human rights watch launch lgbt programme

July 15, 2004: Human Rights Watch have announced the launch of an international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender programme which will be headed by long-term activist Scott Long.

In a message circulated widely to activists in the field Scott Long introduced the new programme of Human Rights Watch admitting that the announcement is a "belated one."

Human Rights Watch is one of the largest and best-known human rights organisations in the world. They carry out timely and accurate investigations, offer informed policy recommendations, and generate intense pressure to confront human rights abusers and defend basic freedoms. Through vigilant monitoring, reporting, and advocacy, Human Rights Watch has advanced essential human rights protections in over ninety countries for twenty-five years.

The announcement states that the belatedness is "Due to the intensity of the work we've been engaged in since its start," said Long. "The first day of the program, March 1, 2004 saw me in Cairo, accompanied by Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, to release our report on Egypt's persecution of men suspected of having sex with men. "In A Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt's Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct" detailed for the first time the full scope and sweep of a massive campaign of repression. Since then, we have intensively lobbied Egypt's government, as well as European and U.S. officials, to end the arrests."

(A copy of the report is available at http://hrw.org/reports/2004/egypt0304/)

"In March and April, we spent six weeks in Geneva, during the annual session of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights," Long's statement continues. "Together with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), we assisted over a dozen grassroots activists to attend the session, and meet and lobby government delegates. The activists spoke out at panels and on the floor of the Commission itself about abuses based on sexual orientation and gender
identity. They met with U.N. officials and networked with other non-governmental
organisations. As a result, we saw unprecedented recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues at the U.N.'s most important human rights forum. The voices and visions of campaigners for sexual autonomy gained unprecedented attention. And many governments had to take unprecedented heed of people whose inherent dignity they steadily attack while, ironically, denying their very existence.

"These committed, courageous activists sent a message to those who wield power: sexual rights matter.

"These projects have set a demanding precedent for this program's future work."

The statement promises to continue with detailed reporting about human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. "We will show their seriousness; the conditions that allow them to occur; and the changes needed to end them."

One of the most important functions of the programme will be to support grass roots activists in their situations and struggles.

Although the programme is global two of Human Rights Watch's more recent studies have been conducted in Africa. "Together with IGLHRC, we have documented the effects of state-sponsored homophobic rhetoric on people's lives in southern Africa," states Long; this in addition to the Egypt study mentioned above.

In conclusion Long emphasised, "I have been a human rights activist for almost a decade and a half. For much of that time I worked, like many of you, at the grassroots level. In launching this program at Human Rights Watch, I commit us to continue to think locally as well as globally. Yet I also hope the credibility this organisation has amassed over a quarter-century of advocacy can be used to advance a simple principle: that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's rights are not "special" or trivial, but basic to universal rights protections. Sexual rights are not a privilege, nor the property of a minority. They are everyone's birthright and everyone's concern. The man who faces arrest and torture in Egypt because he fell in love with a man; the lesbian in South Africa whose family believes that rape will "cure" her; the transgender woman in the United States harassed and brutalized on the street - these people share, despite their differences of geography and detail, a common cause with the woman confronting a sentence of death for adultery in Nigeria; with the mother ostracized and shunned by her village community in Jamaica because she contracted HIV/AIDS from a sexual partner; and with the woman in Pakistan whose parents can take her life with impunity, because her behaviour supposedly strikes at the family's "honour" and her safety is unprotected by the state. All these people endure abuse, and are denied their basic rights, because they have claimed their sexual and physical autonomy in ways the state condemns and society fears. We must stand together in asserting that our bodies are our own, that our pleasures like our pains are part of us, that our privacy and integrity and dignity cannot be bargained away."