A hard life for gay refugees in Kenya

Source: Global Post

By Jonathan Kalan

The two tender, soft-spoken Ugandans shared a circle of good friends back in their hometown of Kampala. They were close with their families and they started a restaurant together. Life was good.

That was before everything went wrong. They were disowned by their families. Their restaurant was burned down. Their car was stoned and set ablaze.

And so they fled Uganda and came here, thousands hundreds of kilometers east with little more than the clothes on their backs. They came as brothers to live in a scorching refugee camp in northern Kenya.

Surrounded by thousands of others who have fled wars and drought in neighboring countries, they came here to save their own lives.

These two men are not rebel soldiers. They are not fleeing war or drought, and they aren’t really brothers. They are lovers, and they came here to escape what they feared would be certain death after being outed last year in a country where homosexuality is widely considered a mortal sin, as "unnatural" as it is "un-African."

Alex and his partner Michael — whose real names cannot be used because of a continued threat of violence against them — were the target of a series of violent attacks inspired, they say, by an American evangelical campaign that began in 2009, and inspired legislation that, if passed, would have made gay acts punishable by the death penalty.

“I’m not a fighter,” said Alex, a former youth and community leader back in Uganda.

He is timid, unwilling to throw his elbows against hardened Somalis and Sudanese in the food line at the camp. As a result, he now shows signs of malnourishment.

Today the men have been pushed to their limits, living as refugees far from their friends, family and allies. Although they had hoped for a better life in a new land, the camp has proven to be yet another dangerous place for the two polite young Ugandans.

“LGBT people are perhaps the most persecuted group in the world,” said Neil Grungras, founder of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM). “They are persecuted in countries of origin, but neighboring countries share similar cultural values. If you go across the border, you’re not any less likely to be persecuted.”

Read more »

Research help: LGBTI refugee detention in Greece and Mexico

Image by LiminalMike via Flickr

The George Washington University Law School International Human Rights Clinic, in collaboration with The Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration (ORAM) is researching the human rights implications of subjecting LGBTI individuals to immigration detention in Greece and Mexico.

Immigration detention inherently implicates numerous human rights norms, and the probability that LGBTI detainees will experience multiple levels of marginalization is especially acute. This project seeks to expose the unique protection gaps LGBTI detainees face in immigration detention, identify the international, regional and domestic legal obligations of the detaining States, and to make recommendations for States to better address these shortcomings that have previously not garnered any attention.

The IHRC Detention Team is seeking individuals who can share relevant experiences of detention in either Greece or Mexico for inclusion in the report we are authoring. Testimonials from migrants and refugees, including former and current detainees, would be used to give an accurate portrayal of the situation in Greece and Mexico, and to ensure appropriate representation through compelling personal stories

If you know of individuals or service providers that would be willing to assist, please contact Katerina Herodotou at kherodotou@law.gwu.edu. We are completing this project in mid-December.

Video: The invisible refugee: Intersex, persecution and protection

Advocates for Informed Choice Founder and Executive Director Anne Tamar-Mattis discusses the legal, medical and survival challenges that intersex refugees encounter in their cross-border searches for safe haven.

This lecture was delivered as part of Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration's Second Annual Lecture Series held June 24, 2011, in San Francisco, CA.

Related articles

• First Ever International Intersex Forum Held in Belgium (mask.org.za)

Video: NBC interviews gay Ugandan refugee

Source: NBC Bay Area

View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

NBC Bay Area's Brent Cannon speaks with gay Ugandan refugee Danny Dyson about his experiences in his native country and his arrival in the Bay Area.

• More about Danny's story: Video: In US, landmark Refugee Congress includes gay Ugandan

Related articles

• Gay Ugandan refugee finds home in Jewish Bay Area (qjew.wordpress.com)

Video: Protection barriers faced by LGBTI refugees

Presentation by Rachel Levitan of Oram at the 'LGBT Identities, Governance, and Asylum' session at the 13th conference of the International Association for Studies in Forced Migration (IASFM) held in Kampala, Uganda, July 3-6.

