David Hunt:

You might expect human rights to merit unequivocal support at the United Nations — especially at the U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, Switzerland, where 47 member countries hotly debate efforts to promote and protect human rights around the globe. In reality, majorities are often thin, with a surprising number of nations abstaining or even voting no on resolutions advancing human rights.

In October 2024, for example, fewer than half — just 23 nations — endorsed a one-year extension of an international fact-finding mission to Sudan, where a civil war has created an “ongoing dire humanitarian and human rights crisis.” Twelve nations, including China and Indonesia, voted against the resolution and 12 others abstained.

If there’s a strong consensus to be found of late, it’s on the margins of the U.N, among a broad coalition of nonprofit agencies urging the Human Rights Council to extend the mandate of an independent expert committed to protecting LGBTQ people from violence and discrimination. The vote on the mandate’s three-year renewal is expected to be close.

I’m David Hunt. For all its work as a peacekeeping body, the United Nations has something in common with military organizations – a love of acronyms. In this program I’ll try to keep them to a minimum. But one acronym who’ll hear over and over is IE SOGI, IE is short for independent expert. SOGI, S O G I, is short for sexual orientation and gender identity.

At the U.N. IE SOGI is a man — South African scholar Graeme Reid — and a mandate, a position created under the U.N.’s special procedures mechanism to “examine, monitor, advise, and publicly report on matters related to human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The council created the three-year position in 2016 and renewed it twice — in 2019 and again in 2021. This week’s vote — to renew the mandate for another three years — comes at a fraught time for the global LGBTQ movement. 

Fabiana Leibl is a program manager at the International Service for Human Rights in Geneva, an organization that supports human rights defenders around the world through training, activism, research, and legal advice. ISHR works on the front lines in some of the world’s most challenging areas, promoting rights and accountability in autocratic nations, strengthening laws and systems in struggling democracies and supporting human rights activists in regions enduring war, violence and targeted oppression.

Leibl has a front row seat for this week’s pivotal vote of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council. She spoke with me from the council’s headquarters in the Palace of Nations, a sprawling complex overlooking Lake Geneva, built to house the League of Nations after the First World War.

I asked her about the upcoming vote to renew IE SOGI and why some members of the Human Rights Council are expected to oppose the resolution.

Fabiana Leibl:

This time around we have what we call a technical rollover, which is basically a very short resolution that just states what the mandate is. And then asks for the renewal. One of the main objections has always been that it's a myth at the same time that this is a mandate that's driven by what they call Western values. Despite it being a resolution that's presented by seven Latin American countries, there are a number of grounds on which this is objected from kind of religious claims around religious practices, claims around cultural norms and family values, which are absolutely not in conformity with UN human rights standards. And so there are many different claims, but they come from a place of, a place of intolerance and a place of discrimination against sexual orientation and diverse sexual orientation and gender identities.

David Hunt:

Do you expect this to be a close vote?

Fabiana Leibl:

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's a political moment in an environment that's not conducive to advancing the rights of L-G-B-T-Q-I persons at the international stage. Like what we want is to secure that this mandates continue its very important and key work, because the resolution doesn't create any rights, doesn't propose any new language. It's basically the continuation of the work of the independent expert. We expect a close vote. Yes. And also, beside the vote, there’s also the attempts to weaken the text, attempts to empty the resolution of meaning and, and relevance.

David Hunt:

To counter this opposition, a coalition of more than 1200 NGOs — nongovernmental organizations — signed a statement of support for the renewal of IE SOGI. 

Trans activist Best Chitsangupong read the statement at a meeting of the Human Rights Council in late June.

Best Chitsangupong:

In every region of the world, systematic violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity persist.

In 2016, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council took definitive action to systematically address these abuses, creating an Independent Expert on SOGI.

Since then, mandate holders have extensively documented discrimination and violence based on SOGI; they also sent over 171 communications documenting allegations of violations, and carried out 10 country visits.

A decision by Council members to renew this mandate would send a clear message that violence and discrimination against people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities cannot be tolerated. It would reaffirm that specific, sustained and systematic attention continues to be crucial to address these human rights violations and ensure that LGBT people are in fact free and equal in dignity and rights.

