that they and their staff had not had a chance to talk about the impact of the pandemic on their wellbeing, and a few people said that the work and sacrifices of shelter staff had not been acknowledged, and that burnout was increasingly a problem. “Everyone just put their heads down and did the work, but now we’re seeing the impact on staff,” said a senior social worker at a 120-bed shelter, Saartjie Bartman Centre, in Cape Town. At least two shelters moved employees from daily shifts, going home at night, to working a week at a time to reduce exposure.
Protections against Covid-19 also created additional costs. “We spent huge amounts of money on PPE in the first months, some R60,000 [about $3,800],” said a senior social worker at the Saartjie Bartman Centre. Like others, this shelter also spent precious funds on private car services to reduce staff exposure on public transport. Fundraising events were canceled and at least some shelters decided to stop in-kind deliveries of food and other support that they usually depend on to reduce opportunities for virus transmission. In-person outreach work in communities also stopped, potentially reducing people’s access and knowledge about sheltering.
Covid-19 Impacts on Services for Survivors
Shelter workers said that perhaps the most worrying loss for shelter residents from the pandemic has been job opportunities. “Women can’t find jobs now, some have been with us for six months now and have no follow-up plan because of that,” a KwaZulu-Natal social worker at a shelter said in February. “I refuse to send a client back to an abusive situation.”
“Our clients have been disappointed,” said a senior social worker from the Sahara Shelter. “A lot come here unemployed, and we try to work as much as possible with local businesses and people who can give our clients jobs, so they have income, but that’s not been possible under Covid-19.” Another social worker said that “We have 15 women [clients] with us now, and only two are employed – it’s terrible.”
Government services were harder to get, including some lifesaving services. “Some government officials were working from home and it was hard to reach them”, a social worker from a shelter in the Eastern Cape Province said. “[This] led to a delay in service delivery to our clients and also added strain on them with regard to their cases. In the beginning of the lockdown, cases were postponed in court and protection orders could not be granted on the date set.”
“We faced huge problems in getting protection orders,” another social worker said.
Others said that health services were affected, with some hospitals shutting down or canceling normal services their clients depended on, some medications being harder to get, and general anxiety and uncertainty as to when taking a client to a hospital or clinic was worth the risk of exposure to Covid-19. “Access to mental [health services] and other health care has proved to be extremely inaccessible during lockdown, even more so than before,” a domestic violence worker in the Cape Flats said.
Shelters struggled to keep essential services such as psychosocial – mental health – support and counseling ongoing, and these essential services were halted in some places for at least a period. Some shelters lost at least some programming. “We also had to stop all our extra services,” said one social worker.
Organizations like SWEAT, the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce, and Mothers for the Future, a SWEAT offshoot, who work to support sex workers including protecting them against gender-based violence, struggled with major programming losses, especially in the early days of the pandemic. “We had to stop support group meetings,” Dlamini said. “We moved over to a WhatsApp group so we could provide a little support.”
“We even saw places that had provided condoms for free had shut down,” said a sex worker activist, Megan Lessing. “Some sex workers were earning R50 a day [about $3.20] and paying R20 [about $1.30] for condoms.”
Access to Shelters for Marginalized Survivors
Human Rights Watch found that shelters differed in whom they accepted as clients. Undocumented migrants, LGBT people, and women with older male children were sometimes excluded, for reasons that range from lack of private family facilities to concern about running afoul of the immigration law, or not being able to pay expenses the government would not reimburse for non-nationals. Older women, people who use drugs, and women with severe illnesses were sometimes excluded as well, with many facilities lacking the resources to provide specialized health or services, such as personal care and other support, to people with disabilities, including older people with disabilities.
While sex workers, transwomen, transmen, and lesbians, were usually accepted in theory, people working with these vulnerable groups said that particular group often did not feel welcome and that more needed to be done to help them access shelters.
“Vulnerable groups struggle to find or use shelters mainly because of stigma,” a shelter social worker said. “They are often discriminated against by the public and by staff at shelters … and they’re coming from a place where there’s a lack of acceptance to start with from family members.”
Citing security concerns, about half of the shelters contacted would not take older boys, usually any male over 12. Two shelters said that they did not take older women, in one case because of fears that they would never find another home for them. “We can’t [discharge] them because other support structures [like [older] people’s homes] are not working,” said one social worker. More commonly shelters said that they would not take women using drugs, because they are not set up to safely provide necessary services.
