An international conference planned for Oct. 12-13 in Jamaica will focus on how churches have helped to impose anti-LGBT laws in the past and how they can help to eliminate them in the future. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Commonwealth
Former British colonies inch toward LGBTI rights
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
‘Advancing LGBT rights in the Commonwealth is a delicate task’
A key decision will be made in June about the campaign challenging 36 Commonwealth nations to repeal their anti-LGBT laws. Those repressive laws once applied to all the nations in the former British Empire. Continue reading
Defeated anti-gay strongman demands Gambian revote
Rabidly anti-gay Gambian strongman President Yahya Jammeh has reversed course, declaring his “total rejection” of the results of the Dec. 1 election that he lost decisively. He called for a new vote “free from foreign influence.” Continue reading
Caleb Orozco sets a valuable Caribbean precedent
Caleb Orozco struck me as nervous but determined when we first met in 2007. We were among only a handful of Caribbean civil society delegates at an Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly in Panama. In the very Latin space that is the OAS, I affectionately referred to our grouping as the “English ghetto” … Continue reading
Two LGBT activists murdered in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, two LGBT rights activists, including the editor of Roopbaan, the country’s first LGBT magazine, were hacked to death this morning in a flat in the country’s capital, Dhaka. The deceased are Roopbaan editor Xulhaz Mannan, 35, and his friend, Tonoy Mojumdar, also an LGBT rights activist. Bangladeshi LGBT rights activists expressed shock and … Continue reading
Toolkit for progress toward LGBT rights in 53 countries
The Commonwealth of 53 nations, formerly the British Commonwealth, can play a positive role in improving the lives of LGBT citizens even though dozens of those countries still have anti-LGBT laws inherited from their former colonial overlords. So say the LGBT rights advocates at London-based Kaleidoscope Trust, which this week published a “toolkit” of recommendations … Continue reading
LGBTI Africans urge Commonwealth focus on human rights
The London-based African LGBTI organization Out and Proud Diamond Group has launched a campaign to put human rights of LGBTI people on the agenda for the next summit meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth. If they succeed, that meeting in early 2018 in the United Kingdom would be the first one to address the issue. … Continue reading
Empire’s evils live on, so activist rejects Empire’s honors
What’s to be done about the continued repression of LGBTI people in Commonwealth nations that hang onto anti-homosexuality laws originally imposed by the British Empire? One answer to the question is clear to Anglo-Ghanian LGBTI rights activist Phyll Opoku-Gyimah. She has turned down the honor of being named an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent … Continue reading
39 Commonwealth nations still have anti-LGBTI laws
Among the 53 nations in the Commonwealth of countries that formerly belonged to the British Empire, the following 39 still have anti-homosexuality laws, which first were imposed by the British. Worldwide, 79+ countries have anti-homosexuality laws. The following list includes links to this blog’s coverage of them. Africa Botswana Cameroon Ghana Kenya Malawi (enforcement of … Continue reading
