World
UNHCR highlights work with LGBTQ asylum seekers in Central America
Agency adopted LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination policy in 2018
Officials with the U.N. Refugee Agency in Central America and Mexico say they remain committed to helping LGBTQ asylum seekers and migrants in the region.
UNHCR Guatemala Representative Besem Obenson told the Washington Blade during an interview at her Guatemala City office last September that she and her colleagues work with Asociación Lambda and other Guatemalan NGOs to provide LGBTQ asylum seekers with access to LGBTQ-friendly shelters, psychosocial care and other programs once they identify themselves as LGBTQ. Obenson said UNHCR also works with the Guatemalan government to improve the way it responds to an asylum seeker with an ID document that does not correspond to their gender presentation.
“Our role … is to strengthen the government’s response to refugees and asylum seekers,” said Obenson.
Rafael Zavala, a senior UNHCR official in El Salvador, echoed Obenson when he spoke with the Blade at UNHCR’s office in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital, last July.
Zavala noted UNHCR has a formal partnership with COMCAVIS Trans, a Salvadoran transgender rights group. Zavala said UNHCR also works with two other LGBTQ groups — Aspidh Arcoíris Trans and Diké LGBTI+ — in a less official capacity.
“What we do is work at the community level to strengthen their role in communities,” Zavala told the Blade. “We also build for them safe spaces (to accept internally displaced people, migrants and deportees who are LGBTQ) and also find spaces where they can receive services, attention and legal assistance.”
Anti-LGBTQ violence among migration ‘root causes’
Vice President Kamala Harris and others have acknowledged anti-LGBTQ violence is one of the “root causes” of migration from Central America’s Northern Triangle that includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The Mexican Commission on Refugee Aid (COMAR) on Monday reported 27.7 percent of the 131,448 people who asked for asylum in Mexico in 2021 were Honduran.
The Justice Department notes 85,391 people asked for asylum in the U.S. in the 2021 fiscal year from Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021. More than twice as many people asked for asylum in the U.S. during the 2020 fiscal year, which began before the pandemic.
The Justice Department statistics indicate 10 percent of the 8,679 Guatemalans, 11 percent of the 5,464 Hondurans and 14 percent of the 8,030 Salvadorans who applied for asylum in the U.S. during the 2021 fiscal year won their cases. Neither the Justice Department nor COMAR specify the asylum seekers’ sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Biden administration last February began to allow into the U.S. asylum seekers who the previous White House forced to pursue their cases in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols program. The Biden administration has sought to end MPP, but a federal appeals court last month blocked this effort.
Title 42, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the pandemic, remains in place.
UNHCR non-discrimination policy includes sexual orientation, gender identity
UNHCR Senior Protection Officer Sofia Cardona last summer during an interview at UNHCR’s Mexico City office acknowledged that identifying asylum seekers who are LGBTQ is a challenge. Cardona and other UNHCR representatives with whom the Blade spoke for this story referred to the agency’s 2018 non-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and gender identity and specifically recognizes LGBTQ asylum seekers.
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons face complex challenges, threats and barriers and are often exposed to discrimination, abuse, prejudice and violence due to their sex, sexual orientation and/or gender identity,” notes the policy. “This is often severely compounded in situations of displacement, where the nature of the discrimination they encounter can be particularly virulent, their isolation from family and community profound and the harm inflicted on them severe.”
The policy states “diversity refers to different values, attitudes, cultural perspectives, beliefs, ethnicities, nationalities, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, health, social and economic status, skills and other specific personal characteristics.”
“Diversity characteristics vary from person to person and intersect, making each person unique,” it reads. “These differences must be recognized, understood, respected and valued by UNHCR in each context and operation in order to address effectively the needs of all persons of concern. Respecting diversity means recognizing and valuing those differences and creating a protective, inclusive and non-discriminatory environment where everyone’s rights are upheld.”
Cardona noted UNHCR staff and representatives of NGOs and governments with which it works regularly attend LGBTQ sensitivity trainings. Topics include ways to determine whether an asylum seeker is LGBTQ without forcing them to out themselves.
“You can’t force a disclosure,” said Cardona. “You can neve directly ask somebody, so, are you gay? Are you transgender? It’s incorrect because you may put people at risk, so it’s a very thin line of you can never force a disclosure of someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation, but you must signify to somebody that you are a safe space to receive that disclosure.”
Cardona said UNHCR representatives can ask an asylum seeker what their name is or disclose to them that they are “de la diversidad” or “from a diverse background.”
