South Africa is, in some ways, the exception to the generally grim situation facing the estimated 50 million-strong LGBTI community in Africa. Its progressive constitution explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. The country’s vibrant civil society includes a broad range of gay advocacy groups.
But South Africa’s stance on gay rights in Africa is opaque. Scientists from South Africa and Uganda produced research demonstrating that the rationale for repressive laws on the continent are baseless and pernicious. The study found that homosexuality is a normal sexual orientation and that criminalising it can have negative repercussions across society. In 2011, South Africa bravely led on gay rights issues by introducing a resolution to the UN Human Rights Council that called for equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation.
Yet less than three years later it was reticent about a follow on resolution calling for countries to report on LGBTI violations. Graeme Reid of Human Rights Watch described South Africa’s foreign policy on gay rights as “at best inconsistent and at worst obstructionist”. South Africa’s uncertainty on if, and how, it should promote gay rights in Africa stems from two primary sources. Read More
Swaziland: ‘No legislation against lesbianism’
While male homosexuality is criminal in Swaziland, it turns out there has never been any legislation that criminalises lesbian relationships in the country. According to annual research reports, ‘A World Survey of Laws’ compiled by the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), female same-sex relationships have always been ‘legal’ in Swaziland while male same-sex relationships have and still remain illegal, in that sodomy is a common law crime in the kingdom.
Asked yesterday on government’s position on the legality of lesbian relationships as claimed by the reports, Spokesperson Percy Simelane said; “We have made our position clear on these fictitious reports more than once before and are not going to repeat ourselves save to say that someone needs a doctor urgently”.
Last year, Simelane said the state was closely monitoring the situation with a view to take a legal position. He had said gays and lesbians were regulated by the nation’s moral obligations and biblical values, and that as soon as a legal position had been taken, government would make it public. Read More
European Parliament: Vote to address LGBTI rights
The European Parliament voted to put human rights, including of LGBTI people, at the heart of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The Parliament emphasised the “need to focus on strengthening and consolidating … respect for diversity and the rights of minorities, including … the rights of LGBTI persons.”
The ENP organises relationships between the EU and its closest Eastern and Southern neighbours*, and has a budget of more than €15 billion (2014-2020), part of which goes to civil society.
Tanja Fajon MEP, Vice-President of the Intergroup on LGBTI Rights, said: “This report recognises the need to improve the situation for LGBTI people in our neighbourhood. It gives the European Commission and all EU delegations in the ENP countries the mandate to tackle discrimination and work with civil society to change the situation for the better.” Read More
Russia: 41% of public say authorities should persecute gays to ‘exterminate the phenomenon’
Homophobia in Russia has significantly worsened in the last decade, according to a new survey by state-run pollster. The proportion of respondents who consider LGBTI people dangerous and said they should be ‘isolated from society’ grew from 12% in 2004 to 20%.
Some 22% said they didn’t care about other people’s sexual orientation – compared with 24% in 2004. Nearly half of all respondents (41%) said the authorities should persecute people with ‘untraditional sexual preferences’ in order to ‘exterminate the phenomenon,’ while only 12% agreed that the government should protect LGBTI people from discrimination.
‘It’s interesting that we are swimming against the current, strengthening, despite global trends, intolerance toward homosexual relationships. This indicator might serve as a parameter of national identification,’ said Alexei Firsov, the communications director. Read More
Russia: Top Russian official says antigay politicians pose direct threat to national security
Vice-chairman of the Federation Council constitutional legislation committee, senator Konstantin Dobrynin proposes implementing “don’t ask – don’t tell” principle towards LGBT people in Russia and calls to “immediately reduce the intensity of aggression” towards them as they do not pose a direct threat to national security, unlike antigay politicians, as Dobrynin commented the latest MP Milonov’s initiative to ban Facebook in Russia due to rainbow avatars dedicated to celebrating LGBT marriage equality in the USA.
“For Russia, it is important not to turn away from the realities of time and not to fall into the barbarian antigay fight, but to try and find some legal form that will ensure the the public balance on this subject between the conservative part of society and all the rest,” said the senator. “For a period of time the optimal formula, which in our country would be the case and work without causing aggression, could be the “don’t ask – don’t tell” formula”.
“But we need to take away from the political field and from our lives those pseudo-politicians who openly profiteer in the antigay fighting and engage in the legislative spam, the sooner we do it – the better ” concluded Dobrynin. “Because they are the ones, unlike gays, who pose a direct and clear threat to the Russia’s security and it’s them who the state needs to confront”. Read More
Look Who's Stripping for Obama in Africa
According to Vincent Kidaha, a Republican Liberty Party leader, about 5,000 people will strip naked to protest homosexuality when President Obama visits Kenya this month, making a statement against his support for marriage equality, Nairobi News reports. A bunch of guys getting naked seems like an odd way to make an anti-gay statement, doesn't it?
"We have organized a peaceful procession for Obama to understand the difference between a man and a woman in protecting African family values," says Kidaha in a video. Does this guy even know what being gay means? Watch interview now
Kenya: Leaders tell Obama to leave off LGBT issues during visit.