Related articles

• Video: In Uganda, the impact of discriminatory legislation on LGBT human rights defenders (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Conference hears how Uganda is generating LGBT refugees (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Video: In US, landmark Refugee Congress includes gay Ugandan (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Video: In US, landmark Refugee Congress includes gay Ugandan

Dyson

By Paul Canning

Refugees from the past six decades, including  Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek and Dyson, a gay Ugandan, gathered in Washington DC August 3/4 to discuss the challenges that refugees face around the world and to lobby Congress.

60 current or former refugees and asylum-seekers were chosen to participate in the Congress, the first to be held in the United States. It was organised by UNHCR to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention.

Gay Ugandan refugee Dyson was selected and traveled from San Francisco, California. Dyson and a representative from Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) – an NGO that assists lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees and helped resettle Dyson in California – met with staffers in the offices of California Senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Dyson shared his own personal experiences as a gay refugee and told the staff members about his experiences facing persecution in Uganda, his time in a refugee camp in Kenya, and his integration and resettlement in America. According to ORAM, the staffers stressed their concerns about the situation for LGBTI people in Uganda, and their commitment to applying pressure on the Ugandan government to end persecution.

Dyson asked the representatives to continue their ongoing support on refugee issues, as well as continuing American support for UNHCR’s work.

Wrote Marcel Reynolds, ORAM Communications and Outreach Officer:

"Dyson was thrilled about his visit to the Capitol and said he never could have imagined that he would have ever ended up there."

Lilli Tnaib from UNHCR in Washington DC, said that Dyson fled Uganda following heavy persecution and was accepted as a refugee in California in March 2011. Today, he leads a full life as an employee of an LGBT organisation, a group that advocates for rights in the workplace. He is also a gospel singer.

"In 2009, when a strong anti-gay movement swept through Uganda," she says. "Dyson found himself defamed by the press media, due to his sexual orientation. To fight the harrassment, he decided to advocate for a stop to the violence and threats aimed at homosexual individuals."

"He approached radio talk shows as a medium from which he could address the issue. There are no gay rights in Uganda and on the way home from a live broadcast interview that was hosted by an anti-gay minister, he was kidnapped at gunpoint, told that he was a rebel fighting the government, and was beaten, stripped, and raped. Afraid to eat the food he was given because of fear of being poisoned while held captive, he became sick and contracted malaria."

"After days of torture, one of the soldiers recognized Dyson from his life as a gospel singer. The soldier helped him to escape. He fled to a UN refugee camp in Kenya but had to leave when other refugees threatened him because of his sexuality. After leaving the camp, he found UNHCR in Nairobi, and eventually found safety as a refugee living in the U.S."

Dyson was the first participant in ORAM’s San Francisco Bay Area Pilot Resettlement Program, a first-of-its-kind initiative partnering with the LGBTI community to help newly-arrived LGBTI refugees construct their lives anew and integrate into American society.

Dyson, says Reynolds, "hopes to continue sharing his story to raise awareness of the needs of other LGBTI refugees."

UNHCR in 2008 issued a first “Guidance Note on Refugee Claims relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,” which will be updated this year. NGOs have been working with UNHCR since June 2009 on plans for protections for LGBT refugees.Work is planned with national asylum systems to adopt the guidelines. This will be tied to training for Refugee Status Determination, again with outreach to nations to take part.

Another aspect is ensuring safe environments for LGBT refugees in countries of asylum, including camps and urban settings. There's much more included a wealth of research and reporting planned work. In April Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's representative in the United States, told a Washington DC conference that protections for LGBT refugees needed to be "stepped up."

Concerns over weakening American support for refugees led Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to introduce in March the Refugee Protection Act of 2011. The bill would repair some of the most severe problems in the American asylum and refugee systems and strengthen its commitment to providing refuge to victims of religious, political, ethnic, and other forms of persecution.

Video: Dyson tells his story whilst still in Kenya:

Read more »

In Turkey, improvement documented in LGBT refugee processing

Source: ORAM

Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM), a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps refugees fleeing sexual and gender-based violence worldwide, issued a new report showing significant progress in how the UN Refugee Agency treats lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) refugees in Turkey, and urging the government of Turkey to curb the increasing anti-LGBTI violence there.