“You never begin an interview assuming anything by the way a person looks because in forced displacement gender expression is unlikely to match up to gender identity,” Cardona told the Blade. “So you need to understand that you may very well have conversations with a trans man who is wearing makeup and a dress, and you may very well be having a conversation with a trans woman who has a beard because that is how they are protecting themselves in a sphere of forced displacement.”
Cardona also noted UNHCR staff wear buttons with slogans that include “en seguridad” or “espacio libre de discriminación,” which translates into “in safety” or “discrimination-free space” respectively. Both Cardona and Zavala were wearing such buttons when they spoke with the Blade.
“We try very, very, very hard to work with our staff and also our partners … so they have their capacity strengthened in LGBTI rights,” Dagmara Mejia, the director of UNHCR’s field office in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, told the Blade last summer during an interview at her office.
Mejia noted the trainings she and her colleagues conduct focuses on topics that include the use pronouns that correspond to an asylum seeker’s gender identity and shelter standards for LGBTQ asylum seekers.
UNHCR works with Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter for LGBTQ asylum seekers in Tijuana that is less than two miles from El Chaparral, the main port of entry between the city and San Diego. UNHCR also maintains contact with Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration Executive Director Steve Roth and the California-based Transgender Law Center.
“If there is no disclosure, no trust, then we cannot meet their needs and respond,” said Mejia.
“We also create these environments that allow the community to feel safe and to know that it is a place where they can come without the risk of discrimination,” said Zavala.
Obenson told the Blade that UNHCR has worked with the Foundation for Ecodevelopment and Conservation (FUNDAECO), a Guatemalan NGO, to hire asylum seekers who have chosen to stay in Guatemala as park rangers. Trans women are among those who FUNDAECO has hired.
“People need to feel safe,” said Obenson. “People need to be able to live their authentic selves without fear of violence or fear of retribution.”
“That for me, as a rep, is what I strive for,” added Obenson. “Everything that we do here at UNHCR is to encourage that.”
Ernesto Valle contributed to this story from San Salvador, El Salvador.
Netherlands
Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade draws hundreds of thousands
Gay Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten among participants
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key are on assignment in the Netherlands through Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Hundreds of thousands of people lined Amsterdam’s canals on Saturday for the city’s annual Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, who is openly gay, is among those who participated in the parade that featured more than 80 boats. Participants held signs and posters that, among other things, read “proud to be intersex” and “lesbians love you and a free Palestine.”
The Washington Blade saw at least two attendees holding fans that read “fuck Trump.” One of the boats also compared President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as “the kissing couple.”
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The parade took place a week after a terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured.
It passed the Homomonument, a memorial to gays and lesbians who have suffered persecution. The Homomonument has been transformed into a makeshift memorial to the victims of the July 25 terrorist attack in the German capital.
View on Threads
The Canal Parade took place during World Pride, which will end in Amsterdam on Aug. 9.
European Union
Poland’s top court rejects recognition of same-sex marriages from other EU countries
Ruling sets up potential clash with bloc
Poland’s top court this week rejected the recognition of same-sex marriages legally performed in other EU countries.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg last November ruled in favor of a same-sex couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage. Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court in March reaffirmed the decision.
The couple, who lives in Poland, brought their case to Polish courts in 2019. The Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.
The Polish government in May announced it will recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other EU countries. Polish President Karol Nawrocki on July 17 vetoed bills that would have extended rights to same-sex couples.
The Constitutional Tribunal ruling, which it issued on July 28, was unanimous and final. It also sets up a potential clash between it and the EU Court of Justice.
Taiwan
Taiwan’s government has failed to update process to change gender markers on ID documents
Interior Ministry’s 2008 directive remains in place
More than four years after Taiwan began formally studying legislation to overhaul its legal gender recognition system, and despite repeated recommendations from international human rights experts, the government has yet to introduce a bill that would replace decades-old administrative rules governing how transgender people can change the gender marker on official documents.
On May 15, an independent international review committee examining Taiwan’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urged the government to enact legislation governing legal gender recognition. The committee said Taiwan’s continued reliance on an administrative order, despite a 2023 Supreme Administrative Court ruling that mandatory gender-affirming surgery violates constitutional rights, has created legal uncertainty for transgender people, administrative authorities and judges.
In Taiwan, legal gender recognition has long been governed by a 2008 Interior Ministry administrative directive rather than legislation.
