Internazionale

Dettagli: Creato: 10 Agosto 2017

Sono state consegnate le oltre 5600 firme raccolte della petizione promossa da Arcigay Napoli e supportata da All Out (sia sulla piattaforma https://go.allout.org/it/a/booking/, che mezzo social) a Gillian Tans, Amministratore delegato di Booking.com a seguito dei fatti avvenuti in Calabria a Ricadi dove una coppia di ragazzi omosessuali napoletani si è vista rifiutare un alloggio ospitato su Booking.com perché il proprietario non accetta "gay e animali".
Al 31 luglio 2017, Booking.com ha completamente rimosso la struttura dalla sua piattaforma e ha postato una dichiarazione sui social media dicendo che "non tollera alcuna forma di discriminazione", ma non ci fermeremo e continueremo a fare pressione.

Riportiamo inoltre a seguire il messaggio di ringraziamento di Gennaro, uno dei due ragazzi vittima dell'azione discriminatoria del proprietario dell'alloggio di Ricardi di cui sopra:
" Grazie a tutti coloro che, sottoscrivendo la petizione, hanno contribuito a supportare la nostra indignazione contro una discriminazione subita. Grazie a Booking.com per aver immediatamente manifestato solidarietà nei nostri confronti, accogliendo la nostra richiesta. Grazie agli amici di All Out che da sempre e quotidianamente sono impegnati nella lotta contro le ingiustizie sociali, al fine di preservare e tutelare l'essere umano in quanto tale, senza alcuna distinzione!
La battaglia per il riconoscimento dell'uguaglianza e per l'abbattimento delle barriere culturali, sociali e politiche che ci impediscono di godere ognuno degli stessi diritti non è sempre facile, ma ogni piccolo successo di oggi porterà ad un mondo diverso, migliore per tutti.
Grazie dal profondo del cuore, Gennaro "

Dettagli: Creato: 10 Agosto 2017

Pubblichiamo i messaggi ricevuti dagli studenti e dalle studentesse statunitensi del corso gender studies del CIEE - Global Center Rome in collaborazione con l'Università Luiss, in visita a Napoli e nella nostra sede lo scorso 27 luglio. Incontro per conoscere le attività in difesa dei diritti della comunità #Lgbt messe in atto dal nostro comitato.

Studente 1:

"Thank you for taking the time to host us and allowing us to better understand your community. The work that you do and the people that you help are incredible, strong and beautiful. Thank you for your acceptance, your compassion, and your kindness. Forever in a day, I will remember my time in Naples and at Arcigay."

Leggi tutto: Incontro con gli studenti statunitensi del corso gender studies del CIEE

Dettagli: Creato: 07 Marzo 2017

Central America

BY MICHAEL K. LAVERS MARCH 2, 2017

Stacy Velásquez of Organización Trans Reinas de la Noche, a trans advocacy group in Guatemala, at a Guatemala City hotel on Feb. 1, 2017. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The offices of Colectivo Alejandría, a transgender advocacy group, are located in a house in the Magaña neighborhood of the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador that is surrounded by a thick wall with barbed wire on the top of it. A heavy metal gate with a narrow slit through which a person can look outside spans the driveway, while bars cover the house’s windows.

Colectivo Alejandría Director Karla Guevara told the Washington Blade on Feb. 6 during an interview with two of her colleagues that an average of 20 people are killed in El Salvador every day. Francela Méndez, a prominent activist who was a Colectivo Alejandría board member, is among the more than a dozen trans women who were known to have been killed in the Central American country in 2015.

Three trans women have been murdered in San Luis Talpa, a municipality near El Salvador International Airport that is roughly 25 miles southeast of San Salvador, since Feb. 18. Guevara told the Blade this violence is among the reasons that LGBT Salvadorans leave the country.

“There are some heroines, some survivors in this country who are able to make it in this exclusionary society,” she said. “This society, is totally full of hate.”

Violence that is associated with maras and pandillas (gangs) and drug trafficking has made El Salvador and neighboring Honduras two of the most violent countries in the world. Central America is among the regions from which the majority of Immigration Equality’s clients originate.

Verónica López of Asociación Salvadoreña de Mujeres Trans, a San Salvador-based trans advocacy group, described the situation to the Blade during an interview at her office on Feb. 4 as “forced migration because of tremendous insecurity.”

“If you are a person from the LGBTI community, you are more at risk than a cisgender or heterosexual person,” she said.

Activists note poverty and a lack of education and economic opportunities make trans women and men particularly vulnerable to violence from gang members, police officers, soldiers and the general public. They say these underlying factors also prompt LGBT people to migrate from their respective countries

“When you don’t have education; when you don’t have work; when you don’t have dreams; when you don’t have goals; you are going to be living day-to-day,” said Stacy Velásquez of Organización Trans Reinas de la Noche, a Guatemala City-based group that advocates on behalf of trans sex workers. “This is what happens to our counterparts from Honduras and El Salvador who come to Guatemala.”

Cattrachas, a human rights organization that is based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, notes 249 LGBT people have been reported killed in the country between 2009-2016.

René Martínez, a prominent activist in the city of San Pedro Sula who was a member of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández’s ruling National Party, was strangled to death in June 2016. Paola Barraza, Erick Martínez Ávila and Walter Tróchez — who were also LGBT and human rights advocates — have also been killed since 2009.

Activists with whom the Blade spoke in San Pedro Sula, which is one of the most violent cities in the world that is not in a war zone, said police officers frequently extort money from LGBT sex workers in order to allow them to work.

Velásquez told the Blade the “people” who offer to help LGBT migrants force them into prostitution and then charges them “rent” to work on a street corner or from a house. She also noted gangs in El Salvador target LGBT people in neighborhoods they control.

