February 10, 2016

Global progress on LGBTIQ rights

editor:	Vanessa Ellingham

We still have a long way to go when it comes to securing equal rights for members of the LGBTIQ community.

But as a new report from the Guardian shows, there is also plenty to be hopeful about.

The report focuses on six developing nations where LGBTIQ activists are seeing success, from staunchly Catholic Colombia to Mozambique, a single African state ruffling the feathers of its neighbours.

"If you want evidence that the tide of history may be turning irrevocably in the direction of LGBT rights across the world, you need only look to the staunchly Catholic Latin American country of Colombia.

“Equality is unstoppable and equality will also come to Colombia,” said the interior minister, Juan Fernando Cristo, as he announced that his government was in favour of marriage equality."

In Jamaica, the greatest opposition to the LGBTIQ movement in the church. But with the justice minister, the capital city's mayor and even newspaper editorials calling for equal rights, change is in the air.

Lawyer and gay rights activist Maurice Tomlinson will mount a challenge to the anti-sodomy law later this month, and says all these milestones would have been unimaginable merely years ago.

Meanwhile in Asia, Nepal, Vietnam and Taiwan are all seing huge changes in the levels of acceptance of the LGBTIQ community.

Last year Nepal became one of only a very small number of countries to recognise a third gender on its citizens' passports.

"Human Rights Watch researcher Kyle Knight points out, Nepal is in many ways a long way from realising many of its human rights obligations, but in the case of its LGBT citizens it appears to be on a path to progress."

Taiwan currently has a marriage equality bill in progress, supported by its president, and on a local level, same-sex couples are able to register their partnerships in Taipei.

Last year an NBC News headline claimed that “on gay rights, Vietnam is now more progressive than America”. And while that may have been a little premature, change is certainly afoot there, as well.

"Gay marriage is tolerated by the state, though same-sex couples don’t enjoy the same rights as straight people."

This week the Guardian Global Development Professionals Network is highlighting the work of the LGBT rights activists throughout the world. Join the conversation at #LGBTChange.