How to enlist World Bank in fight for gay rights

Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran. He is the…

Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Human rights activists are pushing the World Bank to use its clout to fight discrimination against LGBT people as a way to combat the poverty caused by anti-gay stigmatization.

One opportunity for turning the World Bank’s focus onto this issue will come on Friday, when the general public is invited to submit questions about world poverty to bank President Jim Yong Kim.

Kim, the Korean-American former president of Dartmouth College, will discuss poverty with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from 11 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (15:00-16:10 GMT). People are invited to submit questions via Twitter, using the hashtag #ittakes; via a live online chat; or through comments on the Global Voices on Poverty Web page. The discussion will be webcast live through that site.

Another opportunity for discussing the impact of anti-gay discrimination will come today, when a group of activists from the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation are scheduled to meet with World Bank officials about the problems that LGBT people face in health care and development in 76-plus countries where homosexuality is illegal.

That gathering follows up on a meeting last summer at which World Bank officials and activists from Africa and Asia discussed how the bank could prevent its aid recipients from discriminating against LGBT people in developing countries.