The United Nations is pushing member states harder each year on LGBT+ rights – and is starting to make progress. That’s according to new research by LGBT+ campaign organization ILGA World.
The campaigners have been tracking how UN committees address LGBT+ people’s lives since 2014. Last year they found nine UN Treaty Bodies made 137 references to LGBT+ people in 66 observations and recommendations to 56 member states.
That’s the mechanism by which countries hold each other to account over human rights. In one example, in November 2018 countries told Sudan to urgently scrap the death penalty for gay sex.
And on 9 July this year, Sudan dropped the death penalty and flogging as punishments for ‘sodomy’. The UN refers to LGBT+ issues as ‘sexual