World
Brazil’s most populous state to allow same-sex marriage
Couples in São Paulo can get marriage licenses in 60 days

A São Paulo court on Thursday ordered notaries to begin offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples without a judge’s approval.
The decision, which will take effect in Brazil’s most populous state in 60 days, comes after the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court ruled in May 2011 that gays and lesbians can enter into civil unions. A São Paulo judge in June 2011 ruled two men could convert their civil union into a marriage — 206 of these unions have been converted into marriages in the state.
Alagoas in January became the first Brazilian state to extend marriage to same-sex couples without judicial approval, while Bahia on the country’s northeast coast late last month followed suit. Notaries in Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District that includes the Brazilian capital of Brasilia have also issued marriage licenses to gays and lesbians.
The Brazilian government announced in 2003 it would recognize same-sex unions legally performed outside the country for immigration purposes. Authorities in 2008 simplified these regulations.
“It is a very important decision,” gay Brazilian Congressman Jean Wyllys told the Washington Blade. “And like the Constitution says, in its Article 226, that the state should facilitate the conversation of stable unions into marriage and it also says people are equal under the law, many same-sex partners demanded this in the court. What the judges are doing is complying with the Constitution, recognizing the rights of same-sex partners to enter into civil marriage.”
In spite of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court’s 2011 decision, Rio de Janeiro and many other states have yet to implement it. Wyllys has introduced a proposal that would amend the Brazilian Constitution to recognize same-sex civil marriage throughout the country. A bill that would allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot has languished in Congress since the mid-1990s.
“Justice is doing what should have already been done in the Congress and it deserves our applause,” Wyllys said. “The lack of a bill that ends this unjust discrimination, violation of the Federal Constitution and all the international human rights treaties, has left many partners to seek justice. Justice is doing its job well. Those of us who are missing are the lawmakers and the federal government that remains deaf to the call of millions of people who only want to be equal under the law.”
LGBT activist Felipe Pasqualotto shared Wyllys’ criticisms of the Brazilian government’s response to same-sex marriage and other issues.
“Even though São Paulo is just following the Supreme Court decision, it is a big step for Brazil considering we have been quite silent regarding human rights, especially gay [issues,]” he told the Blade.
The São Paulo ruling comes slightly more than a week after the Uruguay House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would allow gays and lesbians to legally marry in the South American country. Same-sex couples have been able to tie the knot in neighboring Argentina and Mexico City since 2010.
The Mexican Supreme Court on Dec. 5 unanimously struck down a law in the state of Oaxaca that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. A Colombian Senate committee on the same day approved a measure that would legalize same-sex marriage. (The country’s highest court ruled in June 2011 that gays and lesbians will be able to formalize their relationships in two years if lawmakers don’t tackle the issue.)
Lawyer Alder Martins told the Blade he believes internal Brazilian politics continue to play more of a role in the expansion of legal recognition to same-sex couples than recent developments in other Latin American countries.
“I don’t believe recent developments in Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay have influenced this process,” Toni Reis, president of the Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians and Transgenders (ABGLT in Portuguese) added. “It’s a question of implementing Brazilian law.”
Costa Rica to consider legal recognition for gay couples
Meanwhile, the Costa Rican government announced on Monday it supports the extension of limited legal recognition of same-sex couples in the Central American country.
President Laura Chinchilla Miranda opposes nuptials for gays and lesbians, but her government urged lawmakers in a Dec. 7 press release to consider once again a measure that would extend inheritance, hospital visitation and other rights to same-sex couples.
“We hope that the Congress will continue to move forward with the bill and discuss the merits of the case and once and for all fill this legal void,” the government said in a press release. “The government urges respect and tolerance during this discussion that will take place in the Congress, the corresponding body which will take up this decision. Similarly it will respect the position of each deputy on this issue.”
The country’s highest court in 2010 struck down a referendum that sought to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Lawmakers who have repeatedly postponed debate on extending legal rights to same-sex couples are scheduled to potentially consider the proposal on April 30. The country’s Roman Catholic church and other religious leaders have spoken out against any attempt to do so.
Francisco Madrigal Ballestero of the Center for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights in Central America (CIPAC,) described the measure to the Blade earlier this week as “a project that was born partly out of fear.” He further categorized it as “an administrative exit to recognize unions with certain aggravating circumstances.”
“It is not either marriage or civil union, it is a legal figure type contract that gives rights to two people to live together,” Madrigal said. “We believe that this project does not solve the problem of citizenship that we have as LGBT populations, and it is for this reason that this project is not supported by the majority of organizations who work on human rights and sexual diversity.”
