Hundreds of international LGBTQ+ activists will converge on Long Beach next week for the ILGA World conference. Approximately 600 human rights defenders, United Nations and government representatives, scholars, and funders, will meet to discuss and learn about the state of LGBTQ+ rights around the world. Photo: Alex Efimoff for ILGA World
Hundreds of international LGBTQ+ activists will converge on Long Beach next week for the ILGA World conference.
Approximately 600 human rights defenders, United Nations and government representatives, scholars, and funders, will meet to discuss and learn about the state of LGBTQ+ rights around the world.
“People around the world still face violence and discrimination because of whom they love, how they look and present, or because their bodies are seen as different,” Co-Secretaries General Luz Elena Aranda and Tuisina Ymania Brown said in a release. “Often, laws and legislation do not protect our communities, but exclude and deprive them of their human rights.”
Aranda and Brown will be the keynote speakers when ILGA World opens Monday at the Westin Long Beach in downtown. It will close Friday.
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In-person attendance at ILGA World has reached its 600 capacity, but online registration is open.
Panels will include discussions on women, trans, youth, and interfaith issues. Some topics on the schedule are “Leaving no one behind – Disabled LGBTIQA+ changemakers” and “Diverse sexuality and gender through an Indigenous lens.”
ILGA is an international organization with members in 160 countries. Since the 1970s, ILGA has played a central role in LGBTQ+ rights globally, including working with the United Nations to incorporate LGBTQ+ rights as human rights, and helping persuade the World Health Organization to remove transgenderism as a mental disease in its classification.
ILGA’s work is centered outside the United States; however, the U.S. plays an oversized role around the globe.
For example, as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is proposed and passed into law, it emboldens other nations to pass similar legislation, Aranda and Brown said.
“In 2022, there have been more than 240 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation proposed in the United States alone,”
“The reality for most of the world is that every piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation enacted in one country sets a precedent for other governments and hate groups to push — and to adopt — similar legislation.”
