page_title: Scott Long
section_title: IGLHRC
hierarchical_section_title: Scott Long / IGLHRC
caption_attribution_description: English: Queer activists joined by Scott Long (center, behind flag) participate in Zimbabwe's first-ever LGBT rights march on Human Rights Day, December 10, 1998, in Harare
context_page_description: Scott Long is a US-born activist for international human rights, primarily focusing on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. He founded the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, the first-ever program on LGBT rights at a major "mainstream" human rights organization, and served as its executive director from May 2004 - August 2010. He later was a Visiting Fellow in the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School from 2011 - 2012.
  Journalist Rex Wockner called Long "arguably the most knowledgeable person on the planet about international LGBT issues." David Mixner called him "one of the unsung heroes of the LGBT community." Long's blog, A Paper Bird, which focuses on global politics and sexuality, has been acclaimed as "must-read," "indispensable," and "brilliant." Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, praised Long's "exemplary dedication and diligence," saying that "His articulate and relentless defense of LGBT rights everywhere is unparalleled, and his tremendous efforts on this front have been a guiding voice for justice and equality."
context_section_description: Returning to the United States in 1996, Long accepted a position with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) — an NGO combating rights abuses based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV status — first as its advocacy director, then as program director. He continued to work with activists in Romania, returning to the country in 1997 for additional research. During that research, he learned of the imprisonment of Mariana Cetiner, a woman given a three-year sentence for attempting to have sex with another woman. Long later testified to the U.S. Congress that
  I interviewed Mariana in prison. She had enormous bruises; she had been physically and sexually abused by the guards. The prison doctor told us, "After all, she is different from other women. You can hardly expect the guards to treat her as if she were normal.
  Long documented Cetiner's story and persuaded Amnesty International to adopt her as a prisoner of conscience, the first time the organization had taken up the case of a lesbian imprisoned for her sexual orientation.   Later that year, he wrote Public Scandals: Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania, a detailed study jointly published by IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch – the first report on LGBT issues ever issued by the latter organization.
  In Bucharest in 1998, Long met with Romanian president Emil Constantinescu, who  "promised to pardon all those incarcerated under Article 200 and to give priority to the repeal of the discriminatory article." Long specifically lobbied for Mariana Cetiner, who was promptly freed on the president's order. In the next three years, according to political scientist Clifford Bob, Long "enthusiastically and skillfully" pushed the Romanian government toward full repeal of Article 200, which was finally achieved in 2001.
  Between 1998 and 2002, he organized a project bringing many grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists from the global South to speak and advocate before the then United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Long also gave UN bodies extensive information and analyses on abuses against LGBT people. This lobbying brought about an unprecedented commitment by key U.N. human rights officials to work on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2001, six independent experts—high-level individuals appointed by the UN to investigate patterns of human rights abuse—publicly reached out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities, formally declaring that these issues lay within their official mandates. Long said of the move, "Today the United Nations has lived up to its promise: to defend the dignity of all people without exception."
  Long also led IGLHRC's lobbying at the groundbreaking 2001 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS.  IGLHRC was invited to address the session, then blocked by conservative Islamic states and the Holy See.  The crisis eventually reached the floor of the General Assembly, which had never discussed LGBT rights before but was forced to vote on whether the LGBT group could speak. Long's advocacy led to a victory and to IGLHRC's reinstatement. "This was the first time a gay and lesbian issue has ever been debated on the floor of the General Assembly," Long commented on the unprecedented vote. "It's a precedent that will have serious impact on the way vulnerable groups and marginalized groups and outsiders from all parts of society can get involved in the U.N."
  From 1998, when he led a delegation to the World Council of Churches's world conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, and visited Zambia during a huge national furor over a young gay man's public coming-out in the media, Long was closely involved with sexual rights movements across Africa. He connected homophobia and moral panics in many African countries to economic and political factors, especially the poverty and dislocation caused by structural adjustment programs. Long told the Chicago Tribune, "There's a sense of economic and political powerlessness, and when you feel powerless about your economy
caption: Queer activists joined by Scott Long (center, behind flag) participate in Zimbabwe's first-ever LGBT rights march on Human Rights Day, December 10, 1998, in Harare
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