The Commonwealth of Nations, most of them former British colonies, has granted legal recognition to an LGBTI group for the first time. Overall, the group has a poor record on LGBTI rights — of the 52 countries in the Commonwealth, 36 have laws against consensual same-sex intimacy. Continue reading
Canada has a crucial role to play in the effort to assure full recognition of the human rights of LGBTQI people, in particular for LGBTQI refugees, Jamaican-Canadian activist attorney Maurice Tomlinson told Canadian legislators this week. Continue reading
LGBTI rights activist Jason Jones has filed suit to overturn anti-gay laws in Trinidad and Tobago. Continue reading
Substantial advances for LGBT rights were achieved in 2016, amid anti-gay violence, arrests and setbacks that marred the past 12 months. Continue reading
By Khavoy Brown On Saturday, International Human Rights Day, I was at Emancipation Park in Kingston with about 28 Montego Bay “Pridesters.” We went to listen to a pastor, Scott Stirm, deliver the keynote sermon at what was billed as a Human Rights Day Rally. This annual event is put on by the anti-gay … Continue reading
Caleb Orozco, the activist in Belize who successfully challenged and overturned his country’s anti-gay law, has been selected as the 2017 winner of the David Kato Vision and Voice Award. In memory of murdered Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato, the award is presented annually to an exemplary LGBT rights activist. Continue reading
Caribbean leaders recently made it clear that there’s a long way to go before LGBTI people achieve full acceptance, as noted in UNAIDS’s Equal Eyes recap of the world’s LGBTI news. But there’s good news embedded in two of the following news items: A church leader in Grenada spoke against that country’s anti-gay law and … Continue reading
The U.N. General Assembly today rejected a plan to undo the U.N. Human Rights Council’s June decision to hire a watchdog to investigate violations of LGBTI rights. Among the countries supporting the LGBTI rapporteur were South Africa, which had earlier indicated support for the anti-LGBTI proposal; Sri Lanka and Kiribati, two countries that still … Continue reading
In Pakistan, trans activist Didar was shot. She was rushed to the hospital, and her life is out of danger. In Russia, officials shut down BlueSystem, the country’s most popular website for LGBT news and entertainment. See below for more news briefs. Continue reading
If LGBTI rights activists in the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda mount a legal challenge, the courts there would likely nullify that nation’s ban on sexual relations between men, according to Antigua’s cabinet. But the Antiguan government won’t take such action on its own. As Antigua’s Daily Observer reported: The government has said an … Continue reading
