Global Gaze: Asylum for Sexual Minorites

TNG Events Editor and Contributor Jolly submitted this post.

There are many benefits to being queer in America: double wardrobes, little chance of a pregnancy scares, etc. These perks are also accompanied by some drawbacks, of course, including inequality and social stigma among others.

For LGBT individuals around the world living under repressive governments and in conservative societies, however, the negative effects can include harassment, torture, imprisonment, forcible "medical treatment," and execution. So it’s not surprising that every year a number of queer individuals who have the means and opportunity to do so choose to flee their home countries and seek political asylum in countries such as the US, Canada and the UK.

A couple of weeks ago two stories were reported in the international media which were strikingly similar: two gay men in Canada and a lesbian in Britain, all three from Iran, were granted asylum by their new host countries.

While these cases are encouraging, they are also more the exception rather than rule and the result of years of work and legal maneuvering. Not sending a sexual minority back to a place where he or she may be killed may seem like a relatively straightforward decision, but there are a multitude of complex considerations which must be taken into account when making a ruling on asylum for LGBT individuals.

Asylum policies vary from country to country, but they are guided by the international legal framework for asylum and refugees, which is laid out in the United Nations’ 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. These documents define a refugee as a person who is outside their own country due to fear of persecution on protected grounds, which include race, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership and/or participation in any particular social group or social activities.While queer individuals fall into the “social group” category (we, like women, as a group, and the disabled, are considered a “social minority” for the purposes of international human rights law) it’s only been since the 90s that some countries have been reluctantly acknowledging that sexual persecution can be grounds for asylum.

So why the hesitation on the part of government officials and courts?

First, it’s notoriously hard for anyone to get asylum status in many countries. According to international standards, to qualify for asylum an individuals must: be outside his or her country of nationality; be afraid of persecution; be harmed or fear harm by the government or others; be affected by at least one of several defined conditions (as mentioned above, these conditions are: political opinion, race, religion, nationality, and social group); not be a “dangerous person.”

Even if someone meets these requirements, governments and citizens are generally wary that asylum-seekers are trying to take advantage of the system and are attempting to get around the regular immigration process. Also, states fear sending the message that they are so welcoming that foreigners will come flocking to the country in droves. A spokesman for the UK Border Agency proved this when he said of the Emambakhsh case: “We consider each case on its individual merits and, whenever someone needs our protection, we grant it. We constantly monitor the human rights situation in countries like Iran and press for an end to abuses, but we do not believe that everyone claiming to be a homosexual from Iran is in need of international protection.”

This statement also hints at the fact that to grant asylum is to make a political statement. By approving an asylum request for an LGBT individual, a country is bluntly and publicly stating that another state is oppressing its citizens, which, for obvious reasons, is a diplomatic statement which countries are sometimes hesitant to make.

There’s also the issue of changing policies in countries around the world which must be taken into consideration. When I read about these recent cases, I was immediately reminded of an article which appeared in the Washington Post last August about how fewer and fewer asylum requests were being approved for LGBT people coming from Latin America as some states’ policies are becoming increasingly liberal. This once again raises the issue which comes up whenever dealing with sexual minorities around the world and was rightly raised by a commenter in my last Global Gaze column: the potential disconnect between a country’s official policies and the situation “on the ground.” Just because official equality and non-discrimination laws exist doesn't mean they're upheld by the government or respected by the populace in a country. Researching such matters alone can be a major part of making the asylum-seeking process as drawn out as it is.

As conditions hopefully continue to improve for queer individuals around the world, this issue will perhaps become less and less relevant. But for now, it’s a topic that deserves the attention of the international LGBT community and is, quite literally, a matter of life and death for sexual minorities around the world.

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Global Gaze: Moving Towards Equality in Nepal and Sweden

TNG Events Editor Jolly submitted this piece, the second installment of the Global Gaze series.

In the United States, despite what politicians say, politics are generally designed in such a way as to make effecting real change a slow and long-term process. As many LGBT activists can tell you, the slow pace and long wait can be excruciating, demoralizing and just plain frustrating.

But in some cases, like in Nepal, change can come practically overnight. This isn’t meant to minimize the struggle of activists and everyday citizens in that country or to oversimplify the process of bringing about reform, but in November, in one fell swoop, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to both repeal existing laws which discriminated against individuals based on their sexual orientation and grant sexual minorities full and equal rights, including the right to marry, paving the way for Nepal to become one of only seven countries in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Even though the ruling was meant to pressure the government into complying with a similar ruling made months before, it all happened in a relatively small time frame given that the country had only earlier that year replaced the monarchy with a secular democracy.

