
ABIA and SPW support the Brazilian UPR Pre-session
Brazil: ABIA and SPW supported the Brazilian UPR Pre-session, which took place on April 2nd, in Geneva, presenting a short video and recommendations aiming to contextualize some recent aspects of human rights in the country.

Aid, resistance and Queer power
Hakima Abbas, the Executive Director of Fahamu Network for Social Justice, wrote for the SPW Newsletter n. 11 the article “Aid, resistance and Queer power”, on the effects of the aid conditionality to the LGBTIQ issues in Africa.

Aid conditionality and respect for LGBT people rights
Read the article Aid conditionality and respect for LGBT people rights, written by Luis Abolafia Anguita, from Fundación Triángulo, a Spanish LGBT organization wich works with development cooperation. The article debates the threats, reactions and effects of the recent initiative to reduce the development aid to countries that criminalize homosexuality.

Interview: Radhika Balakrishman
Read the interview with Radhika Balakrishnan, the Executive Director and a Professor at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, about aid conditionalities to developing countries and its impacts on national human rights agenda.

NGO roundtable on LGBT issues at the 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
ARC International is co-hosting with the ICJ an NGO roundtable to raise awareness of sexual orientation and gender identity issues on next Monday, 5 March, at the 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Titled “LGBT Issues for the Curious: (Almost) Everything you Wanted to Know about Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity but were too Diplomatic to Ask”, the roundtable affords an opportunity for LGBT human rights defenders from all regions to share their perspectives with diplomats. Read more.

Letter of protest against the murder of Professor Cleides Antônio Amorim (UFT)
Brazil: Cleides Amorim, a professor at the Federal University of Tocantins, was one of over a dozen LGBT Brazilians murdered in just the first two weeks of 2012. AllOut started a national campaign aimed at Federal Government, inspired in a protest letter from a group of professors of Brazilian universities. Read more.

ABEH (Brazilian Association of Homoculture Studies) releases the call for papers and schedule of the VI International Conference of Studies on Sexual and Gender Diversity
The Brazilian Association of Studies on Homoculture (ABEH) released the first version of the schedule, the menu of group themes, and the composition of the scientific commission of the VI International Conference of Studies on Sexual and Gender Diversity that is going to take place at UFBA (Federal University of Bahia) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, on August 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 2012.

Reports to the UN Universal Periodic Review Brazil – 2012
Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) and the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA) were involved in the production of reports on the status of human rights in Brazil for the second Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council, which will be held in June 2012. Read the reports.

In favor of a real debate in Cameroon
Read In favor of a real debate in Cameroon, published at CLAM website, presenting an analysis of the African sexuality context, based on an interview with S.N. Nyeck, a Cameroonian-born Ph.D. candidate at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Political Science.

Nigeria’s Senate passed the “Same-Gender Marriage” Bill on November 29th
Nigeria: The Senate passed the Same-Gender Marriage Prohibition Bill. Nigerian Human Rights Defenders have condemned the Bill and the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights in Nigeria circulated a call for action. Read more.