Personer af anden seksuel orientering – kaldet LGBTI – er i søgelyset i disse år, hvor de oplever store fremskridt i deres rettigheder nogle steder, men også voldsomme tilbageslag andre steder. FN-bureauet IRIN har begået en global analyse og kører et særligt tema om emnet.
HIGHLIGHTS (feature)
* 76 countries criminalize homosexuality
* Progress at UN incremental (voksende)
* Activists should focus on violence aspect
* Mounting research exposes harsh realities
BANGKOK, 14 August 2014 (IRIN): In recent years, the world has seen enormous human rights gains with respect to sexual orientation and gender (køns) identity and expression.
However, there have also been substantial setbacks – ranging from discriminatory legislation, to impunity (straffrihed) for brutal violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) people.
“Recognizing hostilities towards them”
Charles Radcliffe, chief of the Global Issues Section at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), noted:
“Supporting LGBT rights work around the world is about recognizing that hostilities toward LGBT people are deeply ingrained in societies and that changing those mindsets and protecting these people is the duty of governments.”
Same-sex marriage is now legal in 17 countries and parts of two others; a handful of countries legally recognize gender based on self-identification alone, with ARGENTINA and NEPAL leading the way and DENMARK recently joining their ranks.
A 2014 INDIAN Supreme Court judgment in favour of transgender rights showed what one legal scholar, gesturing to NEPALI and PAKISTANI court cases, called “the possibility of developing a unique South Asian jurisprudence (retspraksis) on transgender rights.”
The India, Nepal and Pakistan cases established legally recognized third gender categories.
Highest rates of violence done to any group in the world
The AFRICAN Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in May 2014 issued a resolution on “protection against violence and other human rights violations against persons on the basis of their real or imputed sexual orientation or gender identity”.
In June the Organization of AMERICAN States passed aresolution on “human rights, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.”
But 76 countries criminalize homosexuality in some way, and virtually every country in the world retains legal provisions that impinge on (rammer) the rights of transgender people – exposing them to some of the highest rates of violence of any group of people in the world.
Intersex people are often subjected to harmful “corrective” surgeries without their consent (samtykke).
In December 2013 the INDIAN Supreme Court put the country back on the listof places where consensual same-sex behaviour is against the law.
That same month, UGANDA’s parliament passed an “Anti-Homosexuality Act” (AHA).
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) published a harrowing assessment – From Tyranny to Torment – of the law’s impact on the lives of LGBT Ugandans, includingarbitrary arrests, police abuse and extortion, loss of employment, evictions and homelessness, and LGBT people fleeing the country.
On 1 August UGANDA’s Constitutional Court struck down the AHA on procedural grounds saying the parliament had not reached quorum when it passed the act.
In early 2014, NIGERIA passed a “Same-sex Marriage Prohibition Bill,” which imposes prison sentences for people who enter into same-sex unions or aid such practices or LGBT NGOs.
Creeping measures
Activists have drawn attention to insidious (snigende) measures to curtail LGBTI people’s freedoms.
These include campaigns against RUSSIA’s repeated attempts to table a UN Human Rights Council resolution on “traditional values”, which has been called a “smokescreen to obscure and legitimise the exclusion of minority and disfranchised (udsatte) groups in society”.
In June 2013 Russia passed a law that prohibits “propaganda for nontraditional sexual relationships”.
Debates over the imposition of LGBTI rights as “Western” are widespread, and peak during flashpoint moments such as Uganda’s AHA.
One analyst pointed to the heavy influence of US-based evangelicals in the debates over sexuality in Uganda, to the tune of millions of dollars of funding.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni dismissed broad criticism of the law by Western governments as “telling a married man how to run his house”.
Another observer argued: “international action surrounding the bill seemed to have spawned… turning the legislation and its attendant homophobia into symbols of national self-determination.”
“Focus on frustrations and setbacks, always assuming the worst”
Historian Marc Epprecht, in his book “Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa”, argued:
“The rise of political and religious homophobia is just one aspect of such scapegoating often dovetailing (passer sammen med) closely with anti-feminism, blame-the-West-for-everything and other xenophobic (fremmedfjendsk) rhetoric.”
He argued: “The potential for backlash against ‘gay imperialism’ from the West is all the greater when Western media accounts and well-meaning activists and donors focus solely on frustrations and setbacks, always assume the worst, and fail to praise or appear to even notice success stories.”
Donors: Thread with care
Moves by international agencies have sparked debates over proper intervention methods to protect and promote LGBTI rights.
For example, in the wake of Uganda’s AHA, the World Bank suspended a 90 million US dollar (495 mio. DKR) loan to the country “to ensure that the development objectives would not be adversely affected by the enactment of this new law”.
Bank president Jim Kim called the law “institutionalized discrimination” and said such laws harm development.
Some criticized the announcement, arguing that it was a misguided move for a financial institution or that, because it was a maternal mortality loan, it missed its target.
Ugandan LGBTI rights activists published guidelines for engagement in the wake of the bill, including asking for aid not to be cut.
The local and the global
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/100487/lgbti-rights-still-not-there-yet
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