The daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro says her father supports her efforts to spearhead LGBT-specific issues in the country. “He understands,” Mariela Castro told Hatzel Vela, a Havana-based reporter for the South Florida television station WPLG. “He is supportive.” Mariela Castro, who is director of Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education that is known
News

‘The sky didn’t fall in then and it won’t now’ The activists who led the push to decriminalize homosexuality in Tasmania say Australia can learn a lot from their campaign. Tasmania was the last state to decriminalize homosexuality 20 years ago today. Rodney Croome led the push to end the criminalization of gay sex and

A claim has been made that former US President Barack Obama asked the former President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan to delay an anti-gay bill. The claim was made by former Senate President David Mark, who said that Obama had asked Jonathan to delay the bill because of the US Presidential election. He had apparently asked

In order to help trans people in India a special committee has recommended education and employment quotas be introduced. The Indian government might consider creating quotas for trans people in the public service. A recommendation from a parliamentary panel reviewing a Transgender Bill was that the federal government should create the quotas. A reason the panel

On April 26th, 2017 a student of Žemaitė Gymnasium in Telšiai (Lithuania) published photos from religion class on “Facebook“ that caused an uproar on the social media. The photos display slides shown for tenth grad students as a part of religious education class. The slides contain information indicating that homosexual persons are “murderers and cannibals,
Journalists investigating the abuse of gay men in Chechnya have made a gruesome discovery. Respected newspaper Novaya Gazeta originally reported that gay men were being held in two concentration camp style prisons in the region. Reports initially centred on two jails in the villages of Argun and Tsotsi-Yurt. However journalists from the area now say

Under the initiative by the members of the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has condemned the persecution of homosexual persons by the Chechen authorities (Russian Federation) and called for ‘a special investigation’. The resolution was submitted to the Council of Europe by Emanuelis Zingeris and

On April 26th, 2017 Aurelijus Veryga, the Minister of Health of the Republic of Lithuania, met with the representatives of the National LGBT* rights organization LGL, including the members of the local trans* community, and the Human Rights Monitoring Institute (HRMI) to discuss gender reassignment legislation in Lithuania and other important healthcare issues relevant to

Last weekend, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an article reporting that over 100 people have been detained on suspicion for being gay in Chechnya, and suffered torture and humiliation. At least three men were killed. At his opening statement today, the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani MEP condemned the attacks: “I will confirm once

On March 23rd, 2017 the Government of the Republic of Lithuania placed two Lithuanian ministries, i.e. the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, under obligation to prepare legal acts that would enable gender reassignment procedure in Lithuania. However, developments regarding gender reassignment procedure in Lithuania are slow. Aurelijus Veryga, the Minister of Health

On 24 March 2017, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) issued a report entirely dedicated to the situation of LGBTI asylum seekers. ILGA-Europe welcome this report, which clearly shows that Member States need to step up their efforts to make sure that EU standards are respected and applied correctly with regard to LGBTI asylum