http://www.bbc.co.

uk/news/world-middle-east-19525137 Because of the restrictions and sensitivities very few groups have been able to help gays and lesbians in Iraq. One of them is New York based IRAP (Iraqi Refugees Assistance Project), another is London based Iraqi LGBT. Here the co-founder of IRAP Becca Heller and founder of Iraqi LGBT Ali Hilli discuss challenges of providing the gay community in Iraq with the much needed help.
Becca Heller, Iraqi Refugees Assistance Project

VIDEO: Aiding LGBT Iraqis in Iraq and Middle East

In post-Saddam Iraq, gay men and women have been systematically targeted for death by extra-judicial militias - with the co-operation of the democratically elected government, says Ali Hilli, founder of the London-based group, Iraqi LGBT.
Ali Hilli, Iraqi LGBT

Iraq society has always been a melting pot of ethnic, religious and other groups, a place where difference was often not only tolerated but celebrated. Even through the worst years of Saddam Hussein, sexual minorities in Iraq enjoyed a fair degree of freedom. The US-led invasion of 2003 brought to power the Islamic Dawa party, which was established in Iran in the 1980s and backed Iran in its war with Iraq. The fact that Dawa's core beliefs were inspired by Iranian Shia clerics did not stop the US and UK from supporting the party after Saddam Hussein's fall.

Government involvement

In the years after the invasion, the security situation deteriorated for everyone in the country. But for sexual minorities, Iraq became hell on earth. By 2007, political and religious groups backed by militiamen launched what we believe was an organised, co-ordinated campaign to hunt, arrest, torture and kill everyone they perceived as gay. These radical groups deny sexual minorities the right to life. They target everyone who does not conform to their religious description of family.
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We believe the Ministry of the Interior tracks sexual minorities with the aim of eliminating them

That is why killings of gays are similar to so-called honour killings of women said to bring shame on to the family by having extra-marital sex, even in cases when women are raped. In the same way, gay men and women who do not adhere to traditional sexual practices within an accepted marriage framework are seen as dangerous to society. Instead of protecting sexual minorities, the Iraqi government facilitates their murder by arresting the victims and handing them over to militias who kill them. Iraqi LGBT sources working inside Iraq have found the militias are also getting intelligence about the identities of sexual minorities from the Ministry of the Interior.

'Aim is elimination'
Members of our organisation and the gay men and women we interviewed have said consistently that, under arrest, they have been forced to give names and addresses of other homosexuals or suspected homosexuals.

The violence in Syria has forced gay Iraqis who fled there to return to Iraq

Taken together, this is why we believe the Ministry of the Interior tracks sexual minorities with the aim of eliminating them. Iraq LGBT is based in London, and it has become increasingly dangerous for us to operate inside Iraq. But we have been trying. Since its founding in London in September 2005, Iraqi LGBT has operated in total secrecy, providing gays inside the country with contacts, psychological counselling, financial aid, shelter and accommodation, and assistance escaping Iraq. We have watched as the situation in the country has deteriorated, as lists of targets began to appear in the streets first in Baghdad, then in Najaf, Basra, Kufa and other towns across Iraq. Among the names on these lists were many of our activists and members, and many of them are no longer alive. In the face of the increasing danger we carried on working in Iraq, but recently our funds ran out.

Constant danger
Our safe houses inside Iraq have been raided and shut down and we can no longer afford to open new ones. Our activists continue to be targeted and killed. On top of all that, many Iraqi gays whom we helped to find refuge in neighbouring Syria have now been forced to flee the violence there and return to Iraq. There, they are likely again to be targeted by both the militias and the government. Given the open hostility of the Iraqi government to homosexuals, for now we must remain underground if we are to survive.

If this is ever to change, Iraq's gay men and women also need international attention and support. Hundreds of gay men and women in Iraq are living under enormous stress and are in constant danger simply because of the way they were born. This unprecedented brutal violence against our community must stop, criminals must be brought to justice, and gays and lesbians, just like any other community in Iraq, must be protected by law enforcement agencies and the constitution. Unless the international community steps in to help and to put pressure on the Iraqi government, many more men and women will die.

UN calls for protection of gay rights

World body releases first official report on the issue, asking governments to repeal discriminatory and harmful laws.
Last Modified: 15 Dec 2011 20:19

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/20111215191244754908.html
Globally, homosexuals and transgender individuals face discrimination and violence, including killings, rape and torture because of their orientation, and risk the death penalty in at least five countries, the United Nations says. In the first official UN report on the issue, released on Thursday, the world body called on governments to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, prosecute all serious violations, and repeal discriminatory laws. "Homophobic and transphobic violence has been recorded in all regions. Such violence may be physical (including murder, beatings, kidnappings, rape and sexual assault) or psychological (including threats, coercion and arbitrary deprivations of liberty)," said the report by Navi Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights. Pillay said governments should also outlaw all forms of abuse based on sexual orientation and set the same age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual activity. The UN Human Rights Council commissioned the report in June when it recognised the equal rights of LGBT people and said there should be no discrimination or violence based on sexual orientation. Western countries called the vote historic but Islamic states firmly rejected it.

