Topic: LGBT Rights
Country: Sweden
Delegate Name: Colleen Hillard
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Sweden position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
International focus on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people has increased in the last couple of decades, and even more so in the past few years. Some countries have been slow to increase the rights afforded to LGBT persons, and others are making the lives of LGBT increasingly dangerous. Sweden, however, has been and still is at the forefront of the LGBT rights movement. In 1972, we became the first country in the world to offer gender-reassignment treatment. Homosexual relationships amongst adults have been decriminalized since 1944. Same-sex marriage is also legal in Sweden.
Still, in many countries, LGBT people not only do not enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, but they are jailed or even put to death over something they cannot control. In 2008, Sweden led a resolution to condemn summary executions, including on the grounds of homosexuality; the Organization of the Islamic Conference attempted to delete the phrase “sexual orientation” from the resolution, as one of the included grounds. In over seventy countries, homosexuality is illegal; in at least five, it is punishable by death.
Sweden believes that more can be done to assure the rights of LGBT people in these countries, such as a possible supplement or reinforcement of the aforementioned 2008 resolution, since it has not yet succeeded in ending summary executions under those grounds. Yet whatever it is, we hope that the resolution on this topic will assure basic human rights to LGBT people, or at the very least lessen the discrimination and danger (including death) faced by LGBT people in countries where they are not assured rights.