"Unsafe Haven" is co-authored with Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly – Turkey, the country’s leading refugee advocates. The report draws on in-depth interviews with 108 LGBTI refugees, most from Iran, who fled to Turkey for safety after being persecuted in their home countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

An update on a 2009 report by the same name, "Unsafe Haven" shows how ORAM’s groundbreaking work with partner organizations, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey, has led to dramatic improvements in the treatment of LGBTI persons in the refugee system – most notably by reducing their wait times for legal status and resettlement to the U.S. and other safe countries. At the same time, the report depicts an increased environment of hostility toward sexual minorities – including 45 murders last year alone – and urges Turkey to do more to protect them.

“LGBTI refugees are already among the most vulnerable asylum seekers in Turkey. Amidst increasing threats and violence against LGBTI people, we see a beacon of hope in the steps local and international organizations are taking to protect this population. However, much more needs to be done,” said Neil Grungras, Executive Director of ORAM.

Among its key recommendations, the report urges the Turkish government, civil society and the international community to take action to:

• Enact legislation protecting LGBTI people from hate crimes and discrimination;
• Treat LGBTI refugees with sensitivity and respect; and
• Increase resettlement of LGBTI refugees to safe countries.

Unsafe Haven

Read more »

American Persian organisation donates to aid Iranian gay refugees

Image by Joe Dsilva via Flickr

The PARSA Community Foundation, an American based Persian community foundation, has made a major grant donation to aid LGBTI Iranian refugees.

PARSA has given a $100,000 grant to the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM) to help in three key areas over the next two years:

• Legal representation in Turkey, 
• direct and emergency assistance in Turkey, and 
• resettlement in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Through this program the Iranian LGBTI asylum seekers in Turkey will receive counseling and legal representation. Individuals with exceptional and urgent needs awaiting adjudication will receive clothing, utilities, food, and medical care. The SF Bay Area pilot resettlement program will provide language and vocational training, housing and carrier assistance, community orientation, and trauma counseling. ORAM publishes reports on the issues LGBTI asylum seeker have to deal with in order to raise awareness and build long term programs.

PARSA say:

"[We] recognizes the urgent humanitarian issues that Iranian LGBTI community members who seek refugee and asylum status have to deal with. Due to cultural, religious, and government sensitivities many members of this minority group travel to Turkey and have to live under very hard conditions while trying to immigrate to another part of the world. ORAM has been helping Iranian LGBTI refugees both in Turkey and in the US. They deal with many different issues, from assistance for food, housing, and emergency medical care, to legal representation and resettlement process."

Related articles

• Request for contacts: LGBTI resettlement programme (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Intersex refugees not included in any nation's LGBT refugee policy (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Iranian activists: evidence needed on bad treatment of refugees returned to Tehran (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

UNHCR official calls for 'step up' on protection for LGBT refugees

Vincent Cochetel

Source: UNHCR

By Dasha Smith

A senior UNHCR official has called for stepped up efforts to protect the thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers persecuted every year for their sexual orientation and gender identity.

"We, along with the rest of the international community, must renew efforts to protect this vulnerable group," said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's representative in the United States, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees and asylum-seekers in countries of first asylum and resettlement countries.

Cochetel, addressing a Washington conference organized by the US-based Human Rights First organization, added that their lack of resources and access to safety must be a concern for everyone.

The recent three-day meeting brought together civil society groups, US government officials and UNHCR staff to discuss protection issues, best practices and the challenges faced by this vulnerable group of forcibly displaced people.

They heard about specific cases of abuse, including the story of a young Somali asylum-seeker who was kidnapped in Kenya and repeatedly raped. When the man finally managed to escape, he resorted to commercial sex work just to keep alive. His case was put forward as an example of where protection systems were failing to help people being persecuted due to sexual orientation and gender identity.

East Africa is one of many regions where homosexual conduct is condemned and criminalized – sometimes resulting in the death penalty. Many refugees are deprived of employment and housing, isolated from the rest of the community and in dire need of assistance.

Delegates heard that 75 countries in the world criminalize consensual same-sex relations, including the death penalty in seven of them. But in many other countries, prejudice against homosexuals is deeply entrenched and can lead to persecution and abuse.

Read more »

Request for contacts: LGBTI resettlement programme

The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) is launching its resettlement programme for refugees fleeing persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The aim is to create supported resettlement environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) refugees.