And if you’re looking for an individual to join Edwin Cameron and Johanna Sigurdardottir in the international LGBT Hall of Fame, look no further than Sunil Pant, the founder of the Blue Diamond Society, a Nepalese LGBT activism group, the only openly gay member of Nepal’s parliament and a recent winner of the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award. “The court has instructed the government against making any discrimination on the basis of sex. This is a landmark decision for the sexual minorities and we welcome it,” Pant said after the ruling.

While this story is incredibly historic on its own and uniquely Nepalese in nature, it also highlights some of the universal issues which the whole international gay and lesbian community needs to address. Chief amongst these, I would argue, is that we, as LGBT individuals around the world, need to be more vocal in highlighting and celebrating our victories and, perhaps more fundamentally, acknowledging that successes like those in Nepal are in fact our triumphs as well.

I, for one, just found out about this historic ruling a few weeks ago, months after the fact. I’m not totally naïve, so I know that “small Asian country” plus “LGBT issues” does not generally equal evening news fare, but as someone who writes about obscure issues often, I’m used to going beyond the front page of headlines. And yet I heard no mention of it until recently. Now, this may just be me, and if it is totally common knowledge, then ignore this whole mini-rant, but the unscientific poll I conducted of all the queer folks I know who happened to be on g-chat at the time I was writing this revealed that none of them had heard about it either.

And I know the mainstream media can’t always be trusted to get the word out about queer stories like this, but I think there lots of room for improvement in the media targeted specifically at the LGBT community as well. Stories like this are incredibly important to bring to light because this leap towards equality is a win for sexual minorities across the globe – and that’s not just idealistic rhetoric, it’s political fact.

It’s becoming increasingly acknowledged that domestic law helps to form and develop international law, which in turn has a bearing on individual countries seeking to formulate new national policies. Pant went on to say that “the court ordered the government to form a seven member committee to formulate laws that recognize same-sex marriages in European countries, ending all types of discrimination against gays and lesbians,” which only highlights how important and interconnected we are as a global community.

Anyway, that’s enough caterwauling for now; it’s time to move on to the country that’s likely to be the eighth member of the same-sex marriage club: Sweden. The Scandinavian country presents an interesting counter-point to the way gay marriage came about in Nepal, namely that it was the result of a gradual, planned out process.

The first step was to overturn a 1987 law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman and providing for civil unions instead. This process began in 2006 when a parliamentary committee decided the law was outdated, followed by the same committee’s recommendation in 2007 that same-sex marriages should be allowed, except in churches which did not approve. Following some court challenges in 2008 and many disagreements amongst the political parties making up the majority government, the road has been paved to make same-sex marriage a reality as of May 1, 2009. I like to imagine that Sweden is kind of like my home State of New York in that its citizens secretly bristle at the fact that it loses some liberal cred by not having gay marriage while states like Massachusetts, or in this case other European countries, do. But that really has no basis in reality, so who knows.

It’s interesting to compare the processes in the two countries. Sweden’s path, while taking longer and offering more opportunities for frustration, is also better planned and is backed by the approval of 71% of the population. Plus, gays and lesbians in Sweden haven’t generally faced the same types of violence and discrimination that their compatriots in Nepal have faced in recent years, which makes the situation a little less urgent. On the other end of the spectrum is Nepal, a fairly conservative country which achieved across-the-board formal equality relatively quickly, but without a solid road map. It will be interesting and a real learning experience to watch how these two vastly different countries proceed on these issues in the coming months.

All this being said, I’m far from an expert on the minutia of either Nepalese or Swedish politics. If any readers are more familiar and want to fill in some context, please do so in the comments below. Also, do you agree about the need for more coverage of international gay progress? If so, what’s the best way to go about achieving this? How about approach: slow and steady or quick and ambiguous? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Global Gaze: Making History in South Africa and Iceland

This post was submitted by Jolly, TNG Events Editor and unofficial international affairs nerd.

