PROMOTING GLOBAL EQUALITY IN THE COMMONWEALTH
PROMOTING GLOBAL EQUALITY IN THE COMMONWEALTH A group of Parliamentarians are seeking to promote global equality for LGBT+ citizens.
Rt Hon. Nick Herbert, CBE was
a Member of the UK Parliament between 2005-2019 and Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT+ Rights between 20152019. He is the Chair of the Global Equality Caucus as well as the Countryside Alliance, The Project for Modern Democracy and the Global TB Caucus. As a Parliamentarian, he served as Shadow Minister for Police Reform, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before becoming Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice.
The Commonwealth Charter unites our community of nations under the shared values of peace, democracy, human rights, tolerance, respect and freedom of expression. No matter what our differences are, it is these values that drive our multilateral work towards securing safer, freer, and more prosperous futures for all Commonwealth citizens. These values matter as much to LGBT+ citizens as they do to everyone else, and it is regrettable that in 2020 there are still 34 Commonwealth member states that criminalise same-sex intimacy. It is only with the work of dedicated and impassioned change-makers, both in government and in civil society, that the necessary reforms will be achieved. We have seen encouraging steps forward. Activists and civil society groups have successfully challenged repressive laws in Belize, India, Botswana, and Trinidad and Tobago, and litigators have brought forward court cases in numerous other countries. However, it is not just court judgements that are changing the landscape of equality in the Commonwealth. In the past decade alone, governments and legislators have introduced various laws to recognise and protect their LGBT+ citizens. Lawmakers have decriminalised homosexuality in Fiji, Mozambique, Nauru, Lesotho and the Seychelles. Mozambique and the Seychelles have also passed additional protections against employment discrimination, and Fiji’s new Constitution has banned all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and
40 | The Parliamentarian | 2020: Issue One | 100th anniversary issue 1920-2020
gender identity. A Civil Unions Bill was passed by the Parliament in Cyprus, and same-sex marriage has been legalised in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Malta. Malta has also outlawed damaging conversion therapy, introduced protections for intersex people, made it easier for transgender people to selfidentify, and improved adoption and IVF rights for same-sex couples – all in the past five years. The pace of this change is even more remarkable when we consider that LGBT+ rights in some corners of the world have been going backwards, regardless of the legality of homosexuality. State-sponsored violence has seen gay men in Chechnya tortured and imprisoned in detention camps, the police in Turkey brutally suppressing Pride events, and police raids and crackdowns against the LGBT+ community continue to persist in Indonesia. 12 countries still include the death penalty as a maximum sentence for samesex intimacy, and it is shameful that one of these countries, Brunei, is a member state of the Commonwealth. It was only after effective lobbying from civil society groups and Commonwealth High Commissioners last year that the Sultan of Brunei decided to extend a moratorium on enforcing the death penalty as a punishment. There is cause for concern about the treatment of LGBT+ citizens in a number of other Commonwealth countries, too. It is vitally important that politicians are seen to be taking a stand against actions that threaten the rights and
dignity of LGBT+ people, especially in instances where violence and discrimination have been sanctioned by the state. Parliamentarians have a key role to play in this respect. Legislators are uniquely placed to hold governments to account, provide a voice to the concerns of the people they represent, influence the national debate, and enact the laws that defend and protect LGBT+ equality. Parliamentarians also approve government budgets and vote on the funding for projects that can make a real difference to LGBT+ people in communities. For example, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office funds several civil society organisations in their work to reform equality laws in other nations, and the Department for International Development currently funds research projects through UK Aid Connect to support LGBT+ inclusion in the development goals of numerous countries. This
“Legislators are uniquely placed to hold governments to account, provide a voice to the concerns of the people they represent, influence the national debate, and enact the laws that defend and protect LGBT+ equality.”