“Some shelters won’t take foreign nationals, especially undocumented people, [and] we spent a lot of time trying to place foreign nationals,” said one person who had helped more than 50 women leave domestic violence in Johannesburg. “We will assist, we won’t judge them if they’ve got papers and have been referred to us and have a right to be in the country,” one shelter social worker said. Others said that they would take undocumented survivors, but it was “problematic … we then have to refer them to the correct institutions handling their cases.”
The Creighton Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal said that they had recently taken in a transwoman. “It was very hard for her to find a shelter because in her ID she’s still a man,” the manager said. Other shelters said that staff can feel reluctant to accept transwomen in the facility, especially if there are no private rooms and bathrooms, or training for staff. Another shelter manager and National Shelter Movement executive committee member, Bernadine Bachar, said that the shelter serves transwomen, but that generally, “there’s a lot of reluctance to take transwomen. Staff feel that they’re not equipped to deal with issues.”
Sex workers experience barriers to accessing shelters, including assumptions about their drug use, on whether they can remain working and not violate shelter rules, or whether they have immigration documentation. One shelter worker said: “Sex workers are sometimes [dependent on] drugs; we have a zero-tolerance policy on that.” She also said that female sex workers often “disregard” the shelter’s 5 p.m. curfew, along with the government’s Covid-19 regulations.
“Sex workers … often do not stay long because they have to leave to do their work and so they violate the shelter rules as well as Covid lockdown regulation,” another person interviewed said.
“I put one sex worker in a shelter and the staff there saw her working and told us to take her to another shelter,” Dlamini said. “And there was another case where a sex worker tested positive for drugs and so was not allowed to stay.”
Sex workers usually do not even consider a shelter an option, a sex worker peer said. “The general feeling is that without a South African ID you can’t access anything.”
Government Support During the Pandemic
Unlike many other governments in the region, South Africa does provide support to shelters, and the pandemic has placed many strains on government institutions and services, Human Rights Watch said. It is apparently difficult to calculate government spending on gender-based violence, but experts agree that more funding and focus is needed.
Experts said that the government was too slow to publicly note that the pandemic and the stringent lockdowns had increased the risks of gender-based violence. They said that national and local officials have never acknowledged the added dangers to some groups like sex workers, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants as well as LGBT people. The experts also said that it was not made clear from the beginning that shelters and other services were essential services that would remain open and that survivors could leave their houses to get help even during curfew or the various levels of lockdown. “Women didn’t know what was going on,” Bachar said. “It was unconscionable.”
South African authorities’ enforcement of curfews and lockdowns has been strict, and sometimes violent, which may have affected victims’ ability to seek help. In June 2020 a report by the Atlantic Council noted that, “Since South Africa instituted a country-wide lockdown on March 27, the number of violent incidents by police against civilians has reportedly more than doubled, with poor and vulnerable populations most affected.”
For many shelters, work with local government officials and police continued during the pandemic even if it was bumpy. Some said they got some additional assistance like funds, PPE including masks and sanitizers, and advice from the government, although more commonly from the National Shelter Movement.
A social worker at the Sahara Shelter in Durban said: “we got masks and sanitizer … whenever there was stuff available (DSD) would drop it off and they helped with deep cleaning two or three times.”
“DSD worked with us from the beginning to prepare, even before lockdown, they sent an epidemiologist to consult with shelters,” a senior worker at a large shelter of 120 beds in Cape Town said. Other shelters said that they did not get any additional support from the government and instead were dependent on the National Shelter Movement for PPE and other resources as well as guidance on how to handle social distancing for example.
The biggest problem was when funding arrived late, those interviewed said. But the overall lack of funding for shelters, even when on time was also consistently mentioned as a problem. “A lack of funding means many shelter workers earn a minimum wage even though they are essential and the work they do is so important,” said Claudia Lopes from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Lopes and Kailash Bhana, who are doing research for the Heinrich Böll Foundation on the impact of Covid-19 on shelters, and Lisa Vetten, another expert, said that two shelters in the Eastern Cape had to halt their operations because they could not afford to pay for food as they had not received government funding during the pandemic. They said that at least one shelter in the Northwest province, struggled to feed about 80 clients, some of them children, and came close to collapse because of significantly delayed government funding.
Experts also expressed concerns about the quality of a government hotline set up during the pandemic for victims. “We were shocked by the GBV [gender-based violence] hotline,” the codirector at Rise Up Against Gender-Based Violence said. “[Victims are] trapped in their homes with their abuser and you’re giving them a telephone line. Many people have no phone, and [even if they do] the abuser is within earshot.”