With the passing of Proposition 8 and the start of a new, hopefully more LGBT-friendly, administration in the White House there has been a renewed interest and vigor in America’s movement towards full equality. And while this attention and strengthened resolve has been great for the queer community in the US, it is worthwhile to regularly turn our attention to the lives and experiences of LGBT individuals and communities throughout the world, both the remind ourselves every once and a while how good we have things here comparatively, and also to learn from the successes and failures of others throughout the international community who have already achieved those goals we’re striving for here.

With that in mind, welcome to the first of what will hopefully become a regular feature where we pause and take a moment to highlight queer stories from around the world.

And while, as with any other type of news, there are a lot of depressing stories related to international LGBT issues, we’re going to start this thing off on a positive note and highlight the achievements of Edwin Cameron in South Africa and Johanna Sigurdardottir in Iceland, both of whom are making history and breaking down barriers not only in their own countries but throughout the world.

In what turned out to be yet another example of my friends knowing me entirely too well, a buddy sent me an email last week with a link to a story in the New York Times because it reminded him of me. My interests outside of gay issues lie in international affairs in general, and all things dealing with Africa in particular. The piece in question was a profile of a South African judge named Edwin Cameron who had finally been allowed to take his place on South Africa’s highest court.

This may not sounds very newsworthy for those outside of the country, but it becomes a lot more interesting when one realizes that Cameron is an openly gay man taking on this role on a continent in which it remains more common for homosexuality to be criminalized rather than celebrated. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that, despite sub-Saharan Africa’s association in many people’s minds with the AIDS crisis, Cameron officially becomes the first openly HIV-positive African to hold such a high position.

I have been familiar with Cameron’s work for a while, as his lecture entitled “Sexual Orientation and the Constitution: A Test Case for Human Rights,” which he gave in 1992 as an argument for including a non-discrimination clause based on sexual orientation in South Africa’s new constitution, was one of the documents I built an entire graduate thesis around and lays out in some of the clearest terms I’ve ever read why sexual minorities are worthy and in need of formal protection. Reading the piece in the Times, however, introduced me to his life, which is arguably just as interesting as his words.

Cameron’s early life vaguely resembles the plot of Andre Brink’s amazing novel, A Dry White Season (check it out if you haven’t), in that he was amongst the ranks of white South Africans who crusaded against the very apartheid system from which they tacitly benefited. It was Nelson Mandela himself, in fact, who appointed Cameron to the country’s High Court in 1994. In 1999 he made another brave and unpopular decision: he announced to the panel which would be deciding on his promotion to a higher position within the courts that “I am not dying of AIDS; I am living with AIDS.” With President Mbeki, a man Cameron has publicly clashed with over his AIDS policies, now stepping down, Cameron is finally able to take his rightful place on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the highest tribunal in the country, after having his ascension repeatedly delayed. In doing so, he’s also helping to shatter a culture of silence and shame in a region in which such an act is desperately needed.

Making a similar impact on an even more global level, Johanna Sigurdardottir was appointed the interim Prime Minister of Iceland last week, as TNG's Ben previously reported, and in the process became the world’s first out-and-proud gay head of state.

It was a bizarre series of events which led to the former Social Affairs Secretary’s assumption of the position, which included two upper-level officials being diagnosed with cancer and several others flat out quitting and claiming the job was essentially too stressful and impossible. The initial catalyst, however, was the global economic crisis, which has devastated Iceland and thrown its government into disarray because the country’s prosperity is almost exclusively based on its financial sector.

While it’s unlikely that Sigurdardottir will stay on as Prime Minister after the country’s elections in May, as her party is fairly unpopular at the moment, the former Icelandair stewardess has the opportunity to really prove herself in the coming months. Regardless of how long she holds the position, she will endure forever as a symbol of progress (even if, as Wonkette suggests, “all it took for the gays to reach this special moment in history was for literally every straight person in Iceland to turn down the job”).

Her appointment, in a somewhat Obama-esque way, represents the achievement of something which was unthinkable just years ago. It's interesting to see how the international community will react to a world leader potentially making state visits with her partner and their children. If nothing else, her work will give future queer leaders an idea of what they're getting themselves into. Anyway, congratulations and good luck, Ms. Sigurdardottir – you certainly have your work set out for you, but I, for one, will be rooting for you.

Up next time: new steps towards equality in Sweden and Nepal, amongst other things. In the meantime, if there’s a topic which relates to international affairs and queer issues you’d like to see discussed, leave your suggestions in the comments section or email them to me!

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