World
ICC for first time recognizes LGBTQ people as victims of gender persecution
Chief prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for Taliban leaders behind human rights abuses
The International Criminal Court on Jan. 23 for the first time recognized LGBTQ people as victims of gender persecution under international criminal law.
Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, announced a request for arrest warrants against Taliban officials accused of targeting women and others perceived as defying the group’s strict gender norms in Afghanistan. It is the first time LGBTQ people have been explicitly named as victims in a gender persecution case before the court.
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, there has been a significant escalation in the repression of LGBTQ people and women. A report that Human Rights Watch released in 2022 documented nearly 60 cases of targeted violence against LGBTQ people in the months following the Taliban’s return to power.
The Washington Blade in October 2022 reported the Taliban have frequently used the contents of seized cell phones to track and target LGBTQ people, further intensifying the climate of fear, and violence against the community in Afghanistan.
In its February 2023 report, “A Mountain on My Shoulders: 18 Months of Taliban Persecution of LGBTIQ Afghans,” Outright International detailed how Taliban security officials systematically targeted LGBTQ people, especially gay men and transgender women, subjecting them to physical and sexual assault as well as arbitrary detention. The report also noted Taliban authorities had carried out public floggings for alleged same-sex relations, with the Taliban Supreme Court publicly defending these punishments on social media at the time.
The report indicates Taliban officials had escalated their efforts to target LGBTQ people, making it a greater priority. They collected intelligence on LGBTQ activists and community members, hunted them down, and subjected them to violence and humiliation as part of their systematic campaign of repression.
Khan has sought charges against the Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for crimes against women, girls, and LGBTQ people. Khan said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Haqqani orchestrated systematic violations of fundamental rights, including physical integrity, autonomy, free movement, free expression, education, private and family life, and free assembly.
Khan further detailed that the Taliban’s persecution was committed in connection with other crimes under the Rome Statute, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts.
Reports indicate the Taliban has banned education for girls beyond sixth grade, severely restricting their access to education and limiting employment opportunities in health and education sectors. Taliban members have also beaten, detained, and tortured women who participated in protests in support of their rights, and have carried out violent attacks against LGBTQ people.
Khan’s requests have been submitted to a pretrial chamber comprising three ICC judges, who will decide whether to issue the warrants. The ICC initially authorized the Afghanistan investigation in March 2020, following a preliminary examination that began in 2007. The investigation, however, was paused for several years as the prosecutor and ICC judges considered a request by Afghanistan’s former government to defer ICC proceedings in favor of domestic prosecutions the government claimed to be pursuing.
The judges noted any cases pursued by the former Afghan government represented, at most, a “very limited fraction” of those falling within the scope of an ICC investigation. They also observed that the current government displayed no interest in upholding the deferral request. The ICC, as a result, authorized the resumption of the investigation in October 2022.
“This is a historic moment since it is the first time in history that the ICC has officially recognized the crimes committed against LGBTIQ+ people. This application for an arrest warrant sends a strong message that the international community rejects the gender persecution of LGBTIQ+ people,” said Artemis Akbary, executive director of the Afghanistan LGBTIQ Organization. “LGBTIQ+ people in Afghanistan need our support and solidarity more than ever, and we must ensure that they have access to justice and accountability.”
Outright International in its press release stated this development marks a significant step toward addressing the unique vulnerabilities of LGBTQ people in conflict and crisis situations.
“The Taliban’s reign of terror over women and LGBTIQ people has been based on the assumption that gender persecution can persist with impunity. The ICC’s recognition of LGBTIQ victims challenges that presumption by recognizing the humanity of our communities,” said Outright International Senior Director of Law, Policy, and Research Neela Ghoshal. “Once arrest warrants are issued against Taliban officials, member states should support the court’s efforts to swiftly bring them to justice.”
Human Rights Watch International Justice Director Liz Evenson also welcomed Khan’s announcement.
“The ICC prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against two senior Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender persecution should put the Taliban’s oppression of women, girls, and gender nonconforming people back on the international community’s radar,” said Evenson. “With no justice in sight in Afghanistan, the ICC warrant requests offer an essential pathway for a measure of accountability.”
She added the “international crimes committed in Afghanistan are vast, but a broad approach to accountability is needed to break cycles of impunity that have led to more abuses.”
“ICC member countries should ensure the court has the backing and practical assistance it needs to expand its Afghanistan investigations,” said Evenson.
The Afghan Justice Ministry has not responded to the Washington Blade’s request for comment.
“It is truly groundbreaking for the International Criminal Court to recognize our communities among the victims and survivors of the most heinous crimes and their consequences, and to acknowledge gender identity and gender expression among the drivers of human rights violations,” said ILGA World Executive Director Julia Ehrt. “These warrants of arrest highlight human rights violations that civil society has long documented and that the world can no longer ignore.”
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ryan-Carr Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.
Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”
Netherlands
Dutch prime minister opens World Pride Human Rights Conference
Rob Jetten is country’s first openly gay head of government
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key are on assignment in Amsterdam through Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Wednesday opened the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam.
Jetten — who in February became the country’s first openly gay prime minister — began his remarks with an acknowledgment that the July 25 terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day that left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured “filled me with anger and sorrow.”
He started to speak after a group of activists began to shout at him over his government’s position on Palestine — the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders in connection with crimes against humanity it says they committed in the Gaza Strip and Israel after Oct. 7.
Jetten stood silently and allowed them to protest before security personnel removed them from the room.
View on Threads
Jetten in his speech acknowledged this year marks 25 years since the Netherlands became the first country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. He also pointed out 2025 marks Amsterdam Pride’s Canal Parade‘s 30th year.
“More and more in recent years, we’ve seen hard won progress being eroded,” conceded Jetten. “We’ve seen countries backsliding in equal rights legislation. We’ve seen homophobic hate speech becoming more overt and aggressive, and not only out in the real world, but online as well.”
Jetten pointed out “online hatred is one of the biggest threats facing the LGBTQIA+ people today.”
“All around the world … misinformation and disinformation can be spread in the blink of an eye with a single mouse click, reaching much further and much faster than NGOs, youth workers and health organizations can,” he said. “This is always how hatred takes hold. First in the shadows, outside the spotlight of society, underestimated by everyone, until, having grown into a many headed monster, it crawls out of the darkness.”
Jetten said his government this fall will launch “a social dialog on online discrimination and offering specific guidance on action to take.” This will include “training courses for municipalities and civil society organizations to help them deal with online hate speech.”
His government over the next three years will invest €7.5 million each year “in improving the safety of the queer community in our cities with an alliance of organizations committed to safety, both in the public space and in the workspace for LGBTQI+ people, and with a public information campaign to combat discrimination and disinformation.” Jetten also said the government will promote a campaign in Dutch schools that encourages students and teachers to wear purple as a way to show their support for the LGBTQ community.
’Equal rights are not a Western agenda’
Jetten in his speech also singled out “conservative forces” in Uganda, Senegal, and in other countries who are framing LGBTQ rights “developments as a neocolonial Western agenda.”
“Under the pretense of resisting so-called Western moral decadence, horrendous laws are enacted and promoted, laws that put the rights of free people under severe pressure,” he said. “But in reality, many communities in these countries have a long history of diversity and freedom, and the laws that impose the restrictions were in fact put in place by the colonial powers.”
“No matter how hard those conservative forces try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, queer communities around the world know that equal rights are not a Western agenda,” added Jetten. “They are first and foremost a human agenda.”
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and Nayyab Ali, co-chair of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Alliance Pakistan, are among those who also spoke on Wednesday. Lady Phyll, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and Camiel Welling, supervisor of the Amsterdam Trans Clinic, are co-hosting the conference that ends Friday.
Celebrity News
My evening with Madonna
Gay icon headlined the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in the Netherlands through Aug. 10. They will be covering World Pride in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM — Madonna and 6,000 of her closest friends celebrated World Pride at Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall early Sunday morning. I was fortunate enough to be one of them.
Madonna last Wednesday nearly broke the internet when she said on social media in Dutch that “I got somethin’ I wanna talk about,” referring to an opening line in “Danceteria,” one of the tracks on her “Confessions II” album that has received rave reviews since its July 2 release. The track has been on near constant replay on my playlist since I first heard it.
— Madonna (@Madonna) July 28, 2026
MISTR — a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term care that has organized Madonna’s Club Confessions shows in the U.S. and the U.K. — later confirmed the rampant speculation. I woke up on July 30 to an email in my inbox from MISTR and the World Pride Music Festival PR team that said I was on the press list.
Madonna was indeed going to headline the World Pride Music Festival that Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced, and I was going to be there. OMFG!!!!
The gay icon had one more surprise in store.
The Dutch internet on Saturday once again broke over speculation that Kylie Minogue was going to appear alongside Madonna. I was getting ready to leave our hotel in Amsterdam on Saturday night when I saw a video of the two of them together.
“Madonna is now teasing Kylie Minogue on her social media … she may be one of her ‘special guests’ tonight,” I wrote in a text to Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff at 8:46 p.m.
“Have fun! This is turning into the gayest concert ever,” he responded.
I arrived at AFAS Live shortly before 11 p.m. My press contact walked me and two other Dutch journalists into the venue’s cavernous main room known as the Black Box. We made small talk for a few minutes before I started to walk around and listen to Josh Harrison who was on the decks.
Madonna was scheduled to take the stage at 1:30 a.m., but she is known for being late — she is Madonna and she does what she wants. Hayla, a British singer, and Bebe Rexha are among those who performed ahead of Madonna. Thousands of sweaty men — including a group of Australians next to me who were eagerly awaiting Kylie’s anticipated appearance — packed the Black Box and were dancing, anticipating what was to come.
MISTR CEO Tristan Schukraft at one point came on stage and declared Madonna was indeed in the building. The moment for which we were all eagerly waiting finally came shortly before 2:30 a.m.
“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage.
Stuart Price, who produced her “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album in 2005, manned the decks during Madonna’s set.
She opened it with “I Feel So Free” from “Confessions II.” Madonna then sang “Bring Your Love” and “Danceteria” to which this reporter — and everyone else — sang along.
Madonna then teased a surprise before she began to perform “Love Sensation.” Kylie soon appeared on stage. It was nearly too much for my fellow partygoers from Australia. It was indeed the gayest concert ever!
Madonna and Kylie performed “Love Sensation” together. They then sang “Hung Up” and “Sorry” from “Confessions on a Dance Floor” to round out the set that ended shortly after 3 a.m.
Madonna and I share the same birthday — Aug. 16 — and I would like to think she and Kylie gave me an early birthday present. In all seriousness though, it was an amazing night for me and for everyone else who was fortunate enough to be there.
“On the dance floor I feel so free,” says Madonna in the opening of “I Feel So Free.”
For those few precious hours at AFAS Live I did not think about the Trump-Vance administration and the myriad ways it is destroying the U.S. I did not think about the National Guard troops deployed to D.C. I did not think about the pointless wars that continue to ravage Ukraine and other countries around the world. I simply lost myself on the dance floor and celebrated an icon who has always stood with my community.
Thank you, Madonna.
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