The pilot resettlement site is San Francisco, but ORAM is also working with ‘groups of five’ sponsorship groups in Canada. ORAM is eager to immediately make this programme available to as many refugees as possible.

Readers are encouraged to contact Rachel Levitan if they know of refugees who would qualify and could benefit from this ground‐breaking program. The email should include a half‐page profile outlining the person’s gender, age, education, employment history, languages, reasons for fleeing country of origin and particular vulnerabilities. Partner groups are ready for an immediate referral.

Related articles

• First Pilot Resettlement Program for LGBT Refugees in San Francisco - Seeks Accomodation for Ugandan (lezgetreal.com)
• Czechs asked again to end 'phallometric testing' of gay asylum seekers (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Czechs asked again to end 'phallometric testing' of gay asylum seekers

Source: ORAM 

The Organisation for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) has sent a letter to the Czech Minister of the Interior, Hon Radek John, demanding that the Czech Republic definitively end its practice of phallometric testing.  The letter was co-signed by two Czech asylum organizations, the Association for Integration and Migration (Sdružení pro integraci a migraci) and the OPU (Organizace pro pomoc uprchlíkům) and is attached to ORAM's extensive report on the practice.

The Czech government responded to criticism of the procedure by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency in December, but stated it will continue making the test available to those who request it. ORAM and the Czech organisations fear that those who decline to request the test could be denied refugee protection, and that desperate asylum seekers will “opt” for the procedure in the attempt to avoid being deported to countries where they fear persecution.

The letter asks that the Czech government abolish the practice altogether and explore alternatives to ascertaining sexual orientation such as sensitive interviewing techniques. ORAM has worked with UNHCR on developing such techniques and the letter offers the Czechs, the only government known to use phallometric testing, the benefit of their experience.

Related articles

• Czechs respond to criticism of 'phallometric testing' of gay asylum seekers (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Czechs 'phallometric testing' of gay asylum seekers, the madness continues (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Czech 'arousal test' under fire (bbc.co.uk)

An overview of LGBT asylum in America

Image by Markus Merz via Flickr

Source: Edge Boston

By Joseph Erbentraut

While our own country’s LGBT movement has remained fixated on issues of open military service and marriage equality in the last few years, it is not difficult to understand why, to LGBT people in so many other parts of the world, the United States represents an almost inconceivably accepting alternative to their experiences of discrimination, violence and persecution in their home countries.

In Uganda, LGBT people have been outed in local press and face the threat of a pending anti-homosexuality law that criminalize open queer identity - or "aggravated homosexuality," as the proposed law calls it. In Turkey, an LGBT group was ordered to be shut down by a criminal court under reportedly false claims that one member was engaging in prostitution -- at least three other gay groups in that country have fought similar legal battles in recent years. A 32-year-old Malaysian gay man received death threats and fears for his life after making pro-LGBT comments in a YouTube video. In Lithuania, lawmakers there are working to push legislation that would make the publicly promoting homosexual relations" illegal.

Recently reports emerged from Iran that two young men - aged 20 and 21 - who had filmed themselves having sex on a mobile phone were scheduled to be stoned to death after government agents discovered the film. The purpose of the killing, according to early reports is "to instill fear in the people of Iran."

Tip of the iceberg

Read more »

Call for help for LGBT refugees in San Francisco

Image by wallyg via Flickr  

Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) is beginning a resettlement program helping LGBTI refugees start a new life in the San Francisco Bay Area and are calling for volunteers to help.

The aim of the resettlement program is to offer these refugees a new life in San Francisco and to assist them through the first challenging months, enabling them to thrive in their newly adopted home. Refugees resettled to the U.S. are entitled to work, and therefore a crucial part of the program is to find them employment and affordable housing.

They say:

We have our first refugee arriving in a few weeks and we especially need help finding suitable low-cost accommodation. Please email us at info@oraminternational.org if you think you might be able to help.

Czech response to criticism of bizarre test of gay asylum seekers "not good enough"

By Paul Canning

The Czech Republic has been criticised over their response to international outrage at their use of a so-called 'gay test' on gay asylum seekers. Called 'phallometric testing', gay men - and according to De Spiegel at least one lesbian - are shown pornography and a machine is used to supposedly 'prove' whether of not they are gay.