The White House has downplayed demands by a section of Kenyan leaders for President Barack Obama to keeps off gay talk during his impending visit. The President has used previous trips to Africa to urge governments to decriminalise homosexuality, but heads led by Deputy President William Ruto have warned him not to talk about it.
Obama is not expected to shy off any topic, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, in response to a question on the matter, during a press briefing: "I am confident that the President will not hesitate to make clear that the protection of basic universal human rights in Kenya is also a priority consistent with values we hold dear in the United States of America," he said.
Deputy President William Ruto said he was ready to defend Kenya against homosexuality. "We have heard that in the US they have allowed gay relations and other dirty things. I want to say, as a Christian leader, that we will defend our country, we will stand for our faith and our country," he said. Read More
Egypt: The untold stories of Egypt’s transgender community
Ever since realizing he had Gender Identity Disorder (GID), Bassem has been receiving professional psychiatric support, though mostly “kinda useless.” But Bassam's new treatment is “amazing!” His treatment now is indeed unique and advanced for a country like Egypt, where most psychiatric professionals are uncomfortable with dealing with transgender patients, often not even willing to acknowledge the existence of GID as a medical condition.
Even more unexpected is that this treatment is neither expensive nor private, but is free and provided by a government hospital. Moreover, it is headed by one of Egypt’s most experienced and leading psychiatrists on transgender therapy, Dr Hashem Bahary.
Dr Bahary, who has been working with transgender patients for 25 years, has been at Al-Hussein Hospital for nearly 10 years now. For almost half of his career, gender reassingment operations were prohibited in Egypt. In 2003, they were allowed only for cases of intersex. However, in 2013, in what is considered a major landmark moment for the transgender and transsexual community, the Egyptian Medical Syndicate issued a new Code of Ethics, which essentially recognised GID as a medical condition and permitted transgender patients, who could prove they have GID, to have gender reassignment surgery in Egypt. Read More
UK: The dangers of trans broken arm syndrome
Accessing healthcare is another item on the long list of things that are harder when you’re trans. Transition-related healthcare is notorious for long-waiting lists, unnecessarily strict requirements and a lack of local services. But general healthcare is fraught with difficulties too. Trans people are frequently subject to poor standards of care due to prejudice or plain ignorance. Then there’s the phenomenon known as Trans Broken Arm Syndrome. It’s when healthcare providers assume that all medical issues are a result of a person being trans. Everything – from mental health problems to, yes, broken arms.
The more a person’s trans status is blamed for a person’s unrelated health problems, the less likely they are to bring it up – even when it is relevant. J summed it up, saying: “It’s a calculated risk on our part: The 1% chance that it is relevant and you make it worse by hiding, versus the 99% chance that it’ll be used to push you out of the clinic with no diagnosis, and ending up made worse by that. I take that 1% risk every time, it’s safer. But if I didn’t have to take that risk then I wouldn’t.”
While it’s always important to be honest with healthcare providers, with attitudes as they are it is understandable than many trans people find it hard to trust staff. That will only change when workers are fully informed on trans issues. Read More
Black market for Truvada PrEP may undermine treatment adherence in marginalised people living with HIV
The increasing demand for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is likely to increase the likelihood that some marginalised individuals living with HIV interrupt their own treatment to sell some of their prescribed medication to pill brokers and drug dealers, according to a study presented to the Conference of the Association for the Social Sciences and Humanities in HIV in South Africa last week.
Dr. Steven Kurtz said that several reports have documented street markets for diverted antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the US. In his study of men who have sex with men, people who didn’t sell their drugs also reported being approached by traders. Less frequently, ARVs were sold or given to individuals who would use the pills themselves, sometimes in exchange for recreational drugs or sex.
There was little evidence that individuals purchased ARVs from the black market for self-treatment of HIV infection, but that the illicit use of Truvada for prevention purposes has been documented. Many HIV-negative people who are at high risk of HIV infection do not have health insurance, perhaps making them more likely to turn to the black market. “The potential intersection of widespread ARV street markets and misinformed at-risk populations about the effective use of PrEP is a major public health concern,” Kurtz concluded. Read More
Serbia: Fake condoms flood region
The Serbian Agency of Medicines (Agenciji za lekove) has confirmed that counterfeit condoms have flooded local markets of Belgrade and Novi Pazar. The condoms carry names from prominent manufacturers, but carry false expiration dates, serial numbers, and country of origins. In a local interview, Doctor Nevenka Dimitrijevic warned that these condoms would not provide protection against sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Read More
UK: Nobel scientist calls for HPV vaccination for boys
The UK should vaccinate all boys against the cancer-causing human papilloma virus, Professor Harald zur Hausen, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who discovered the link between HPV and cancer has said. There is now a wealth of evidence that HPV also causes cancers in men, including anal, penile and throat cancer. Professor zur Hausen added that there was now a chance to “eradicate” HPV viruses altogether if the world developed global vaccination programmes for all children.
Since 2008 the UK has offered free vaccinations against HPV to girls aged 12 to 13 – a programme that had an almost 87% uptake from 2013 to 2014 and has led to falls in the number of pre-cancerous abnormalities of the cervix, according to research. Scientists say changes in sexual behaviour – with more couples having oral and anal sex – may be the cause of increased cases of anal and throat cancers in both men and women in recent decades. Read More