High Commissioner Türk sounds the alarm over an escalating onslaught on the rights of LGBTIQ+ people

It’s great to be back here, and I’m very happy that we have this meeting. It’s very important, especially in the context of the high-level segment of the General Assembly. And I would like to unpack some of the things that I’ve just heard from the two co-chairs, Norway and Mexico.

I think it’s important to realize that the movement for the equal rights of LGBTIQ+ people has much to teach the world, particularly at this moment. But some seek to erase or reject those lessons.

The history of the movement for equal rights is full of courage, dignity, and solidarity. And it is an integral part of the broader human rights movement – not something separate.

In claiming their freedom, LGBTIQ+ communities helped free our societies. We need to see it as a broader stride towards freedom. They helped make societies kinder, more open, more cohesive, more peaceful, and more resilient.

By challenging orthodoxies, they widened the space for self-expression, contributing to progress and innovation everywhere, and pushing the boundaries. And the world needs these lessons today more than ever before.

We know that progress on human rights has never been linear. I can certainly vouch for that from my vantage point. But today’s backlash is deep and coordinated, and the persecution of LGBTIQ+ people around the world is escalating at an alarming rate.

In preparation for this meeting, my colleagues pulled together a number of trends that, frankly, I find very shocking. And I intend, before the end of the year, to issue a more comprehensive update, which goes into some of the things that we have been seeing around the world.

We know that across every region, LGBTIQ+ people continue to live and to love in the face of hostility and exclusion. Their rights, safety, and well-being are under attack: physical, psychological, social, political, and legal. So, it’s a comprehensive onslaught.

We have seen a dramatic increase in the persecution of LGBTIQ+ people and human rights defenders. Just recently, Senegal and Türkiye come to mind. Hundreds have been arrested with reports of ill treatment, lack of due process, and no access to legal representation.

We have seen a sweeping crackdown on LGBTIQ+ organizations, including raids, restrictive laws, judicial proceedings, and the branding of groups as terrorists, extremists, or national security threats.

More than 60 Member States still criminalize consensual same-sex relationships. And while we saw a downward trend, we now see an increase in a number of countries where some of these laws are indeed being promoted.

And we have also seen, more generally, during electoral periods, more and more candidates and political parties use bigotry in order to promote anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiments.

Trans people, and particularly trans women, are demonized and increasingly excluded from public spaces.

These attacks are designed to confuse and to distract. They cloak bigotry in the language of decency and morality. They invoke the protection of children against manufactured threats, while real and growing dangers to children’s lives and futures – including those linked to technology, inequality, and the climate disaster – remain unaddressed. So, there’s a big irony in all of this.

More broadly, those who seek to erase difference, and independent thought, expression, and voices from our societies often begin by erasing LGBTIQ+ people: from books and classrooms, from film and culture, and from our streets.

So, this is always the beginning. It’s a wedge issue that, unfortunately, is used politically to eventually erase other portions of society. But less visibility means less familiarity, less acceptance, and more violence.

The rights of LGBTIQ+ people are not ideological or new. They are fundamentally human rights. They’ve always been there, but we cannot take this for granted. We can’t take it for granted for the LGBTIQ+ community, nor can we take it for granted when it comes to gender equality.

The tentacles of the anti-rights movement reach far. They target the human rights movement, and the tools and institutions that are created to protect people’s rights and dignity. And they are trying to weaken them by sowing division.

This is the old playbook of authoritarianism: distraction and deception.

Much of this is done in the name of family, in the name of tradition, in the name of values. But values that render some people valueless are not worthy of the name.

And that’s where the radical idea of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes back in, because it says that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. It doesn’t make an exception. And that’s, again, the law that helps us promote precisely this.

In light of the current challenges, I decided to launch a Global Alliance for Human Rights – because we see these concerted pushbacks. I really hope that we can extend the Alliance to each and every segment of society, to each and every group.

And I hope very much that we can also have and work on an LGBTIQ+ agenda within this global agenda for human rights.

Because we should no longer be on the defensive. We need to be on the offensive.

So, I very much look forward to working with all of you on this in the years to come.

Thank you very much.