Under the directive, applicants seeking to change the gender marker on their national identification documents are generally required to provide diagnoses of gender dysphoria from two psychiatrists and proof that they have undergone gender-affirming surgery. For trans men, this typically involves the removal of the breasts, uterus, and ovaries, while trans women generally must undergo the removal of the penis and testicles. Because these requirements are established through an administrative directive rather than a law enacted by the legislature, trans rights activists and human rights organizations have argued they violate human rights.
Although Taiwanese courts have increasingly allowed trans people to change the gender marker on their official documents without undergoing gender-affirming surgery, the Interior Ministry’s 2008 directive requiring surgery remains in force. As a result, Taiwan’s administrative rules and judicial decisions are no longer fully aligned.
In a landmark ruling in May 2024, the Taipei High Administrative Court ordered a household registration office to approve a trans man’s application to change the gender marker on his household registration without requiring gender-affirming surgery. The court held that the Interior Ministry’s 2008 administrative directive, which requires applicants to submit proof of surgery, cannot be treated as an absolute prerequisite for legal gender recognition. Instead, it found that the applicant had provided sufficient medical evidence of a stable and long-standing gender identity and that denying the application solely because he had not undergone surgery was unlawful.
The Executive Yuan began work on legislation in April 2020, when it decided to commission an academic study examining international legal gender recognition systems rather than immediately drafting a law.
The government subsequently commissioned Shih Hsin University to prepare a report reviewing foreign legal models and developing legislative recommendations, including a bill. Since 2022, the Executive Yuan has held a series of inter-agency meetings involving multiple ministries to consider the study’s recommendations and legislation governing legal gender recognition, though no bill has yet been enacted.
In September 2023, Taiwan’s Supreme Administrative Court set aside a lower court ruling that had upheld the Interior Ministry’s refusal to change a trans person’s legal gender without proof of surgery and ordered the case to be reheard.
The court held that the ministry’s 2008 administrative directive requiring surgery could not be treated as the controlling legal standard because it lacked a clear statutory basis and implicated constitutional protections, including bodily autonomy and personality rights. Rather than treating surgery as an automatic prerequisite, the court instructed the lower court to determine whether the applicant had established a stable gender identity based on the evidence presented.
“From our perspective, the primary goal should be lowering the barriers to legal gender recognition, particularly by abolishing the mandatory surgery requirement,” the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, a nonprofit LGBTQ advocacy and support organization founded in 1998, said in an email to the Washington Blade.
The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association said several factors have stalled progress toward comprehensive legislation.
The organization told the Blade the complexity of the issue and the lack of constructive dialogue are among the primary obstacles. It said legal gender recognition requires extensive discussion, with views differing even within the trans community itself. The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association added that opinions also vary widely within the legislature and across Taiwanese society, while effective channels for dialogue remain lacking.
The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association also attributed the lack of progress to what it described as a lack of political will and an over reliance on “social consensus.”
According to the organization, the executive branch lacks the political momentum to advance legal gender recognition reforms. The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association said the Interior Ministry and other relevant agencies have often adopted a passive approach in the face of opposition from conservative groups, delaying progress by arguing that there is no social consensus or that further discussion is needed.
The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association also said progress has been hindered by what it described as a backlash following the legalization of same-sex marriage. According to the organization, groups opposed to gender equality and trans rights, including some conservative religious and anti-trans organizations, shifted their focus to trans issues after marriage equality became law. The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association said these groups have promoted fear-based narratives, including concerns about safety in public restrooms, leading many politicians to view trans rights as a politically risky issue and reducing momentum for legislative action.
“The existing system makes changing one’s legal gender marker extremely difficult. Forced surgical removal of reproductive organs imposes a heavy financial burden since it must be paid out-of-pocket, and not every trans person can afford, desires, or is medically advised to undergo organ removal,” the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association said. “Additionally, requiring psychiatric evaluations is problematic because specialized medical resources are scarce and concentrated in major cities. These obstacles severely impact transgender individuals in their daily lives.”
The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association said the continued reliance on an administrative directive rather than legislation has created systemic uncertainty for trans people. The organization said the absence of a statutory framework allows executive agencies to alter requirements without legislative oversight, leaving trans people uncertain whether future policies will become more restrictive or more permissive. The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association added that while several trans people have secured favorable court rulings since 2023, those decisions apply only to the individual cases before the courts and do not guarantee similar outcomes for others. The group also said pursuing litigation requires significant time, financial resources, and emotional investment, making it an inaccessible path for many trans people seeking legal recognition.
The Executive Yuan and the Interior Ministry did not respond to the Blade’s requests for comment.
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Taiwan’s government has failed to update process to change gender markers on ID documents
