30 Aug 2018 - NPWJ News Digest on on LGBTI rights

EU Should Follow UN Guidelines on LGBT Asylum Seekers
Human Rights Watch, 30 Aug 2018

The process of seeking asylum is difficult for anyone, but sexual and gender minorities fleeing persecution in their home countries can be particularly vulnerable, as two recent decisions by Austrian asylum officers show. In August, Austrian authorities rejected the asylum application of a 27-year-old Iraqi on grounds that he was behaving “like a girl” and “faking” his homosexuality. One week earlier, an 18-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was denied refugee status because, according to the adjudicating official: “Neither your walk nor behaviour nor clothing indicate in any way you might be homosexual.”