Updated to add: Prague Post quotes Vladimír Řepka, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, saying that tests were only applied to applicants who had "weak to zero credibility of testimony" and who were from countries that "severely punished" homosexuality up to and including the death penalty, citing Iran, Syria, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Cameroon and Nigeria, among others.

This website first broke the news about the test six days ago after it was cited in a report by a European Union human rights agency. Since then the story has gone 'viral' and been featured by media around the world.

The Czechs have said they will continue making the procedure available to those who request it. The LGBTI refugee agency ORAM (Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration) says that, in fact, those who decline to request the test will continue to be denied refugee protection, and that desperate asylum seekers will “opt” for the bizarre and scientifically invalid procedure in an attempt to avoid being removed to countries where they face persecution - countries such as Iran from where the asylum seeker fled whose subsequent deportation hearing in Germany resulted in the test becoming public knowledge.

Oram says that the practice is reported to have also been used in Slovakia.Coverage of the test's history has shown its source was the former Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, where it was used to 'cure' gay men.

ORAM has published today a groundbreaking report that demolishes claims that  plethysmography aka phallometry is reliable in any situation.

As we reported earlier it is used in Canada and the United States on paedophiles and other sex offenders. The report examines legal, psychiatric, and medical studies which show that it has inconsistent results that arise from uncontrolled variables in the application of the method. These uncontrolled variables include:

• the ability of subjects to willfully generate physical responses to the visual stimuli presented in testing and
• the lack of standardization for images used as visual stimuli that fail to account for cultural differences among testing subjects.

Oram says that any refugee claims that were denied because of either the results of plethysmographic testing or the refusal by applicants to submit to the testing must immediately be re-opened and re-examined.

They say that there is an urgent needed for "sophisticated procedures and guidelines" to help asylum decision-makers accurately evaluate the credibility of individuals claiming to be gay, lesbian or bisexual. "Resources must be allocated to the development and application of humane and reliable questioning and interviewing techniques, and to the thorough training of adjudicators in these techniques," they say.

Neil Grungras, Executive Director of ORAM said:

“Phallometry is an outdated practice based on deeply prejudicial and simplistic beliefs.  In addition to being unreliable, the test is invasive and humiliating.  There is incontrovertible scientific evidence that people do not respond uniformly to the kinds of stimulation provided in phallometry.  And from our work with our clients, we know that refugees are often so traumatized from the experiences that caused them to flee and seek asylum in the first place that they are unlikely to react in a ‘predictable’ way to any kind of testing.  This is all the more so because so many gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees have been sexually abused throughout their lives.

“The practice of phallometry must stop immediately.  It is not good enough for Czech government to simply say it will end its compulsory use but will let it remain available.  Asylum seekers are extremely vulnerable and desperate, and may feel obliged to request this degrading exam it in order to prove their claim. Only applicants who claim to be gay are targeted for this physically invasive examination.  Other asylum applicants in the Czech Republic are simply interviewed to ascertain the veracity of their claims.  Our report has demonstrated that phallometry is completely unreliable.   There is no point in having it available at all.

“Sophisticated procedures, including sensitive interviewing techniques and training for interviewers, need to be developed and implemented as soon as possible to ensure that those who need protection from persecution based on their sexual orientation are able to access safety without fear of abuse and humiliation by those charged with protecting them.”

• Sign a petition at change.org

Testing Sexual Orientation: A Scientific and Legal Analysis of Plethysmography in Asylum and Refugee Status...

Happy birthday UNHCR

Image via Wikipedia

The head of the UN refugee agency, António Guterres, marked the 60th anniversary 14 December of the organization he heads by appealing for strengthened global impetus in tackling the world's new and fast-evolving displacement and statelessness problems. UNHCR staff members in the organization's Geneva headquarters and offices around the world held special birthday parties to mark the milestone.

Speaking at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, Guterres warned of multiple new factors that are causing displacement. He said many of these did not exist at the time of UNHCR's founding or when the major international refugee and statelessness conventions were created.

"UNHCR traditionally was supporting refugees, people that would cross a border because of a conflict or persecution," he said. "But now we see that more and more people are crossing borders because of extreme poverty, because of the impact of climate change, [and] because of their interrelation with conflict. So there are new patterns of forced displacement and the international community needs to be able to tackle those challenges."

