Fears of LGBTQI+ rights erosion in multiple Western countries

Paul CrickFriday 19 July 2024

The latest report from ILGA-Europe, an independent, international non-governmental umbrella organisation, suggested the UK has regressed on LGBTQI+ human rights at an alarming rate. Campaigners are now urging Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government, newly elected at the beginning of July, to turn the corner. 

In regard to why the UK and other Western European countries have fallen behind, the main areas appear to be gender legal equality and asylum, as well as hate crimes and speech. The 2024 Report highlights that ‘politicians continued the crackdown on trans rights’ in 2023 and expresses concern about the then-UK government’s veto of the devolved Scottish government’s Gender Recognition Bill. The UK government argued at the time that the Bill would have an ‘adverse effect’ on reserved matters (those not devolved to Scotland), in particular under the Equality Act 2010.

The UK Home Office’s annual statistics highlighted that, although homophobic hate crimes actually decreased by six per cent in England and Wales in 2023 – the first fall in numbers since 2013 – transphobic hate crimes increased by 11 per cent, marking the highest number of anti-trans crimes since 2012. The 2024 Report attributes the rise in transphobic hate crime in part to anti-trans media reporting and negative discussion about trans issues by some elected officials. 

Alexander Maine is a senior lecturer within The City Law School at City, University of London, and has written on gender, sexuality and the law. He highlights that the UK ‘had in the last two decades become a trailblazer for LGBTQ rights, with the equalisation of the age of consent, the introduction of civil partnerships and eventually same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination law, improved parental and surrogacy rights, and what was once the world’s leading gender recognition regime enshrined in law’. 

However, while over the past few years same-sex family rights, such as civil partnerships, marriage and parenting, have felt safe from attempts to backslide on rights, Maine says there have been ‘calls to delegitimise things like Pride campaigns, inclusive education and diversity, inclusion, and equity schemes in workplaces’. Campaigners are keen to see if Starmer’s new government will reverse this trend. 

As highlighted, progress in other countries has also stalled or is regressing – Sweden didn’t score well on hate crime and speech or gender recognition, and France’s lowest scores were for hate crime and speech, and asylum. Yet, all of these countries will highlight harmful policies and the lack of progress in jurisdictions outside of Europe. 

For instance, in May 2023 Uganda passed its Anti-Homosexuality Act, which includes the threat of the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ and a ‘duty to report acts of homosexuality’. The UK government at the time said it was ‘appalled’ that this ‘deeply discriminatory’ legislation had been enacted. 

Meanwhile in April, Iraq’s parliament passed a bill criminalising same-sex relationships, with jail terms of 10–15 years threatened. Transgender people could be sent to prison for one to three years under the same law. The bill was condemned by the UK government as ‘worrying’ at the time. To call it out was ‘right’, says Maine, but he adds that ‘there is a danger of complacency of the UK’s treatment of trans people, in the backsliding of rights and the growing hostile environment which they experience, from changing rooms, schools, sports, and in public life’.

More generally, Western governments must watch that, while they’re willing to tackle the human rights violations perpetrated against LGBTQI+ communities elsewhere, they don’t simultaneously allow those rights to be eroded in their own countries. 

In the UK, at least, the recent change of government may take the country in a new direction. The Government’s manifesto included a number of LGBTQI+ pledges, including for a trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban and the drafting of a new gender recognition law; for  LGBTQI+ hate crimes to become a specific offence; and for the implementation of the Cass Review findings on gender-identity services in England.

The King’s Speech in mid-July announced that a draft bill would be brought forward to ban conversion practices. Plans have been made to do so numerous times over the past decade or more, but these have later been scrapped, which the Prime Minister acknowledged when he said that the promise to ban conversion therapy ‘has lingered in the lobby of good intentions for too long’. Critics are concerned that this bill may take some time to make it onto the statute books, however.

M Ravi, LGBTQI+ Liaison Officer on the IBA Human Rights Law Committee, hopes the new government can reverse some of the negative trends of the past few years. ‘I urge the new government to hold steadfast in its commitment to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly the rights of transgender individuals in the UK, including to ban conversion therapy and make the NHS more equitable for trans people’, he says. For, as ILGA-EUROPE starkly warns, ‘only legal protections can ensure that fundamental rights are guaranteed’.

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