Velásquez highlighted the case of a trans woman who fled to Guatemala after a gang member tried to kill her. She told the Blade she had a large scar on her neck from where he tried to slit her throat.

“They don’t want any faggots, any queers,” said Velásquez.

“For someone in the community to say I am going to go to the United States and not return to this country is common,” Freddy Funez, an LGBT activist in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, told the Blade on Feb. 10 during an interview at his office.

Trump has sparked ‘a lot of concern’

The Blade traveled to Central America less than a week after President Trump signed an executive order that spurs construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The proposed wall and the administration’s pledge to deport undocumented immigrants from the U.S. has sparked widespread concern in the region.

“We all feel like we are all Mexico,” said Ayala.

“The primary concern is what’s going to happen to the immigrants that are coming in and the children and the LGBT people who are being persecuted,” said Cifuentes.

“This situation now with Donald Trump in which we are living is a concern,” Guevara told the Blade in the Salvadoran capital.

Dettagli: Creato: 03 Marzo 2017

Sudan

"Queer Voices From Sudan...What is it like to be Queer in Khartoum?" a short documentary film that Document the challenges, hardships, and abuses members of the LGBTQI+ community have faced in Sudan because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eEmMhucWLA&feature=youtu.be

Leggi tutto: What is it like to be Queer in Khartoum?

Dettagli: Creato: 03 Marzo 2017

BY BORIS DITTRICH FEB 21, 2017

As of March 1, Finland will allow same-sex couples to marry, bringing to thirteen the number of European countries with marriage equality laws.

Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement on February 21, affirmed that 27 of the Council’s 47 member states provide some form of legal recognition to same-sex partnerships, including the 13 countries with marriage equality.

Disappointingly, 20 Council of Europe states still do not provide any legal recognition to same-sex couples, in spite of jurisprudence by the European Court of Human Rights. In the 2015 Oliari case, the court found Italy had violated the European Convention on Human Rights – specifically article 8, on family life –by failing to make registered partnerships available to same-sex couples.

Most countries in Western Europe now permit same-sex couples to marry. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are exceptions, although opinion polls show a majority of people in these countries are in favour of equal marriage rights.

In his statement, Muiznieks called on the 20 states without any provisions “to enact legislation to create – at the very least – registered partnerships that ensure that privileges, obligations or benefits available to married or registered different-sex partners are equally available to same-sex partners.” He specifically mentioned “social security, taxes, employment and pension benefits, freedom of movement, family reunification, parental rights, and inheritance.”

The commissioner rightly notes that granting rights and benefits to same-sex couples does not take anything away from different-sex couples who already have access to them.

Finland has taken a positive step forward towards ending discrimination. Other European countries should follow suit.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/21/finland-allow-same-sex-marriage

Dettagli: Creato: 02 Marzo 2017

Trump Rescinds Rules on Bathrooms for Transgender Students

By JEREMY W. PETERS, JO BECKER and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS FEB. 22, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, overruling his own education secretary and placing his administration firmly in the middle of the culture wars that many Republicans have tried to leave behind.

In a joint letter, the top civil rights officials from the Justice Department and the Education Department rejected the Obama administration’s position that nondiscrimination laws require schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.

The question of how to address the “bathroom debate,” as it has become known, opened a rift inside the Trump administration, pitting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr. Sessions, who had been expected to move quickly to roll back the civil rights expansions put in place under his Democratic predecessors, wanted to act decisively because of two pending court cases that could have upheld the protections and pushed the government into further litigation.

But Ms. DeVos initially resisted signing off and told Mr. Trump that she was uncomfortable because of the potential harm that rescinding the protections could cause transgender students, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the internal discussions.

Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, initially resisted signing off on the order and told President Trump that she was uncomfortable with it. Mr. Sessions, who has opposed expanding gay, lesbian and transgender rights, pushed Ms. DeVos to relent. After getting nowhere, he took his objections to the White House because he could not go forward without her consent. Mr. Trump sided with his attorney general, the Republicans said, and told Ms. DeVos in a meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he wanted her to drop her opposition. And Ms. DeVos, faced with the alternative of resigning or defying the president, agreed to go along.

Ms. DeVos’s unease was evident in a strongly worded statement she released on Wednesday night, in which she said she considered it a “moral obligation” for every school in America to protect all students from discrimination, bullying and harassment.

She said she had directed the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate all claims of such treatment “against those who are most vulnerable in our schools,” but also argued that bathroom access was not a federal matter.

Gay rights supporters made their displeasure clear. Outside the White House, several hundred people protested the decision, chanting, “No hate, no fear, trans students are welcome here.”

Individual schools will remain free to let transgender students use the bathrooms with which they are most comfortable. And the effect of the administration’s decision will not be immediate because a federal court had already issued a nationwide injunction barring enforcement of the Obama order.

The dispute highlighted the degree to which transgender rights issues, which Mr. Trump expressed sympathy for during the campaign, continue to split Republicans, even as many in the party argue that it is time to move away from social issues and focus more on bread-and-butter pocketbook concerns.

Social conservatives, one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituencies, applauded him for honoring a pledge he had made to them during the campaign. They had argued that former President Barack Obama’s policy would allow potential sexual predators access to bathrooms and create an unsafe environment for children.

“The federal government has absolutely no right to strip parents and local schools of their rights to provide a safe learning environment for children,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

But supporters of transgender rights said the Trump administration was acting recklessly and cruelly. “The consequences of this decision will no doubt be heartbreaking,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “This isn’t a states’ rights issue; it’s a civil rights issue.”

Despite his personal views, Mr. Trump’s decisions in office have been consistently conservative on social issues. And he has shown considerable deference to the religious right, naming many religious conservatives to top cabinet posts and pledging to fight for religious freedom protections and restrictions on abortion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/devos-sessions-transgender-students-rights.html