Twenty-one years ago the World Health Organization excluded homosexuality from its list of officially recognized mental illnesses. Today, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia is marked around the world to commemorate that landmark decision, and to raise awareness about the continued rights abuses -- in the form, among others,...

Several weeks ago Sharon Kelly, my colleague at Human Rights First, warned that Uganda's notorious “Kill the Gays” might come back. Well, here it is:

The controversial Anti Homosexuality bill is one of several bills that Members of Parliament on the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee are...

Today, the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis presented its latest report on hate crimes in the Russian Federation. The press conference began with a minute of silence honoring the memory of the report's principal author, Galina Kozhevnikova, who passed away in Moscow on March 5 from a...

Two years ago today, 27-year-old Robert Csorba and his four-year-old son were shot dead as they ran from their burning home in Tatárszentgyörgy, Hungary. The Csorba family is Roma, a fact that sparked unknown assailants to set the home ablaze and then wait to murder the fleeing victims with...

Following yesterday's U.N. General Assembly vote to recognize and condemn killings based on sexual orientation -- a reference that had been stripped in an earlier vote and was subsequently championed by, among others, the United States -- White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement praising the 93-55 vote...

On May 2, The Call, a U.S. evangelical ministry led by Lou Engle, together with its Ugandan affiliate, will host a religious gathering at a stadium in Uganda's capital Kampala. Among other things, the event aims to rally participants around anti-gay sentiments by urging them to "fight vices eating away...

On April 12, Eduard Chuvashov, a federal judge of the Russian Federation, was gunned down in front of his apartment building in Moscow in a contract-style killing. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev denounced the killing as "cynical" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Police officials stated that the murder...

Julius Kaggwa, a Ugandan human rights activist campaigning against the anti-homosexuality bill recently introduced in Uganda, analyzes the effects for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) community in today's Huffington Post.

Kaggwa's story illustrates the harassment the LGBT community face regularly:

In an attempt to determine the...

On December 1-2, foreign ministers and other officials from the 56 states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) - a conflict prevention organization bringing together states from North America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union - met in Athens, Greece for the annual ministerial meeting. A...

Ten years ago this month, Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked and murdered because he was gay. A year before Matthew's murder, James Byrd. Jr. was kidnapped, beaten, and stripped naked by three white supremacists, who chained him by the ankles to a pickup truck and dragged his...

Senator Kennedy's prolific career spanned nearly five decades, during which he authored more than 2,500 bills in the U.S. Senate. Several hundred have become public law. This fall we hope to add yet another bill to that distinguished list - the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

On Friday, July 10, the leader of a Paris gang was sentenced to life in prison for torturing and murdering a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi.

In February 2006, Halimi was kidnapped, tortured and killed because he was a Jew. He was held captive for twenty-four days during...

In a week, President Obama will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The agenda items of the summit in Moscow are of course numerous and complex, but it would be a mistake to let human rights concerns get lost in the mix. High among those concerns...

In 1998, the murder of Matthew Shepard sent shock waves through the nation. A 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming, Shepard was brutally beaten, tortured, tied to a fence, and left for dead. Eighteen hours later, a bicyclist found Matthew, initially thinking he was a scarecrow. He was...