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1 Ari Shaw, To Be a Global Leader of Human Rights, the US Must Do More for LGBTI Asylum Seekers [i] (2021)

handle is hein.lgbtqwi/glhrum0001 and id is 1 raw text is: To be a global leader of human rights, the US must do more for LGBTI asylum seekers By Ari Shaw In October, 29 LGBTQI refugees arrived in the UK from Afghanistan, where the newly resurgent Taliban government has declared that LGBTQI human rights would not be respected under Sharia law. According to human rights groups, since the U.S. military withdrawal in August, the Taliban have generated a kill list of LGBTQI Afghans. Memories of anti-LGBTQI violence under the previous Taliban regime have led to a flood of requests to organizations like Rainbow Railroad that assist in resettling LGBTQI refugees. Afghanistan is by no means the only country in the world where it is dangerous to be LGBTQI. Despite advances on LGBTQI rights in many countries over the past two decades, homosexuality remains criminalized in nearly 70 countries, and laws that criminalize trans ender eopie are on the books in 13. Even where laws do not exist that formally outlaw consensual same-sex conduct, LGBTQI people may still face stigma, persecution, and violence that cause them to seek refuge in another country. According to the latest Global Acceptance Index (GAl) from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law- a measure of public support for LGBTQI people and their rights across 175 countries-social acceptance of LGBTQI people has decreased in 57 countries since 1980. While many countries have seen advances in LGBTQI rights and greater social acceptance of LGBTQI people during that time, a majority have either declined in public support for LGBTQI people or experienced no increase in support at all. This results in an ever-polarized world in which the most accepting countries become more accepting of LGBTQI people, while the least accepting become even less accepting. Public attitudes towards LGBTQI people are important for understanding the violence and exclusion that LGBTQI people face in many aspects of their daily lives. Negative beliefs about LGBTQI people are linked to discrimination in employment, education, housing, and other dimensions of social and civic life, and these shared negative beliefs create stigmas that can be used to provoke and sanction violence and persecution on the basis of a person's real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. For LGBTQI people caught in such unaccepting countries, the decision to seek refuge is often one of life or death, and many of the 31 million refugees and asylum seekers in the world today are LGBTQI. According to a recent analysis of government data by the Williams Institute, an estimated 30,900 LGBTQI people claimed asylum in the United States between 2012-2017. This likely undercounts the actual number of LGBTQI asylum seekers because many LGBTQI people may fear coming out to asylum officials or other refugees or family members with whom they are traveling. Moreover, existing data that is publicly available do not include asylum seekers who were refused entry at the border or those who were placed into removal proceedings without the opportunity to claim asylum during fear interviews. According to our analysis, the majority of LGBTQI people seeking asylum came from the Northern Triangle region of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. All three of those countries, according

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