"On the basis of the information presented (in this report), a pattern of human rights violations emerges that demands a response,'' Pillay said. "Governments and inter-governmental bodies have often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,'' she added. In addition to spontaneous "street" violence, people perceived as being LGBT may be targets of more organised abuse, "including by religious extremists, paramilitary groups, neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists," the UN report said. 'High degree of cruelty' Violence against LGBT people tends to be especially vicious, with "a high degree of cruelty" including mutilation and castration, the 25-page report said. They are also victims of so-called "honour killings" carried out by relatives or community members who believe shame has been brought on the family, the report added. Gay men have been murdered in Sweden and the Netherlands, while a homeless transgender woman was killed in Portugal, it said. Lesbian, bisexual and transgender women in El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan and South Africa have experienced gang rapes, family violence and murder. Currently 76 countries have laws that are used to criminalise behaviour on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, it said, calling for their repeal. "In at least five countries, the death penalty may be applied to those found guilty of offences relating to consensual, adult homosexual conduct," the report said. It did not identify the countries, but activists named them as Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. Areas of Nigeria and Somalia also impose the death penalty for homosexual practices, they said. Last week, US President Barack Obama directed government agencies to make sure US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote gay rights and fight discrimination. At the same time, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, in a speech to diplomats in Geneva, compared the struggle for gay equality to difficult passages toward women's rights and racial equality. The US, and Pillay's report, stopped short of backing gay marriage. But the UN report cites human rights experts as saying countries have an obligation to ensure "unmarried same-sex couples are treated in the same way and entitled to the same benefits as unmarried opposite-sex couples".

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/17/traditionalvalues-code-for-human-rights-abuse/?iref=allsearch Traditional Values code for human rights abuse?

By Graeme Reid, Special to CNN Editors note: Graeme Reid is director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed are his own. The U.N. Human Rights Council recently passed a resolution on traditional values of humankind as a vehicle for promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms. It sounds innocuous, but its implications are ominous. Indeed, it is an immediate threat to the rights of many vulnerable groups including women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. And it flies in the face of the founding principles of universality and indivisibility enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the third Russian-sponsored traditional values resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council. The second, in 2011, called for a study, and the resulting draft study is highly critical of traditional values as a framework, criticizing the concept as vague, subjective and unclear. The third, though, adopted on September 27, affirms traditional values as a valid framework for human rights. Underpinning this is an argument that homosexuality is a moral issue and not a rights issue at all. A pernicious development is the recent proliferation of laws in Eastern Europe and Central Asia that seek to curtain freedom of speech by clamping down on homosexual propaganda under the pretext of protecting children. These laws are vaguely defined and have the effect of outlawing any supportive messages or activism around LGBT issues. Laws have, for example, been passed or are under discussion in Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Hungary and in Russias regions. In March, St. Petersburg became one of the nine regions in Russia to adopt such a law (upheld, albeit restricted, by the Supreme Court in October), a dangerous precedent for similar legislation to be imposed nationwide. The law explicitly conflates homosexuality with pedophilia and outlaws creating distorted percept ions about social equality of traditional and non-traditional family relationships. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov justified these propaganda laws by arguing that the human rights of LGBT people were nothing but an outside appendage to the universal values. We can see where traditional values is headed. I am South African and these universal core values, which transcend differences in culture, religion and tradition, resonate strongly with my own experience living through the last decades of apartheid and the transition to democracy. For all its shortcomings, the vision for a new South Africa the antithesis of the old was based on the idea that we have more in common than what divides us. The apartheid state had long pointed to racial and cultural differences to justify a pernicious ideology and with democracy this was rejected with contempt.

It is appropriate that the cornerstone of our South African constitution our never again pledge is a bill of rights that enshrines protection against discrimination by state actors or fellow citizens. All the more important because to this day there are those who would restrict the rights of women and strip LGBT people of protection in the name of tradition. As a South African, I am deeply suspicious when traditional values are evoked as the basis for human rights I know only too well how quickly these can be twisted for nefarious ends. I am gay, and these core values also resonate strongly with my own experience. No one who has grown up in a precarious relationship to family or tradition will take references to traditional values as inherently and invariably good, positive and affirming. I have heard too many stories of people ostracized by their families and rejected by their communities because they are different. Life within a family can bring affection and productive socialization, but it can also bring violence and oppression. Tradition can give a sense of meaning and connectedness with the past, to something bigger and more enduring than the individual, but it can also be a stick to beat difference, discourage dissent, to keep people in line. I know only too well how these terms are used to justify discrimination and abuse. This is what is at stake at the Human Rights Council. Gender and sexuality have become one of the fissures within the U.N. Human Rights Council and beyond an ongoing battle around womens reproductive rights and the rights of LGBT people. Tradition has been used to justify forced marriage, virginity testing, so-called honor crimes, family violence and marital rape. It is also used to justify the imprisonment of gay men and rape of lesbians. What is going on here, behind the euphemistic language of the resolution, is very clear: this is a pushback against the incremental claims of women and LGBT people. The traditional values resolution is the latest in a series of resolutions that edge the Human Rights Council closer to a relativist position on human rights. If we continue to go down this path then everything is potentially relative and determined by vague concepts such as culture and tradition. For those who are seen to exist outside the neatly defined parameters of culture, this is especially troubling. There is no doubt that governments will continue to use traditional values as a way of justifying human rights abuses, particularly against the most marginal and vulnerable members of society. But it will be a sad day for the United Nations if human rights abusers are able to turn to a traditional values resolution to back up th eir spurious claims. When it comes to human rights, universal and relative cannot coexist