UNHCR was created on December 14, 1950 by the UN General Assembly. Its original purpose was to address the post-World War II refugee situation in Europe, but its work quickly expanded. By 1956 it was facing its first major international emergency with the outpouring of refugees when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution.

In the 1960s, the decolonization of Africa produced the first of that continent's numerous refugee crises needing UNHCR intervention. Over the following two decades, UNHCR had to help with displacement crises in Asia and Latin America. Today it deals with major displacement situations around the world. The global population of refugees, internally displaced people and asylum-seekers stands at 43 million people – most of them under UNHCR's duty of care.

Guterres pointed to major displacement from Somalia and Afghanistan as examples of 21st Century refugee problems that extend across multiple borders and require new and globalized approaches to finding solutions. He also highlighted the phenomenon of statelessness as requiring particular attention.

Read more »

Video: USA reintroduces sexual orientation to UN anti-violence resolution

Video of the UN special event 'Ending violence and criminal sanctions on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity', 10 December 2010. Includes powerful remarks by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.

By Paul Canning

The United States has reintroduced an amendment at the UN General Assembly reinstating a reference to sexual orientation as a suspect motive for extrajudicial killings. The reference, which had previously been included in a list of suspect motives for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions specifically condemned by the resolution, was removed by a UN vote last month. If passed, the amendment will make clear that the international community does not condone extrajudicial killing based on sexual orientation.

Neil Grungras, Executive Director of ORAM (Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration) said:

“We are gratified that the US government heard the international outcry over last month’s vote and is taking a stand against the extermination of LGBTs worldwide.  At a time when oppression, hatred and scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is mushrooming, it is more important than ever that LGBTs receive all the support possible from enlightened nations.  In another positive development, we are also very pleased that this week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees expressed the agency’s commitment to protect those who are forced to flee due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“As we celebrate International Human Rights Day we are given renewed hope that all people – including LGBTs – will one day be able to live free from fear and safe from harm.”

The American announcement was made at a side event at the United Nations yesterday. Present were UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon; Permanent Representative of the US to the UN, Susan Rice; Assistant Secretary-General, Ivan Šimonović, and three panelists from civil society. The event was hosted by the Permanent Missions of Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, France, Gabon, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, The United States of America and the Delegation of the European Union and co-organized with International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), which recently received observer status at the UN, as well as other international LGBT human rights organizations.

Rice said she was "incensed" by the recent vote in a General Assembly committee that left out any mention of sexual orientation from a resolution condemning the extrajudicial killing of vulnerable people worldwide. Previous resolutions had included the mention.

The American ambassador said that the United States will sponsor a UN amendment to restore the reference to killings based on sexual orientation. "We're going to stand firm on this basic principle," she said.

Rights groups welcomed Rice's announcement, and called on all U.N. member states to support the amendment.

"Words do have a meaning at the U.N.," said Boris Dittrich of Human Rights Watch. "Reintroducing the reference to sexual orientation in the resolution could help put an end to the hateful killing of people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity."

Other statements presented at the UN Side Event (all PDF):

• UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
• Mr. Ivan Šimonović, Assistant Secretary-General, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
• Linda Baumann, (Namibia) Interim Director of Out-Right Namibia
• Buse Kilickaya, (Turkey) Founder of Pembe Hayat (Pink Life) (Read by Justus Eisfeld at the event)
• Vidyaratha Kissoon, (Guyana) Founding member of the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD)

ILGA conference: LGBT asylum workshop report

Source: Equality Network

These notes on the workshops Jane Carnall attended at the ILGA-Europe conference are as accurate as she could make them but absolute accuracy is not guaranteed: if anyone feels misrepresented or misreported, contact janeATequality-network.org and updates/corrections will be made.

Lunch was a brisk and busy affair - the food was better than the Bel Air hotel's grasp of queuing theory. (Two buffets, side by side, and 250 delegates all trying to eat at once.) But I had an interesting conversation with a delegate who was to speak at a workshop on Saturday about Islam and sexual minorities - he had also picked up on the rather one-way comment about "Muslim youths and gay youths" in the morning's plenary session, not quite right for the theme of the conference "challenging our prejudices".

