Letter from the Editors

Tags: Urgency Required

Dear readers, We have the pleasure to present to you the publication Urgency Required – Gay and Lesbian Rights are Human Rights. The book focuses on urgent issues of gay and lesbian liberation, taking a historical perspective and reflecting worldwide geographic diversity. Employing the term ‘LGBT’-persons, the acronym used for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, it explores concepts and strategies for taking steps towards decriminalization and equal rights and treatment regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Urgency Required reveals that the LGBT movement is expanding and gaining visibility all over the world, even, against all odds, in Africa and Eastern Europe. Colourful autobiographical accounts by LGBT activists add a personal urgency to the book’s moving and persuasive contents.

This book was conceived in response to the 2008 celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite this Declaration, which was adopted in 1948, sexual minorities around the world are routinely subjected to flagrant human rights violations (particularly by governments) that range from subtle discrimination to imprisonment, torture, the death penalty and murder. There are still countries where gays and lesbians are not considered human and human rights are not, therefore, considered applicable.
In this book the problem is summarized in these words: ‘Homophobia appears to be the last accepted prejudice, where racism is rejected, anti-Semitism is condemned and hatred of women has lost its legitimacy.’
Why the slogan ‘Gay and lesbian rights are human rights’? Amnesty International provides the answer: ‘Sexual orientation and gender identity touch the innermost affairs of the heart, the deepest desires of the spirit and the most intimate physical expressions.’ Sexual orientation and gender identity are part of the essence of one’s being, concerning one’s right to physical and mental integrity and the right to self-realization. These rights imply that individuals themselves determine their sexual orientation and gender identity and express them - based on equality with others - free of fear and with no risk of discrimination and suppression. Sexual orientation and gender identity form a fundamental aspect of the being, of the individual. That is what human rights are all about.

Enjoy reading,

Ireen Dubel and André Hielkema

This publication was realised with support from Hivos and the worldwide network of Hivos partner organisations.