Louis,” who underwent a forced anal examination in Cameroon in 2007, at age 18, told Human Rights Watch nine years later: “I still have nightmares about that examination. Sometimes it keeps me up at night when I think about it. I never thought a doctor could do something like that to me.”

The Core Group of seven Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay – and 41 additional countries jointly presented the text. The resolution was adopted by a vote of 23 in favor, 18 against and 6 abstentions.

I genuinely do not understand how one person can look at another person and not see all of that. How can they look at someone and not imagine the lives they would have touched or changed just by simply existing? How they can look at another person and decide they are wrong for loving someone? Anyone who’s ever experienced any kind of love knows how wonderfully indescribably that feeling can be. I can’t fathom wanting to take that away from anyone.

The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders yesterday announced the three finalists who will be receiving this year’s prestigious honor. The award, created in 1993, is granted annually to individuals who have demonstrated an exceptional record of combating human rights violations by courageous means and is in need of protection.

A U.S. government employee, who was also the editor of an LGBT magazine in Bangladesh, was hacked to death Monday in the capital of Dhaka, officials said. A group of assailants stormed the home of Xulhaz Mannan, a staffer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, stabbing him and a friend to death. Mannan was a senior editor of Roopbaan, the first gay rights magazine in the country.

“If I stand here in my true authentic self, it means I stand here and am able to talk about race without having to leave my gender at the door. I stand here and talk about gender without having to leave my sexual orientation at the door. I stand here being a lesbian – part of the lesbian gay bisexual queer and intersex (LGBTQI) family – without having to leave a hidden disability at the door.

The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) last week unequivocally stated that efforts to “cure” LGBT people don’t work and are dangerous and unethical. The WPA is an international association of national psychiatric societies.