Madrigal also pointed out “we don’t see a quick exit” on the issue because the Costa Rican Constitutional Court has said it is the responsibility of the country’s Congress to decide the issue. “The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court could choose to take this particular Costa Rican case,” he said. “We are aware above all the commission, like the court, will take its time to resolve it.”
A CIPAC poll earlier this year found 67 percent of LGBT Costa Ricans support civil unions, compared to only 22 percent who back the president’s proposal and 11 percent who endorse marriage rights for same-sex couples.
“From the people it’s no big deal,” José Chaves, general manager of Gay Tours that operates tours and other activities for gay visitors to Manuel Antonio National Park and other parts of the country, told the Blade. “We are not having manifestations of people in the streets saying like, ‘no, that should not be like that.’ It’s more like ‘of course, let the gay people have the rights and it’s no problem.’ But on the other hand it’s all these people in the government and the church from inside of the government that’s working against it.”
Pete Thelen, a co-owner of the Windy City Times who owns two vacation homes near Manuel Antonio National Park, agreed.
“Most Costa Ricans are a live-and-let-live kind of people, so if it doesn’t affect them, they don’t really mind it,” he told the Blade. “If civil unions would go through, I don’t think it would be a problem for most Costa Ricans. We’ve never had any problems with our neighbors. They’ve accepted us.”
Japan
Japan should end abusive detention conditions for transgender people
Mistreatment exacerbated by ‘hostage justice’ system

Tomoya Asanuma, a prominent transgender activist in Tokyo, faced the triple abuses of Japan’s “hostage justice” system, hostile detention conditions, and mistreatment trans people face in the absence of meaningful legal protections.
For Asanuma, March 14, 2024, was supposed to be another Thursday at work. At around 7 a.m., he woke up to the sound of someone repeatedly ringing his doorbell. Through the intercom, Asanuma saw three men wearing dark-colored clothes, this time pounding his front door. When he opened the door, the men identified themselves as police officers and showed him an arrest warrant.
This was the beginning of what Asanuma recently described to Human Rights Watch as being “difficult to put into words.” After Japanese police arrested him for sexual assault for allegedly hugging an acquaintance from behind, the authorities held him for months at a pre-trial detention center.
During this time, they mocked his transgender identity during interrogation, denied him access to medical services such as dental care, and initially denied hormone treatment until he obtained a recommendation from a doctor.
While some authorities showed a level of consideration for Asanuma, including letting him shower away from other detained men, the abusive treatment he faced led him to attempt suicide twice.
Trans people in Japan are in legal limbo. Historically, they have faced outright discrimination — including a law compelling them to be surgically sterilized for legal gender recognition — and barriers to accessing education, employment, and health care. A landmark Supreme Court decision in 2023 declared the sterilization requirement unconstitutional, but reform has stalled in parliament — leaving trans people’s basic rights in limbo.
The courts finally granted bail to Asanuma in July 2024 and found him not guilty in January 2025. But in a country with a 99.8 percent conviction rate for indicted cases, Asanuma had to live through acute fear as authorities forcibly tried to obtain a confession from him during interrogations without the presence of his lawyer.
His fears are grounded in a justice system with a well-earned reputation for abuse and arbitrariness. His experience is part of systemic treatment in Japan called “hostage justice,” under which criminal suspects are detained for prolonged periods, sometimes months or years, unless they confess to the charges. This denies them the rights to due process and a fair trial.
The authorities ultimately dropped the sexual assault allegations, but charged Asanuma with assault, which is punishable by up to two years in prison or up to a 300,000 yen fine ($2,000.) Prosecutors sought a 200,000 yen fine. Despite this, because he pleaded not guilty, a court rejected his request for bail four times and detained him for more than 100 days in pre-trial detention, punishing him disproportionately since the prosecutors did not even seek imprisonment for his alleged crime.
In Japan’s hostage justice system, authorities frequently subject suspects to harsh interrogations to coerce confessions from them during pre-indictment detention. Defense lawyers are not permitted to be present, and the questioning does not stop even when a suspect invokes their constitutional right to remain silent. Indeed, Asanuma invoked his right to remain silent, but authorities interrogated him for hours on 13 occasions.
The case of Iwao Hakamata highlights the dangers of this practice. Hakamata, a former professional boxer, was arrested on Aug. 18, 1966, for murdering a family of four. Following harsh interrogations by the police and prosecutors, he confessed nearly a month later. Based on this coerced confession, Hakamata was indicted and subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence and was eventually acquitted — 58 years after his arrest — on Sept. 26, 2024, following a retrial.
