joan_psmith | Urgency Required - Putting LGBT Rights in a Worldwide Context (Reply)

First published at eurOut.

Hivos publishes Urgency Required, a report about LGBT rights in the context of human rights.

Hivos, which is short for Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingsamenwerking (Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation), is a Dutch NGO, dedicated to the empowerment of poor and marginalised peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Urgency Required. Gay and Lesbian Rights are Human Rights analyses the legal and political situation in different countries around the globe. Personal accounts from people living in those countries add Two chapters take a closer look at significant developments in the history LGBT and human rights politics like the Montreal Declaration of Human LGBT Rights and the Yogyakarta Principles, and theoretical discussion of terminology and concepts isn't neglected either.
Urgency Required is certainly worth a read for anyone interested in LGBT politics.

Even though the main focus of this book is on Africa, Asia and Latin America, there are also chapters discussing the current situation in the Netherlands, UK, various eastern European countries and the USA. I will try to give a short preview of the chapters that deal with issues relating to present day Europe.

The current situation in the Netherlands is discussed in context with muslim integration. Rob Tielman compares islam, christianity and humanism and examines whether the often cited contradiction between gay liberation and islamic liberation in the Netherlands is really a contradiction at all.

Hostility towards homosexuality is greatest in people and (sub) cultures that are largely confronted with homosexual behaviour that is not a matter of mutual consent (involving rape, for example) and is in every case unspeakable.
Rob Tielman (p.34)

Tielman argues that, "although it is labelled as islamic, hostility towards homosexuality is often not islamic at all; in reality it could include cultural traditions that might have a western colonial background." The negative attitude of adolescents from gay-hostile cultures is intensified by the confusing way schools deal with LGBT issues.

Eastern Europe and EU neighbours - One chapter (pp.273-279) examines which mechanisms the EU can employ to further LGBT rights in neighbouring countries. Gaining eligibility to join the EU is discussed as a main motivator for countries to amend their laws to satisfy human rights in regards to LGBT people.

In most Eastern European countries same-sex acts were decriminalized only recently. Under the pressure of the Council of Europe they were decriminalized in Serbia between 1990- 1994 and in Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia between 1995-1999. Of these countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia went on to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, but they did so under pressure from the European institutions.

The EU proposed the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which offers concrete incentives to new democracies in exchange for reforms. However, sexual minorities are not always explicitly mentioned in those Action Plans and are thus easily overlooked.
The authors of this chapter emphasize that social and legal changes in new member states, or neighbouring countries who wish to join, wouldn't take place without pressure from the EU. Many governments see adopting anti discrimination laws as an unfortunate sacrifice for gaining those benefits associated with accession to the EU.

That legal progress made in that way doesn't immediately lead to a better climate for LGBT people in this country is illustrated by the example of Poland (pp.280-283). The struggle for accession to the EU led to a contrary reaction.

'In the eyes of these patriots, Brussels and its "love" for gays stands for decadency and moral decay that can "contaminate" catholic Poles or Romanians. I don't think it is a coincidence that the gay march in Warsaw in 2004 was attacked for the first time a few days after the accession to the European Union, even though this march, with hundreds of participants, had been organised unnoticed every year since 1994.' Tomász Kitlinski (p.282).

Migration plays a huge part in present day life and as a consequence so do binational couples. LGBT people in a binational relationship face the added difficulty of vastly varying laws concerning the official recognition of same-sex partners. Even inside the EU there's a broad spectrum of how the local laws treat LGBT issues. Laws regarding same-sex partnerships range from legally recognized same-sex marriage to no legal recognition of same-sex partnerships at all. The chapter "United by Love, Exiled by Law: Immigration and Same-Sex Couples" (pp.256-263) brings examples of which complications same-sex couples from different countries might have to face and briefly compares select immigration laws illustrated by example cases.

Urgency Required is available as a free download: