Brody's Notes... U. S. State Department Releases 2009 Human Rights Report

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Mar 12 | The State Department yesterday released its 34th annual report to Congress that examines the human rights record of every country around the world.  The report documents a growing crisis in human rights abuse directed against LGBT people worldwide. 

U. S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking during the press briefing yesterday presenting the State Department's Human Rights Practises Report said;

"The principle that each person possesses equal moral value is a simple, self-evident truth."

In this report to Congress, for the first time, most of the country chapters have a dedicated section examining “societal abuses, discrimination, and acts of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”  In its cumulative impact, the report makes clear that LGBT rights are firmly rooted in basic human rights protections and that those protections are under severe attack in the world today.

Secretary Clinton noted; "Human rights are universal, but their experience is local. As we work to protect human rights at home and abroad, we remember that human rights begin, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “in small places close to home.” So when we work to secure human rights, we are working to protect the experiences that make life meaningful, to preserve each person’s ability to fulfill his or her God-given potential – the potential within every person to learn, discover and embrace the world around them; the potential to join freely with others to shape their communities and their societies so that every person can find fulfillment and self-sufficiency; the potential to share life’s beauties and tragedies, laughter and tears with the people they love. "

The Secretary, in her closing remarks said; 

"The timeless principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are a North Star guiding us toward the world we want to inhabit – a just world where, as President Obama has put it, peace rests on the “inherent rights and dignity of every individual.” With the facts in hand and the goals clear in our heads and our hearts, we recommit ourselves to continue the hard work of making human rights a human reality."

Mrs. Clinton then introduced Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, who in presenting the report's findings singled out the case of Uganda, where introduction of a draconian anti‐gay bill has resulted in serious abuse directed against Uganda’s LGBT community.
The report further documents LGBT‐related incidents in almost every country in the world, including a range of cases involving arbitrary arrest and detention, police abuse, rape, and murder. For instance, the report notes serious assaults against LGBT individuals in Jamaica, “including arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of homosexual patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of such persons.”
In Iraq, the report notes that “numerous press reports indicate that some victims were assaulted and murdered by having their anuses glued shut or their genitals cut off and stuffed down their throats until they suffocated.” The report highlights numerous instances in which police and other authorities have failed to investigate or prosecute such incidents.

Former U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest, a senior advisor to The Council for Global Equality, a Washington D. C. based non profit organisation dedicated to human rights concerns impacting LGBT communities around the world, remarked that he applauded “President Obama’s and Secretary Clinton’s principled belief that the human rights of LGBT people cannot be separated from those of all of society.”  Emphasizing that “many of the most egregious abuses have been committed in countries considered to be friends and allies of the United States,” he urged that the State Department develop strategies to counter intolerance and homophobia in every region, drawing on all the tools of American diplomacy. 

The report is available for review on the State Department's Website: [Link]