This is a repost of an article I wrote in 2010 about Labour's record on LGBT international human rights and LGBT refugees. To contextualize, we had just come off an election campaign in which Labour had paraded its LGBT credentials and I had tried to take them down a peg or two, see this pinknews.co.uk article. Having worked closely with Iraqi refugees their reaction on that issue in particular made my blood boil. Hence the tone.
Just after that time I spoke with a lesbian woman who made a lot of allegations regarding the IRC (International Rescue Committee, one of the world's big refugee support groups), the organisation that David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary, Labour leadership candidate and Ttony Blair prodigy, is going to work for. In particular she talked about an appalling episode of mismanagement similar to the one experienced by two Iraqi gay refugees sent to Texas. Nothing ended up resulting from her allegations, as usually occurs, though I had connected her with interested American journalists and a whistleblower support organisation.
On a side note, a journalist friend of mine told me that the IRC had a long and unsavory history during the Cold War as a major front group for the CIA, which all came out on the public record during the 1974 Senate special committee investigating intelligence abuses hearings. This is covered in Eric Thomas Chester's book 'Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA'.
Groups like IRC have an enormous potential to aid LGBT refugees, as LGBT specific aid groups are tiny in comparison. And that is worldwide potential. There are LGBT refugees in the biggest refugee camps in the world, like Daabab in Kenya.
The big refugee assistance groups have shifted at the top over the past few years to recognition of that LGBT assistance role but it may be different at the coalface, hence an episode like the one reported to me regarding the Iraqis can repeat. So that makes leadership important. And so in that respect Miliband still has an opportunity to effect LGBT issues internationally, just as he did at the Foreign Office. Remains to be seen whether he follows through. Here's a bit of alternative history on Miliband's record for consideration if you're punting.
