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Protest against the detention of gay men in concentration camps in Chechnya in Brussels, Belgium, May 2017.
The Global Respect Act would allow sanctions against those who commit human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people.
Nearly a dozen senators have reintroduced a bill that would allow sanctions against foreign individuals responsible for human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people.
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The Global Respect Act, first introduced in 2023, would allow the State Department to impose targeted sanctions — like a visa ban — on those found to have committed gross violations against LGBTQ+ people, such as torture, prolonged detention without trial, degrading treatment, or other denials of the right to life, liberty, or security.
The bill has been reintroduced by a group of ten Democratic senators and one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, who leads the group alongside Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.
Shaheen said she is bringing forward the legislation again "because the risk of personal harm for LGBTQI individuals for publicly identifying who they are or expressing who they love has tragically increased in recent years."
“Human rights, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human rights, recognizes that global freedom, justice and peace depend on ‘the inherent dignity’ and ‘the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,'" Shaheen said in a statement. "LBGTQI human rights are universal human rights. We must ensure that we hold all violators of those rights accountable.”
The Global Respect Act would require the executive branch to send Congress a list of foreign persons responsible for or complicit in LGBTQ+ human rights violations twice a year. It would also require the annual State Department Report on Human Rights to include a section on LGBTQ+ international human rights, as well as require the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to designate a senior officer responsible for tracking violence and criminalization against queer people.
“Around the world, individuals who are part of the LGBTQ+ community are in danger for simply existing,” Murkowski said. “Hate and violence cannot and should not be tolerated. I’m hopeful that this legislation will establish actionable consequences for these inexcusable human rights violations, and create a safer world for all people — regardless of who they are or who they love.”
