Global decriminalization of homosexuality will require change in hearts and minds

Remarks on the occasion of Paris Gay Games 2018 Human Rights Conference

From the decriminalization of homosexuality to equal rights

1 August / 10:30 - 12:00, Paris City Hall

Starting in December 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights appealed to all 193 Member States to decriminalize homosexuality and enact comprehensive anti-discrimination laws. Two years later, the Office launched the Free & Equal campaign, which challenges negative stereotypes and promotes equal rights and fair treatment for LGBTI people everywhere. The reason behind this campaign is that decriminalization and overdue legal changes for transgender and intersex people are only meaningful when accompanied by significant efforts to tackle prejudice and change “hearts and minds”.

Our natural instinct as activists is often to want justice everywhere immediately. Yet if there is one lesson that emerges from the #metoo and #blacklivesmatter movements, it is that human rights are unfortunately much more of a journey than a destination. And because, as stated by Foucault, sexuality “appears (…) as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power”, we must proceed with particular caution and strategy as well as compassion on the matter of homosexuality.

On March 16th, 2014, in the immediate aftermath of the anti-homosexuality bill in Nigeria, CNN interviewed a former Managing Director of mine at the World Bank, by then finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. When asked about gay rights, she responded that 96% of people supported these laws. Hers was a very unfortunate answer as public opinion can never justify such abhorrent laws and egregious violations of human rights. But it was also a strong reminder of the urgency for local social change if we are to see any progress.

And even though legal and social changes are often hard to dissociate, there is no country in my opinion which better illustrates this complexity of the recipe for social change than France. My view, possibly an unpopular one, as an outsider is that to this day the French LGBT equality movement pays the price of the passing of same-sex marriage in 2013 without having tackled deep-rooted prejudice against LGBT people. While same-sex marriage was pushed by the Government, France was allegedly at the time the least tolerant country in Western Europe based on the World Values Survey. In many ways, "marriage pour tous" ended up being a superficial victory: homophobia remains rampant, LGBT people continue to be in the closet  at work and the frontier of homophobia and transphobia displaced itself with furor to LGBT parenting.

I recently met in New York, Tiernan Brady, the LGBT equality campaigner who has been integral in delivering marriage equality in both Ireland (2015) and Australia (2017) – by a margin of 61.6 per cent to 38.4 per cent - the only two countries in the world to do so by public vote. He highlighted to me the science, strategy but equally important compassion for same-sex marriage opponents that went into both campaigns. As he often repeated, the movement needed to identify the right arguments which would best sway the voters and build the campaign around it. In the US, the argument that worked was ‘freedom and love’ while in Ireland and Australia, it was about ‘fairness and equality’ which resonated better with local cultures.

Similarly, in the United States, I met with Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, who highlighted that the road to marriage equality was really a marathon followed by a sprint. It took hard work over many years to change the public perceptions of LGBTI people before obtaining the recent legal changes that were lauded as groundbreaking. In matters of #humanrights, there are no coups, just hard-won battles.

Finally, we are all hoping that India Supreme Court will finally decriminalize homosexuality following recent hearings on the matter. Yet, it has become increasingly apparent that the Supreme Court is informally scanning the public opinion on the matter. The economic argument, to which I contributed with Professor Lee Badgett in a World Bank study I led in 2013, is also proving to have an imopact. Both will hopefully weigh in a just decision.

I am proud that my office, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) is contributing to this change. Since its launch in July 2013, U.N. Free & Equal has become one of the United Nations’ most successful and popular global campaigns. Every year, it reaches billions of people worldwide. In 2017, on the International Day against homophobia and transphobia, we launched a mini-video campaign called #cultureoflove that highlighted how LGBTI people have a place in traditions and families.

I have also championed in 2018 an initiative with the private sector around the LGBTI Standards for Business that has received the support of more than 174 of the largest companies in the world (including French BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, EDF, Orange, Schneider-Electric, L’Oreal, Accor or Sodexo). The voice of the private sector can also be instrumental in tackling prejudice and visibility of LGBT people in the workplace plays a key role in changing hearts in minds in communities.

In the many countries that have not yet fully embarked on the journey to full LGBTI equality, the starting point must be conversations. We must work together to design new ways to achieve progress in order to accelerate the pace of social change. In a difficult context, our success in will lie in organization, in careful long term planning, in consistency of action, in the scale of financing and in our political power.