After lunch I went on to the 2:30 panel, one of the smaller workshops on the Mezzanine floor, LGBT Asylum Seekers in Europe: improving decision-making standards.

Four speakers, three organisations: the first was Neil Grungras, ORAM (Organisation for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration), the first migration organisation focusing exclusively on refugees fleeing sexual and gender-based violence world-wide. ORAM is based in the US (San Francisco).

Grungras spoke about how many of the difficulties such refugees face are based on the way basic processes about asylum seekers are framed to assume you are heterosexual and your gender identity is cis.

• Forms that asylum seekers have to fill in ask if they are male or female, if they are married, if they have a family: there is nowhere on the forms to come out. 
• That training of the interviewers for asylum seekers does not include training on LGBT issues. 
• The European Court of Human Rights has a good policy but the policy is not disseminated to people in the field.
• The interviewers and adjudicators are not encouraged to reach out to people seeking asylum and encourage them to feel safe about coming out - and if they do come out, the questions intended to "prove" that this person is gay tend to be about sex acts, and humiliate the applicant.

Grungras pointed out that we as an LGBTI community do not want people to tell us where we fit into, what boxes we fit in, but this is what the asylum process is designed to do - to find out what box the applicant can be fitted into, what boxes the adjudicator can tick. He said that often interviewers come from the same homophobic background which the asylum seeker is fleeing - that even without intending to be abusive, interviewers use abusive or insulting language to applicants very often - example, a gay man from Iran was asked by an interviewer, for how long had he been a male prostitute? - because the interviewer knew of no other word to describe a male homosexual.

Read more »

What are the hurdles for LGBT asylum seekers in the United States?

Source: Bay Area Reporter

By Matthew S. Bajko

LGBT immigrants in the United States face many hurdles to seeing their applications for asylum be granted. The first of which is a ticking clock.

Under U.S. immigration law, a person seeking asylum has one year from the first day they step foot on American soil to file their paperwork. The deadline presents quite an obstacle for many LGBT people, who either are unaware of the time limit or often have yet to grapple with or come to terms with their own sexual orientation or gender identity.

Even if an asylum seeker does get their paperwork in on time, then they face another series of challenges. Foremost is proving that they are indeed gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, and if sent back to their home country, that they are likely to face persecution for being an LGBT person.

Many lack the resources to hire an immigration lawyer to represent and guide them through the process. And language barriers can further complicate matters.

At a time when LGBT Americans remain second-class citizens and continue to fight for their own rights from local, state, and federal governments, the issue of LGBT immigration to the U.S. is often overlooked.
But advocates and lawyers who handle immigration cases say the issue will only grow as more people around the world come out and flee anti-gay persecution.

"There is a lot of work out there," said Ann Lewis, an attorney in the New York office of Ropes and Gray, which was the recipient of the 2010 Safe Haven Award from Immigration Equality for its pro bono work assisting LGBT asylum seekers.

Read more »

New NGO aims to protect LGBT refugees

Source: Bay Area Reporter
By Matthew S. Bajko
A little known agency founded two years ago in San Francisco is helping to shine a spotlight on the plight of LGBT refugees around the globe who are fleeing persecution in their home countries.
The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, called ORAM for short, is the brainchild of Neil Grungras, an openly gay lawyer who specializes in immigration and refuge law whose career has included stints with the State Department and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Since founding ORAM in 2008, Grungras has devoted himself full time to growing the nonprofit. He oversees its program in Turkey for LGBT Iranians seeking to immigrate to Western countries and lobbies United Nations officials in Geneva about the needs of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees from around the globe.

"No one had touched on the issues of LGBT refugees, period, from a legal perspective. No one had confronted the reason why the international system does not protect LGBT refugees," said Grungras when asked why he started ORAM in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter .

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Audio: Interview with Neil Grungras, ORAM International

Interview with Neil Grungras – Founder, Executive Director Organisation for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) International - by Terry Le Grand on 'The Alternative', LATALK Radio, Sunday, August 15.

Neil talks about Oram's work in the Middle East, the situation of LGBT refugees in Israel and South Africa as well as about his organisation.

Part one

Part two