International News
On March 23 the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice released the final draft of Ukraine's National Human Rights Strategy. This draft law, which will guide Ukrainian human rights policy until 2020, offers no protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity.
[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of Colombia [official website, in Spanish] on Wednesday upheld a restriction that same-sex couples cannot adopt children that have no biological relation to either parent.
TOKYO — A district in Tokyo plans to give same-sex couples the same legal rights as married opposite-sex spouses, becoming the first local government in Japan to do so at a time when gay marriage is a hot-button issue in many countries.
The American LGBT community has increasingly begun to contribute to the success of LGBT rights worldwide. However, the contributions go both ways. Countries in some other parts of the world have adopted gay equality laws much earlier than the United States, and some of that progress has contributed to the success of the LGBT movement in the United States.
The US Department of State will soon select an openly gay diplomat to oversee international human rights advocacy for LGBT people.
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - U.S. lawmakers in both houses of Congress introduced on Thursday a bill to protect and promote the rights of the international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.