To prevent further abuses and wrongful convictions spurred by the “hostage justice” system, the Japanese government should not as a general rule deny bail to suspects in pretrial detention, and should end interrogations without legal counsel that often involve coerced confessions through manipulation and intimidation.
The Japanese government should also improve the conditions under which suspects are being held, including by ensuring adequate access to all medical services, and revising the Notice Regarding Treatment Guidelines for Detainees with Gender Identity Disorder by specifying that hormone replacement therapy and other gender-affirming medical interventions are medically necessary and should be made available to all imprisoned people who want them.
“My case is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are others who are detained much longer,” Asanuma said. “I think this experience gave me a good reason to speak up even more for the rights of suspects going forward,” he added.
Teppei Kasai is a program officer for Japan at Human Rights Watch.
Uganda
Trans Ugandans build power through business
One organization backs economic projects that can reshape lives

Achen, not her real name, is a soft-spoken 26-year-old from northern Uganda. She never imagined she would run a business, let alone one that would allow her to earn enough to send her younger sister to school. For years, she moved from shelter to shelter, surviving day by day, evicted from rental rooms, beaten on the street, and regularly denied healthcare simply for being a transgender woman.
When Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023, along with other trans persons, Achen’s fragile life collapsed further. Fear intensified, support systems buckled, and donor-funded safe spaces that once offered her hope shuttered under a wave of foreign aid suspensions. Her voice, already timid, nearly disappeared altogether.
Achen is one of transgender and gender diverse persons who have found a lifeline through the Trans Resilience and Economic Empowerment (TREE) a bold initiative by Tranz Network Uganda that has been running since 2020. Designed as an integrated support economic empowerment platform in the face of both institutional hostility and global donor shifts, TREE is one of the few initiatives/ strategies still standing amid Uganda’s increasingly restrictive environment.
At a time when the LGBTQ+ movement in Uganda is grappling with an unprecedented dual crisis — legal persecution at home and donor withdrawal abroad — this initiative is a timely intervention to restore agency and dignity through livelihoods. Funded modestly through a patchwork of partner organizations, TREE delivers skills training, seed capital, mentorship with health services linkage/referral to trans and gender diverse people navigating the harsh realities of criminalization and economic exclusion.
Since it began, TREE has supported trans-led businesses across Uganda’s towns and cities, from Kampala to Mbarara, Lugazi to Mbale. Groups have been trained in financial literacy and record-keeping, received smartphones to enable digital transactions, and built networks of savings and credit through Village Savings and Loan Associations while creating a safe space and linkage to health services like HIV test and counseling and gender violence services. Trans-led businesses in piggery, tailoring, catering, vending, and crafts have emerged not just as sources of income but as community hubs.
Some beneficiaries have gone on to earn certificates in accounting and financial management. Others have used their new income to rent safe housing, restart school, or reenter HIV treatment. Emergency assistance has been extended to community members facing eviction or violence, including access to medical care, relocation support, and GBV counseling. These interventions have created a ripple effect that is difficult to quantify but undeniable to those living it. One project beneficiary described TREE as “not just money, but a second chance.”
Economic marginalization has long been wielded as a weapon of control against transgender communities. Trans and gender diverse persons in Uganda are systematically excluded from the formal labor market due to discriminatory hiring practices, lack of legal recognition on IDs, and pervasive social stigma. Many are pushed into unstable, informal sectors like sex work, which not only expose them to health risks but also legal vulnerability under vague morality clauses in the law.
In rural areas, where surveillance and stigma are even more pronounced, trans and gender diverse persons report being blacklisted from community savings groups, denied land access, and forcibly outed when seeking credit or medical attention. With nowhere else to turn, many live in cycles of poverty, dependent on shrinking NGO safety nets that were already under strain even before U.S. foreign aid cuts triggered widespread closures.
The 2025 executive order(s) issued by President Donald Trump, which halted 83 percent of USAID programs, acted like a wrecking ball through Uganda’s LGBTQ+ support ecosystem. Despite waivers allowing continued funding for basic HIV and tuberculosis treatment, the cuts included a freeze on programs that offered diversity and inclusion services. Shelters closed, staff were laid off, mental health services evaporated, and peer-led HIV prevention programs vanished. As access points to HIV testing and treatment diminished, stigma deepened. Several community members who previously accessed PrEP, lubricants, and condoms through drop-in centers began reporting new infections or treatment interruptions. In these conditions, economic resilience isn’t just about income — it’s about survival.
