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In Warsaw, Poland, from September 30th to October 8th, 2010, the OSCE held the first
of three review conferences in the run-up to December's summit. At the conference, participating
States and NGOs reviewed their commitments to human rights. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender individuals are only gradually receiving recognition and protection. The
U.S. Mission to the OSCE spoke to NGOs working n this field about the problems they face
and their views on the OSCE. We have much more problems than LGBT people,
let's say, in the Netherlands or as we say, in the West, but you know, they started much,
much earlier than we did. Of course, our situation is much better than in Central Asia, let's
say, Kazakhstan or Russia or Western Balkans. We're going to have, this Sunday, 10th October
2010, a 'Pride', hopefully, in Belgrade, and actually I say 'we hope' because last year
it was kind of the same situation, meaning that the Pride had been carefully prepared,
also with contacts with the police and other authorities in Serbia, and at the last moment
the level of threats by extremist groups was so high that it even had to be cancelled.
In the United States we see statistics from the FBI showing increasing violence against
LGBT Americans, much of that directed against transgender Americans unfortunately, but we
see similarly alarming statistics across the entire OSCE region. The OSCE compiles annual
statistics on hate crimes and those statistics also show an increasing trend in violence
against LGBT individuals in the broader region. Well we have cases from Kazakhstan, a transgender
was - it's a difficult case to speak about - was actually taken from her home, ***
in a group by heterosexual men, her hair was cut off, and she was beaten up, they even
smoked cigarettes and the cigarette butts were... on, all over her body, and the police
did not do anything. What they can do is offer assistance to, for
instance, local police forces, in educating them, in helping them to set up effective
mechanisms that can help ensure that the lives of LGBT people are safe in all the OSCE participating
States. Well, there are some commitments against discrimination,
against bias violence, hate violence, but the OSCE bodies are still failing to recognize
that homophobic and transphobic violence are part of this hate violence.
It's a good thing that its wide, you know, and that there are so many countries, but
at the same time it can become a problem. Because, you know, United States, European
Union, European countries which are not in the European Union and Central Asian countries,
all of them, they are in a different situation, they have, you know, they are on a different
level of development, and sometimes it's very hard to find, like, a common language.
Until now, the issue has been addressed under the Tolerance and Non-Discrimination heading,
but it has not been given formal recognition in official pronouncements from the OSCE at
Ministerial level, so it's time for that issue to be formally on the OSCE agenda and we're
here to demand that the OSCE consider that.