Even when survivors could call, said Lopes, hotline workers were sometimes giving callers inappropriate advice and “deciding for themselves whether someone was eligible for shelters or not” rather than just doing referrals. In one example, she said, “the victim’s partner was a gangster, and she was needing urgent escape from the situation and the community that she lives in, but the command center told her that she was not eligible for sheltering as she could be accommodated elsewhere, essentially with her mom in the same community she had to leave for her own safety. They simply didn’t understand the dynamics.”
Hungary’s parliament passed a resolution on Tuesday which will empower the government to hold a referendum on LGBTQ issues, raising Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-LGBTQ campaign to a new level as he heads into a tough election race next year.
Orban, a nationalist who has been in power since 2010, this year proposed a referendum on ruling party legislation that limits schools’ teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues, stepping up a culture war with the European Union.
Facing his first competitive election in more than a decade, nationalist Orban has sought to promote social policies that he says safeguard Christian values against Western liberalism, putting gender issues and what he calls LGBTQ propaganda at the center of his campaign along with migration.
Parliament voted on four referendum questions one by one, passing them with Fidesz’s ruling majority.
“The Hungarian government proposes that citizens should have a chance to express their stance on the issues of gender propaganda,” deputy minister Balazs Orban told parliament.
“We are committed. We believe that we …have to say no to LGBTQ propaganda in schools carried out with the help of NGOs and media, without parental consent.”
He said holding the referendum on the same day as the parliamentary vote would save taxpayers money but it is up to President Janos Ader to set the date. Ader, an ally of the government, has not yet fixed a date for the parliamentary elections which are expected to be held in April.
In the referendum, Hungarians will be asked whether they support the holding of sexual orientation workshops in schools without parents’ consent and whether they believe gender reassignment procedures should be promoted among children.
They will also be asked whether media content that could affect sexual orientation should be shown to children without any restrictions.
The law passed in June, which the government says aims to protect children, has caused anxiety in the LGBT community.
Sweden’s first female prime minister Magdalena Andersson has added the country’s first-ever trans minister to her new majority female government.
On Tuesday (30 November), on her second day as prime minister, Andersson announced her new government, including Lina Axelsson-Kihlbom as education minister.
Axelsson-Kihlbom, 51, is a former headteacher and lawyer who became known as “Superrektorn” (“Super Principal”) after she appeared on a documentary series in which she managed to turn around a failing school in one of Sweden’s most deprived areas.
The mother-of-two also published a book in 2015 titled Kommer du tycka om mig nu? (Will You Love Me Now?) in which she told the world for the first time that she was trans.
She received an outpouring of love and support from the public after her book was released, and said in an op-ed in 2018: “Trans people have always existed, they will always exist and we no longer feel ashamed. We are the new normal.”
Axelsson-Kihlbom has said she knew she was trans from the age of three, according to Aftonbladet, but didn’t have the language to describe it, leading her to feel completely alone.
She medically transitioned when she was 24 years old, but in an interview on the Swedish talkshow Skavlan, discussed the cruel requirement at the time that she be sterilised in order to gain legal recognition as a woman, a law that was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
She said: “I had to undergo an operation where the state ensured that none of my unique gene set would ever be reproduced.
“I remember that there were tears but did not know if it was tears of pain or because I was so enormously humiliated.”
According to Bloomberg, one of prime minister Andersson’s priorities is reforming Sweden’s highly-privatised school system, and Axelsson-Kihlbom is the perfect person for the job.
The new trans education minister, who has been a member of Sweden’s School Commission since 2015, said at a press conference after her appointment that she would work to ban private profits being made from schools.
She said: “Society needs to take control over schools. Every student’s right to knowledge must be in focus, and not share price movements or religious beliefs.”
Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s first female prime minister, had to resign on her first day in office
On Wednesday, Magdalena Andersson was elected Sweden’s first female prime minister, but hours later she resigned following the collapse of her coalition.
In a dispute over budget proposals, the country’s Green Party walked away from the coalition with Andersson’s Social Democratic Party, and so she was forced to step down.
On Monday, she was reappointed as prime minister after a second vote, and will lead the one-party government until an election next September.
Botswana’s Court of Appeal on Monday upheld a 2019 ruling that decriminalised gay sex, a decision hailed by gay community as establishing the southern African country as a “true democracy”.
Monday’s decision in effect struck off two sections of the penal code that had outlawed homosexuality. Before the 2019 High Court ruling, which was praised by international organisations and activists, engaging in gay sex in Botswana was punishable by up to seven years in prison.
The state had argued on appeal that the penal code outlawed gay sex and there was no evidence that people’s attitude towards homosexuality had changed.