We urge this Council to ensure we continue building a world where everyone can live free from violence and discrimination. I thank you.

David Hunt:

You’re listening to This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. 

I’m David Hunt. IE SOGI, the United Nations’ Independent Expert on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has worked since 2016 to advance the human rights of LGBTQ people around the globe. It’s critical work in an increasingly fractured world.

Sixty-four countries still outlaw same-sex sexual activity and 10 criminalize diverse gender expressions and identities. But efforts to secure the human rights of LGBTQ people have improved in some countries in the past decade. Since the IE SOGI mandate was established in 2016, 14 countries have decriminalized gay sex. The United Kingdom, responsible for colonial-era anti-sodomy laws around the world, apologized to Commonwealth leaders in 2018 urging repeal of those laws.

Fabiana Leibl, a program manager at ISHR, the International Service for Human Rights, says the independent expert’s work is needed now, more than ever.

Fabiana Leibl:

I think the IE SOGI mandate is crucial because it deals with issues that perhaps couldn't be dealt with at the national level. Another fundamental aspect of the mandate is the mandate’s ability to comment on policy and legislation and particularly question governments when laws and legislation are violating the rights of, of people in general. And when, and I think the IE SOGI has also done an incredible job in, in addressing those situations and commenting on legislation and submitting information and asking for clarification. And this is another aspect of, of the mandate, which is really important. The fact that the mandate has visited so many countries also is the visits itself provides a a platform for civil society organizations. The recommendations that come out of those visits are a great tool for civil society organizations to work on, to, to follow up on, to keep, you know, pushing their governments.

David Hunt:

The coalition of NGOs campaigning for renewal of the mandate is active on social media, where the hashtag RenewIESOGI is used to publicize informational webinars and online petitions. I sat in on one of those webinars — hosted by the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School — last week.

Jessica Stern, a Carr-Ryan Senior Fellow and formerly the State Department’s top envoy for LGBTQ rights, recalled the hard-fought effort to create the IE SOGI mandate in 2016.

Jessica Stern:

We started with joint statements, voluntary ones to test whether any government would even dare to say our names in the halls of power. Then we secured the first resolution at the Human Rights Council, recognizing violence and discrimination based on SOGI. I will never forget it, what it was like to be in the room that day, watching a third of the room walk out in protest during the first panel, and then watching them reappear moments later on the mezzanine watching from above, because they couldn't stay away. That moment made something clear. Visibility is power, and our power is exactly what they feared.

David Hunt:

Another featured speaker, scholar and activist Ignacio Saiz, summarized some of his findings from a 2024 report on IE SOGI. 

Ignacio Saiz:

The mandate has significantly expanded the body of knowledge on violence and discrimination based on soggy. What so many people have valued is how it's looked, not just at specific forms of abuse, you know, like conversion therapy or, or denial of gender recognition. It's looked at the root causes. And that's quite unusual for a, for a UN human rights body. So it's, it's really shone a spotlight on patriarchal gender constructs, legacies of colonialism, religious fundamentalisms, and, and how religion is politically manipulated for, for for, for certain ends. And that systemic analysis, that systematic analysis has enabled it to take on some of the, some of the deeper cultural narratives that pathologize, that demonize and that criminalize queer lives. 

David Hunt:

Back in Geneva, Fabiana Leibl awaits the vote at the Human Rights Council with grim determination.

Fabiana Leibl:

It's hard to be optimistic at this point in time, particularly because of, because there's, it's, what we've seen are challenges to multilateralism. That is what we're seeing. It's not only about the UN, it's about norms, standards, guarantees at the international level that are not being, you know, are being disregarded. So it's hard to be optimistic when the whole system is not responding the way we would've expected to respond. And that states are actively working against it.

David Hunt:

A victory at the U.N. for IE SOGI would be welcome news for human rights activists around the world, a spark of hope in challenging times. I’d like to thank Fabiana Leibl at the International Service for Human Rights for speaking with me for this program and the Carr-Ryan Center at Harvard for its public education efforts. For This Way Out, I’m David Hunt.