Two weeks ago, nine HIV activists were sentenced to eight years in prison in Dakar, Senegal for "indecent and unnatural acts" and "forming associations of criminals." They were arrested in December, just after the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), on suspicion of having engaged in homosexual acts.  Such arrests are all too common around the world.  And under the Bush Administration, U.S. foreign policy leaders were far too reluctant to name such abuses for what they are - serious human rights violations.     

Finding similar laws in the United States unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that they demean the existence of homosexuals. In so doing, such laws limit the effectiveness of our global commitment to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  It is time for the new Obama Administration to take a principled stand for human rights. 

In Senegal, the ICASA discussions highlighted the hypocrisy of countries, like Senegal, that support crucial HIV-prevention efforts for men who have sex with men, while simultaneously enforcing laws that criminalize consensual homosexual conduct and drive homosexuals into the shadows - often to a precarious and fearful legal existence that is well beyond the reach of any effective health intervention.  There are far too many countries like Senegal, where the rights of LGBT communities are denied with impunity, and where the efforts of public health officials are continually thwarted.      

Our existing legal commitments to human rights, together with our massive global investments in combating HIV/AIDS, should compel those who represent our country - in Congress, in the White House, in U.S. embassies and in U.S. corporations - to use the diplomatic, political and economic leverage available to them to oppose human rights abuses that are too often directed at individuals because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.  Public opposition to international human rights abuses impacting LGBT individuals was unusual under the Bush Administration.  It will be sorely needed under the Obama Administration. 

For example, at the United Nations General Assembly this past December, more than 60 countries submitted a ground-breaking statement on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity that called on all governments around the world to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity are not subjected to criminal penalty, and that individuals are not executed, arrested or otherwise detained because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  Despite thousands of individual calls to the State Department from US citizens, letters from Members of Congress, and requests from close U.S. allies, the United States refused to join the Statement.  The United States was one of the only countries in the "Western Group" at the United Nations that did not sign the Statement.   

In its yearly human rights report, the State Department last March listed human rights concerns relating to sexual orientation and gender identity in more than 100 different countries.  The reported violations included murders, extreme police violence, arrests of individuals based only on their sexual orientation or gender identity, state-sponsored harassment, extortion, and abuse in detention, and the denial of health care, housing, education and other social services.  Reports of violence directed at transvestite and transgender activists in Latin America were notable.  And the reports pointed once again to the failure of the police to protect gay pride marchers in several East European countries.

While the State Department has been reporting on the growing crisis in abuse against LGBT individuals and their communities worldwide since 1990, the response ends there.  Today, nineteen years later, it is time for the State Department to move beyond a reporting agenda to an affirmative "protection agenda," one that recognizes that the rights of LGBT communities are indeed human rights.  The United States must join the more than sixty countries from all regions of the world that signed the UN statement in December by publicly committing to new diplomatic and financial efforts that will seek to end violence and discrimination against LGBT communities everywhere. 

A new protection agenda will require a careful examination of how U.S. embassies, funding missions and diplomatic interactions at the United Nations and elsewhere reflect the human rights concerns of LGBT people and communities.  At minimum, the State Department should: 

• Clarify U.S. policy by highlighting sexual orientation and gender identity as important components within a broad U.S. commitment to renewing and restoring its human rights credibility worldwide;
• Officially appoint a liaison and provide a small budget within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to follow LGBT concerns raised in this year's soon-to-be-released human rights report;
• Host a roundtable for U.S. diplomats (including those abroad), other government experts who have taken the lead on these issues, and human rights NGOs to solicit feedback on how to move from a reporting agenda to a protection agenda in response to documented patterns of human rights violations against LGBT individuals;
• Develop more specific instructions and training for all embassies to assist their reporting on LGBT-related human rights concerns in future reports, including more focused reporting on lesbian and transgender abuses, and distribute to all human rights reporting officers copies of the influential "Yogyakarta Principles," which provide guidance on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity;
• Develop appropriate mechanisms and opportunities to increase U.S. government funding through USAID, the State Department or other institutions for rights-focused LGBT organizations internationally.
• Foster greater diversity within the State Department by ending employment-related disparities in overseas posting benefits and other employment benefits that limit the career options of LGBT employees with spouses or domestic partners. 

Until these steps are taken, crucial public health interventions in the field of HIV/AIDS will continue to be undermined by those who are determined - often for political motives - to deny human rights.  It is time for a new "ABC" policy to guide our diplomats and other U.S. representatives abroad.  We need a policy that abstains from siding with those states in the United Nations that would deny the application of human rights protections to LGBT individuals; one that will be faithful to our binding human rights commitments to promote privacy and non-discrimination for LGBT individuals under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); and one that will speak out against any attempt to criminalize consensual homosexual conduct as a matter of human rights, public health and common decency.