Williams Apako, executive director of Tranz Network Uganda, says the TREE initiative is about putting power back into the hands of trans people by recognizing that economic agency is foundational to every other form of empowerment, including health.
“You can’t ask someone to adhere to HIV treatment or avoid risky behavior when they’re hungry, homeless, or too afraid to walk to a clinic,” he says. “This strategy is about reframing resilience not as endurance but as self-determination. Each cycle has adapted to what our communities are facing. When people lose shelter, we help them find footing again. When businesses collapse due to legal attacks, we help them pivot. The ability to make money on your own terms means you can walk away from violence, from unsafe sex, from dependence.”
Afiya, not her real name, is a 22-year-old trans woman in Lugazi. She turned to TREE after being kicked out by her family and missing her antiretroviral medication for weeks.
“They helped me get back into care quietly,” she says. “But also, I now braid hair from home and have customers who love my work. I have my own money now. It’s not much, but it’s mine.”
TREE-supported organizations, whose names have been withheld to protect participants, have trained dozens of trans persons in tailoring, hairdressing, catering, piggery, and crafts. Others are piloting mobile vending and delivery services in areas where visibility is dangerous. The project does more than provide capital. It helps beneficiaries establish business registration, form cooperatives, and, where possible, partner with sympathetic local leaders to create safer work environments while still accessing critical reproductive health services. In one region, a local health center has agreed to integrate HIV services with the TREE enterprise hub, providing discreet access to ARVs and counseling without requiring individuals to self-identify as LGBTQ+.
Hakim, not his real name, shares his journey with honesty and strength.
“As if life wasn’t already challenging enough as a trans person, I was also broke. I wanted to do something that would help me earn a living without having to depend on anyone. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset, but back then, I didn’t know where to begin. I took a leap of faith and got a loan from the SACCO (Savings and Credit Cooperative Organization),, which I invested in a sisal sponge business. It took time, but it paid off. With my own hands, I’ve managed to repay the loan and sustain myself. That’s something I’m really proud of.”
What makes the TREE project stand out is its decentralized design. Rather than imposing a single model, it tailors support to each organization’s strengths and the local risks they face. Some groups have chosen to stay low-profile, operating income-generating activities from private homes. Others have gone semi-public, advocating for inclusive budgeting from district councils. In either case, the project positions trans persons not as passive recipients of aid, but as innovators, workers, and citizens. Several beneficiaries reported, for the first time in their lives, being able to make a financial decision without external approval. One said simply, “I paid my rent without begging. That was new for me.”
Yet even as TREE offers a glimpse of hope, Apako is realistic about its scale and limits.
“This is not a replacement for healthcare or human rights protections,” he says. “Economic empowerment can’t thrive in a vacuum. We need international solidarity, we need political pressure on the Ugandan government to respect human dignity, and we need donors, including private foundations, to rethink how they fund resilience in hostile contexts.” He notes that several TREE partners are already overwhelmed with requests for support that they cannot meet.
Uganda’s HIV strategy, guided by the Uganda AIDS Commission and supported in part by global actors like UNAIDS and the Global Fund, risks losing its effectiveness if it continues to marginalize or exclude key populations. The rollback of targeted, inclusive programs will not only lead to higher transmission rates but also undermine decades of progress in public health. TREE, though small and other supporting programming and strategies in solidarity with LGBTQI+ communities in Uganda, reminds us that solutions must center the people most affected. In a moment when rhetoric is high and funding is low, this project speaks the language of possibility.
For Achen and others, the transformation has been quiet but profound. She now runs a small catering stall with two other trans women. She no longer sleeps with one eye open, waiting for a landlord to bang on her door. When asked what she would tell other trans persons scared of being visible or starting over, she says, “Even in fear, we can plant something small. And from that, we live.”
Williams Apako is the executive officer of the Tranz Network Uganda and a board member of the Global Fund’s Uganda Country Coordinating Mechanism.
Argentina
Two trans women document Argentina military dictatorship’s persecution
Carolina Boetti and Marzia Echenique arrested multiple times after 1976 coup

Editor’s note: Washington Blade International News Editor Michael K. Lavers was on assignment in Argentina and Uruguay from April 2-12, 2025.
ROSARIO, Argentina — Two transgender women in Argentina’s Santa Fe province are documenting the persecution of trans people that took place during the brutal military dictatorship that governed their country from 1976-1983.
Carolina Boetti and Marzia Echenique created the Travestí Trans Santa Fe Archive, which seeks to “create a collective memory,” in 2020. (“Travestí” is the Spanish word for “crossdresser.”)
