ILGA-Europe’s Annual Review 2023 of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People in Europe and Central Asia

According to the ILGA-Europe’s Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People in Europe and Central Asia,2022 was the most violent year for LGBTI people across the region in the past decade, both through intentional, brutal attacks and through suicides as a result of rising and widespread hate speech from politicians, religious leaders, right-wing organisations and media experts.

The report finds that attacks on LGBTI people with a conscious and deliberate will to kill and injure have increased to unprecedented levels, including two terror attacks outside LGBTI bars in Norway and Slovakia, which combined killed four people and maimed 22.

Evelyne Paradis, ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director, pointed out that anti-LGBTI hate speech does not come only from the sides, from marginal leaders or would-be autocrats, but is a rising phenomenon also within progressive and accepting countries.

Politicians’ reactions with horror to the killings of LGBTI people and clear expressions of solidarity are not enough, according to Paradis, but concrete preventive actions to fight the rise of hate-speech are needed.

Nevertheless, there is also good news, indeed several countries showed much progress because of activists and their communities. Their commitment is actually recognized by Katrin Hugendubel, Advocacy Director with ILGA-Europe, who celebrated the work done by LGBTI activists, as seen in Spain and Finland, where huge effort went into successfully keeping self-determined legal gender recognition on the right political track, despite fierce opposition.

Paradis has described this report as a story of cause and effect that is not going to go away or diminish until politicians and policy makers understand that they have to get ahead of the problem. Politicians are called to tackle hate speech in all its forms, instead of finding themselves on the back foot, expressing sympathy for the families of the unjust murdered, or those who have taken their own lives, while hatred continues to be fostered and exploited.