United Nations to hold first security meeting on LGBT rights
The United Nations Security Council will hold its first ever meeting on gay rights to discuss the terrorist group Islamic State’s persecution of sexual minorities.
The meeting, hailed by human rights groups as a significant step forward, will take place later today.
US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, said that the meeting will focus on “ISIL and its systematic targeting of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) persons who find themselves in ISIL-controlled territory.”
The meeting will be hosted by the US and Chile, and all member states interested in LGBT protections will be able to attend.
“This will be a historic meeting. It will be the first Security Council meeting on LGBT rights,” Power told reporters.
The US and Chile published a note ahead of the meeting outlining that the extremist group “has targeted one particular community with seeming impunity and scant international attention: LGBT individuals and those perceived to be LGBT.”
Chad Griffin, the President of the Human Rights Campaign, hailed the meeting, saying: “The gruesome images and videos documenting ISIS’s horrific violence are a haunting reminder of humankind’s capacity for evil.
“By convening this meeting, Ambassadors Power and Melet have made clear that these human rights abuses against LGBT people are not only deeply heinous and inhumane, but also a matter of utmost importance to global security.”
There has been a spate of killings out of killings by ISIS, of men accused of homosexuality.
Last month, a video, shot in Palmyra, showed two Syrian men be thrown off a building before being stoned to death.
The terrorist group, which operates predominantly across Syria and Iraq, is notorious for filming videos in which captives – usually Westerners or opposing fighters – are brutally slaughtered.
It has also taken to executing men it claims are gay, by throwing them off of tall buildings and pelting them with rocks in IS-produced videos.
Members of the terrorist group, which has published a number of graphic videos featuring the murder of supposed gay men, holds power across parts of Iraq, Syria and Libya.