The archive, among other things, includes interviews with trans women who the dictatorship arrested and tortured. The archive also contains photographs from that period.
The archive is not in a specific location, but Boetti and Echenique have given presentations at local schools and universities. They have also spoken at a museum in Rosario, the largest city in Santa Fe province that is roughly 200 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, that honors the dictatorship’s victims.
Boetti and Echenique during an April 11 interview at a Rosario hotel said they are trying to raise funds that would allow them to digitize the archive and house it in a permanent location.
“We have this material that is fantastic,” said Boetti.
The Associated Press notes human rights groups estimate the dictatorship killed or forcibly disappeared upwards of 30,000 people in what became known as the “dirty war.” The dictatorship specifically targeted students, journalists, labor union leaders, and anyone else who it thought posed a threat.
The dictatorship first detained Echenique in 1979 when she was 16. She said it targeted her and other trans women because they were “not within that strict” binary of man and woman.
“There was a dictator during the dictatorship, and he dictated this binarism, and there was no other way than man or woman,” Echenique told the Blade. “Everything else was penalized, deprived of all rights. They took away everything.”
Boetti was 15 when the dictatorship first detained her.
“They detained me because of my sexual orientation,” she told the Blade. “Homosexuality in those years was penalized under the law.”
Boetti said the law in 1982 — the year when she began her transition — penalized crossdressing, prostitution and vagrancy with up to 120 days in jail. Boetti told the Blade that authorities “constantly detained me” from 1982 until she left Argentina in the 1990s.
Echenique said the regime once detained her for six months.
“The way of living, of studying, of walking freely down the street, of living somewhere, of sitting down to eat something in a bar or how we are sitting today, for example, was unthinkable in those years,” she said.
Echenique left Argentina in 1988, three years after the dictatorship ended. She returned to the country in 2006.
“The dictatorship ended in ’83, but not for the trans community,” she said.
Rosario and Santa Fe, the provincial capital, in 2018 implemented a reparation policy for trans people who suffered persecution under the dictatorship. They remain the only cities in Argentina with such a program.
Boetti on May 17, 2018, during an International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia ceremony over which then-Santa Fe Gov. Miguel Lifshitz presided became the first trans person in Argentina to receive reparations. Boetti receives a monthly pension of ARG 40,000 ($34.48) and a monthly stipend that pays for her health care.
Those who have received reparations successfully presented evidence to a judge that proved they suffered persecution and repression during the dictatorship. Boetti and Echenique pointed out that only 10 of the 50 trans women in Santa Fe who the dictatorship are known to have persecuted are still alive.

Post-dictatorship Argentina became global trans rights leader
Then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012 signed Argentina’s landmark Gender Identity Law that, among other things, allows trans and nonbinary people to legally change their gender without medical intervention. The country in 2010 extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Then-President Alberto Fernández, who is unrelated to Cristina Fernández, in 2020 signed the Trans Labor Quota Law, which set aside at least 1 percent of public sector jobs for trans people. Fernández in 2021 issued a decree that allowed nonbinary Argentines to choose an “X” gender marker on their National Identity Document or DNI.

Alba Rueda, a trans woman and well-known activist, in 2022 became Argentina’s special envoy for LGBTQ and intersex rights.
President Javier Milei has implemented several anti-trans measures since he took office in December 2023. These include a decree that restricts minors’ access to gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatment and the dismissal of trans people who the government hired under the Trans Labor Quota Law.
Milei closed the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism, a government agency known by the acronym INADI that provided support and resources to people who suffered discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors. He also eliminated Argentina’s Women, Gender, and Diversity Ministry under which Rueda worked until Fernández left office.

Gay Congressman Esteban Paulón, a long-time LGBTQ activist, in January filed a criminal complaint against Milei after he linked the LGBTQ community to pedophilia and made other homophobic and transphobic comments during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Paulón is among those who attended the 2018 ceremony during which Boetti received her reparations.
Echenique noted the restoration of democracy in Argentina did not end anti-trans discrimination and persecution in the country.
“We came from the period of the dictatorship, but we do not forget that everything didn’t end then,” she said. “The persecutions were worse than what we suffered during the period of the dictatorship once democracy returned.”

Boetti said she does not think Argentina will once again become a dictatorship under Milei.
“But unfortunately, there is a lot of harassment and a lot of hate speech,” said Boetti.
“There are now laws that protect us, but there is a fight for sure,” added Echenique. “I don’t think we’ll go back to how things were before, and that’s why I again emphasize the importance of archiving memory in this.”
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