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Under Secretary Zeya’s Closing Remarks At the 2024 Pride Month Convening on U.S. Foreign Policy [1]

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Date: 2024-07 

As delivered.

Thank you, Jessica, for that kind introduction and I want to congratulate you, your team, our speakers, and our guests for making history together today.

For the very first time, government, multilateral, and civil society leaders from across the world came together in these hallowed halls to think strategically about the connection between LGBTQI+ persons’ rights and broader national security objectives, including achieving more prosperous, open, secure, inclusive, and healthy societies.

Today’s sessions underscored why government-sponsored attacks on LGBTQI+ persons’ human rights are a telling indicator – indeed a canary in the coal mine – of broader crackdowns on civil society and threats to human rights. Our brave speakers have shown us, vividly, how these attacks threaten inclusive economic development, human-centered security, and public health wherever they occur, undermining U.S. interests at home and abroad.

I hope each of you will take away a clear sense of this Administration’s laser focus on tackling these challenges and our commitment to doing so via partnerships across the U.S. government and with likeminded allies, multilateral partners, and civil society changemakers like yourselves.

Our own painful history at this Department reminds us that change is not easily won, nor is it achieved alone. Barbara Gittings was a trailblazing activist who marched outside of this building in 1965 to protest institutionalized U.S. government discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons. She said, “Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.”

If Barbara could see us now! Not only have we taken her words to heart, but we’re doing so in every region of the world. During my international travel as Under Secretary to more than 50 countries, I’ve pressed for LGBTQI+ equality with senior government leaders from CARICOM and the C5 to ECOWAS and the EU to the GCC and ASEAN member states. But at every stop, I’ve also taken time to support civil society, often under siege – to help propel their efforts to win hearts and minds in their home countries with meaningful U.S. allyship.

My experience has shown me the decisive difference that U.S. leadership and partnerships can make in pursuing an end to violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics. But to do so, we have to integrate LGBTQI+ equality across the broad and complex spectrum of our Department’s work. Let me highlight three key ways we are doing so within the dynamic family of bureaus and offices I oversee, to heed President Biden’s call “to lead by the power of our example in the cause of advancing the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world:”

First, we are making a concerted effort to build our knowledge base, specifically to facilitate swift and meaningful U.S. responses to human rights abuses of LGBTQI+ persons abroad. For example, our Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) has been leading an interagency Learning Collaborative on LGBTQI+ Violence Reduction and Civilian Security. By better understanding violent trends targeting LGBTQI+ communities, we can more quickly identify and effectively combat them.

The INL Learning Collaborative meets regularly, inviting experts in and out of government to share best practices for countering violence against LGBTQI+ persons. Continuous dialogue with civil society helps us better address safety, security, confidentiality, and privacy concerns. These collective efforts recently culminated in the release of a groundbreaking public report on Bias, Discrimination, and Violence Against LGBTQI+ Communities that is full of insightful analysis and essential reading for law enforcement and security professionals seeking to ensure accountable, rights-respecting policing.

Through training and capacity-building in INL projects globally, we are further countering harassment and abuse of LGBTQI+ persons by police and other law enforcement officials. Earlier today, you heard Secretary Blinken refer to a recent session at the Organization of American States on precisely these issues.

Second, we are investing in a more robust response to the heightened risk that LGBTQI+ persons, especially youth, face from traffickers. As President Biden recognized in the U.S. National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, trafficking is an abhorrent crime – a stain on our society’s conscience. It erodes the safety of our communities, the security of our borders, the strength of our economy, and the rule of law.

The U.S. Action Plan also recognizes that trafficking disproportionately impacts LGBTQI+ persons, along with racial and ethnic minorities, women and girls, vulnerable migrants, and others from historically marginalized and underserved communities.

This disproportionate impact is stark. Our 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report found 45 percent of respondents in a survivor-led survey on human trafficking identified as LGBTQI+ and 43 percent as a person of color. The report also highlighted that boys represent the fastest-growing segment of human trafficking victims, a crime often hidden from view. While women constitute about twice the percentage of identified trafficking victims as men, the percentage of identified trafficking victims who are boys and girls is almost identical (17 percent and 18 percent, respectively). Yet this group of male victims is far less visible to the public and sometimes even to themselves. As the report explains, male victims “face multiple societal barriers to self-identifying as trafficking victims, including stigma associated with LGBTQI+ status or same-sex conduct, as well as the taboo nature of discussions around sexual violence against males.

So, what are we doing about it? For one, the State Department invested in Look Beneath the Surface Training, to support more inclusive communication in anti-TIP partners’ public awareness, outreach, and program activities. Many have been trained already, supported by the crucial input of LGBTQI+ TIP survivors’ lived experiences, to better inform these new resources, strategies, and engagement methods.

And because awareness is crucial to our effectiveness, the Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons now requires training for service providers that offer comprehensive case management programs for foreign national survivors of human trafficking. This includes training on the intersection between sexual orientation, gender identity, and human trafficking.

The third and final way, we are leading by example is by increasing protection and support for LGBTQI+ refugees and displaced persons. The United States is proud to be the world’s leading humanitarian donor, as we work to better protect and ease the suffering of some of the world’s most vulnerable and persecuted populations. Against a backdrop of historic peak forced displacement globally, integrating LGBTQI+ inclusion in U.S. humanitarian response is essential, and in this space, our Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, or PRM, is leading the way. As PRM’s fearless leader Assistant Secretary Julieta Noyes declared, “LGBTQI+ persons should have equal access to protection, assistance, and solutions in global humanitarian response.” This means ensuring that all persons have access to the humanitarian support they need, and that LGBTQI+ status is not a barrier to access. Yet it all too often is. So, what are we doing about it?

In the last two years alone, PRM provided more than two million dollars for projects focused on LGBTQI+ refugees and other vulnerable migrants, including more than 300,000 dollars in small grant funding to a dozen LGBTQI+-led organizations globally. In addition, PRM established new programs to increase NGO referrals of LGBTQI+ and other refugees to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and to support LGBTQI+ resettlement in the United States through a new private sponsorship program launched in 2022.

We have also increased use of Priority 1 refugee referrals from U.S. embassies abroad to expedite resettlement of highly vulnerable LGBTQI+ persons with urgent protection needs. And we have developed methods to measure success in resettling LGBTQI+ refugees in the United States, while safeguarding their privacy. And there is much more, as you’ll find online and by talking with our PRM colleagues who are here today.

Colleagues, friends, partners, and allies, I hope these examples and the insights from today’s historic convening bring you inspiration and a sense of solidarity in the long road ahead. Our goal is clear: to build a world in which LGBTQI+ persons are able to thrive, wherever they live. This simple premise serves as our inspiration, our motivator, and a persistent reminder that whether we are in government, a multilateral institution, civil society, or the private sector, the work we do to advance and protect the human rights and full civic participation of LGBTQI+ persons matters for the well-being of our communities, our nations, and our planet.

Thank you again for coming today and for all you do – as described so eloquently in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to achieve “the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” which is “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Thank you all and Happy Pride!

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[1] Url: https://www.state.gov/under-secretary-zeyas-closing-remarks-at-the-2024-pride-month-convening-on-u-s-foreign-policy/

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