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Greetings!
We've been busy this summer promoting a U.S. foreign policy inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity. I hope you'll read more about our work and join us in promoting global equality today.
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Council's Senior Advisor to Lead U.S. Delegation to International Human
Rights Conference
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| photo: Lage Carlson  | The State Department has asked Michael Guest, a Senior Advisor to the Council, to lead the U.S. delegation to an upcoming human rights review conference to be held in Poland. The conference, to be held September 30-October 8 in Warsaw, will review the degree to which the 56 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which embraces all of North America and Europe, are implementing their international human rights commitments. The Warsaw meeting is the first step in preparations for a Summit-level OSCE meeting in Kazakhstan later this year.
During his previous 26-year State Department career, Ambassador Guest worked directly on OSCE policy, as well as on broader human rights policy concerns. He retired in December 2007, in protest of State Department regulations that discriminated against gay and lesbian Foreign Service personnel. His career displays a record of commitment to the ideals that underlay the creation of the OSCE. We salute the State Department for tapping him to lead efforts in Warsaw to reaffirm the transatlantic community's commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms.
This is the first time that the United States has named an openly gay individual to serve on its official delegation to an OSCE conference. Of note, the United States delegation to a related OSCE human rights conference last year raised, for the first time, concerns over violence directed against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender minorities in many states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This issue is expected to be a feature of the Warsaw discussions, along with other U.S. concerns about challenges to journalist protections, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association.
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"Thank You for Being a Part of History's Great Moments"
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To honor LGBT Pride month in June, Secretary Clinton delivered a speech to a packed auditorium in the State Department, where she highlighted the State Department's ongoing commitment to LGBT rights and emphatically declared that "just as I was very proud to say the obvious more than 15 years ago in Beijing that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, well, let me say today that human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights, once and for all." In the speech, Secretary Clinton also made a number of policy announcements, all of which the Council worked on in partnership with the State Department.
Secretary Clinton noted the addition of gender identity to the State Department's equal opportunity employment statement. She emphasized that she had recently issued directives to all regional bureaus to expand their work on LGBT-related human rights concerns. She also noted new grants that will be available for civil society-based LGBT human rights programs, and she highlighted groundbreaking new regulations that make it easier for transgender Americans to amend the gender designation on their passports, while simultaneously ensuring a more dignified application process.
In addition, during the Pride address, Secretary Clinton personally welcomed four visiting LGBT activists from Uganda, Cameroon, South Africa, and Malawi, who attended the speech before settling into a working meeting with the State Department's Africa Bureau. The Council, working closely with our member organizations, brought those activists to the State Department for the address and for a working meeting with the Africa Bureau. The Secretary concluded by making a personal plea to do more for LGBT youth, and she thanked everyone for "being a part of history's great moments."
The June event also included comments by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, Eric Schwartz. The Council, in coalition with other leading refugee NGOs, has been working closely with the Refugee Bureau to institute new policies for LGBT refugee processing and resettlement. A brief panel discussion followed the remarks and included Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Baer, as well as the Council's Chair, Mark Bromley, and IGLHRC's Executive Director, Cary Alan Johnson. The Council emphasized the importance of integrating marginalized LGBT communities into all of the State Department's broad range of development assistance programs.
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State Department Announces New Regulations to Change Gender on U.S. Passports
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This summer, the State Department announced simplified regulations that make it easier for transgender Americans to change the gender designations on their U.S. passports. The Council, together with transgender experts in our member organizations, worked closely with the State Department to craft that new policy, and to highlight ongoing clarifications that are still needed. Under the new rules, applicants need only present certification from an attending physician indicating that the applicant has "undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition." Under previous rules, an individual was required to undergo sexual reassignment surgery before applying for a new passport, even in cases where surgery might not be individually appropriate or medically advisable. The new rules also allow for an individual to obtain a limited-validity passport during the process of gender transition.
Read the full State Department Press Release.
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Council Supports Vote Conferring UN Status on the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)
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In a contentious vote in July, the UN granted special consultative status to IGLHRC, despite strong objections from states that stand opposed to the recognition of LGBT rights at the UN. IGLHRC, a founding member of the Council, is the first LGBT group from the United States to secure this special status, and one of only a handful of LGBT groups in the world that has successfully navigated this hostile process. The Council worked with IGLHRC to ensure U.S. support for the vote from the Obama Administration and from key members of Congress.
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Council Submits Report on LGBT Rights in US to UN and State Department
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Council staff, working with member organizations, prepared a "shadow" report to the UN on LGBT rights in the United States for consideration as part of the UN's new human rights review process, known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). A similar report was also submitted to the UN's Human Rights Committee for the upcoming review of U.S. compliance with treaty provisions under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Council was attacked in The Advocate for airing our country's dirty laundry at the UN. Council staff responded vigorously to highlight the importance of these UN review mechanisms (see the criticism here, and our rebuttal here).
Council Senior Advisor Julie Dorf puts the argument in context in a recent blog posting here.
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Sincerely, 
Mark Bromley
Council for Global Equality
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