Now is the time to strengthen LGBTQ+ asylum rights, not weaken them

On Friday, Pink News published an article by our Executive Director Leila Zadeh looking back at the history of LGBTQI+ asylum in the UK and the urgent need for change and a more compassionate asylum system today. Read it in full, or find a summary below:

Over the past three decades, we have celebrated key moments that have helped establish protections for LGBTQI+ people moving to the UK and seeking safety from persecution. However, those protections have also been –  and continue to be – under threat.

Thanks to relentless campaigning, same-sex couples were finally recognised positively for the first time in British law with the introduction of the Unmarried Partners Concession in 1997, paving the way for the Civil Partnership Act (2004) and Marriage Act (2013). Yet, nearly five decades after the 1951 Refugee Convention came into force, LGBTQI+ people were still not recognised as eligible for refugee protection. Restrictive interpretations of the convention denied them safety until 1999. That year, and thanks to pressure from advocacy groups, the UK courts formally recognised LGBTQI+ people as a social group eligible for asylum.

A few years later, in 2010, a groundbreaking ruling was issued in the case of HJ (Iran) and HT (Cameroon). This landmark UK Supreme Court judgment affirmed that no LGBTQI+ person seeking asylum could be expected to conceal their sexual orientation to avoid persecution in their home country.

While these hard-won protections have transformed LGBTQI+ asylum and immigration rights, challenges remain – particularly the difficult task of proving one’s sexual orientation or gender identity to officials during the asylum process. In recent years, regressive laws have only made this and other challenges for LGBTQI+ people seeking safety worse.

The Nationality and Borders Act, passed in 2022, introduced a higher standard of proof for all refugees, meaning LGBTQI+ people now have to provide even more evidence to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity, putting them at greater risk of being returned to the horrific situations they fled. And with the Illegal Migration Act (2023), the government can deny people the right to claim refugee protection based solely on how they arrived in the UK, detaining people for as long as the government considers ‘reasonable’ before sending them back. This law also denied refugee protection to people from a list of so-called ‘safe’ countries – many of which are, in fact, dangerous places for LGBTQI+ people, such as India, Albania, or Georgia.