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Just as a reminder: Everyone is welcome to submit information or thoughts on SOGIESC issues on this page and the related social media accounts. We welcome submissions of any kind.
Send your communications by email to: andreas.ziegler@unil.ch
We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest World Bank report on the Economic Cost of Exclusion based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics
(SOGIESC) in the Labor Market in Brazil.
The study estimates that Brazil loses R$94.4 billion in labor income each year, equal to 0.8 percent of GDP. Fiscal losses reach R$14.6 billion, equal to 0.12 percent of GDP. These losses stem from higher unemployment, higher inactivity, and wage penalties among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI+) people. Unemployment among LGBTI+ is more than double the national unemployment rate (15.2 vs. 7.7 percent) and the relative labor income of LGBTI+ people is 91 percent of
the general population. These findings show that exclusion is not only a social issue but a tangible economic constraint with direct consequences for productivity and growth. Brazil’s next stage of growth will depend not only on the pace of investment or the direction of reforms, but on how effectively the country uses its human capital.
Read the full report here.
The Cost of Exclusion Studies
Published in 2023, the Economic Cost of Exclusion in North Macedonia, and The
Republic of Serbia are the first two reports in the on-going series of studies providing
new data on key labor market indicators for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and
intersex (LGBTI) people and their experiences of labor market discrimination and
exclusion, along with an estimate of the resulting economic impact.
Read the full report
Read the full report
Press Release by Blue Diamond Society
Welcoming the Government of Nepal’s Decision to Explicitly Include Gender and Sexual Minorities in the Ministry’s Name and Mandate
Blue Diamond Society warmly welcomes the decision of the Government of Nepal to explicitly include Gender and Sexual Minorities in the newly renamed Ministry of Women, Children, Gender and Sexual Minorities, and Social Protection, which was authenticated by the President of Nepal and officially published in the Government Gazette today. This is a historic and long-awaited milestone for Nepal’s gender and sexual minority communities. It reflects the Government’s recognition of the rights, dignity, and inclusion of gender and sexual minorities within the national governance framework.
Today, BDS recall the tireless efforts of Blue Diamond Society and the broader LGBTQI+ movement in Nepal with our Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities of Nepal that made this achievement possible. For many years, BDS has continuously engaged in advocacy, policy dialogue, and consultations with the Government of Nepal, including with the former Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens, on issues affecting LGBTQI+ communities, including children and youth. These sustained advocacy efforts have been witnessed and supported by many stakeholders.
This success was not achieved alone. We deeply value the solidarity and support of our allies, supporters, development partners, and human rights defenders who stood with us throughout this journey.
At the same time, BDS has continuously engaged with political parties to advance the rights of gender and sexual minorities. As a result of years of collective advocacy, many political parties have now included gender and sexual minority issues in their political manifestos. We also proudly acknowledge that our former colleague, Bhumika Shrestha, has become a Member of Parliament and has played an important role in advancing this cause.
Today, we celebrate this important achievement and are encouraged to see our issues formally recognized within a government ministry’s name and mandate. This marks an important step toward meaningful inclusion.
We express our sincere gratitude to the Government of Nepal, Hon. Bhumika Shrestha, our allies, supporters, and all those who contributed to achieving this milestone.Our journey, however, continues. We remain committed to working toward comprehensive legal reform, inclusive policies, and effective implementation that translate these achievements into meaningful change at the grassroots level for all gender and sexual minorities across Nepal.
Finally, we thank our national, regional, and international partners and supporters who have trusted and stood with us—even during the most challenging times. Your solidarity has strengthened our resilience and resolve.
Manisha Dhakal
Executive Director
Blue Diamond Society
Nepal
On May 12, NYU Langone Health, a major hospital network in the state of New York, disclosed that it had received a federal grand jury subpoena from prosecutors in Texas state. The subpoena demands the names of every patient under 18 who received gender-affirming care at NYU Langone hospitals since 2020, as well as every provider, administrator, and volunteer involved in their care. The public only learned of the subpoena because NYU Langone, citing New York’s Shield Law, warned families that Texas prosecutors could receive their private records within 30 days.
The Texas subpoena is sweeping. It demands complete personnel files for all staff involved in these cases—whether they provided care, handled billing, or supervised staff—as well as copies of all internal rules, training materials, and billing-related emails. Most striking, it demands information identifying every patient and their full medical history, from first visit to latest treatment. Yet it never specifies what crime is under investigation or which law was allegedly broken.
The subpoena centers on a term the government has used across its legal actions since 2025: “sex-rejecting procedures.” US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy formalized the term in a December 18 declaration, stating that gender-affirming care “fail[s] to meet professionally recognized standards of health care”—a finding that has empowered federal officials to exclude healthcare providers from government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) General Counsel Mike Stuart then threatened to publicly refer at least 17 children’s hospitals to federal investigators for exclusion, including NYU Langone, each time invoking “sex-rejecting procedures.” The term has now migrated into the criminal subpoena as its foundational legal definition, explicitly overriding medical terminology and potentially recasting standard billing practices as evidence of fraud.
Courts have rejected this framing. In Oregon v. Kennedy, Judge Kasubhai vacated the Kennedy Declaration entirely and refused to use the government’s terminology, writing, “In this Court, all people will be treated with dignity. The Court will use the appropriate term ‘gender-affirming care.’” The government’s own HHS report on pediatric gender care, which serves as its stated scientific basis for these actions, never uses the term ” sex-rejecting ” once.
This subpoena to NYU Langone comes as legal challenges ramp up. Last week, eleven families represented by GLAD Law (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders), the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, and Brown, Goldstein & Levy filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, seeking emergency nationwide relief to block the US Department of Justice (DOJ) from obtaining or retaining patient records pending litigation. The filing argues that “once medical records are turned over to the federal government, the harm becomes irreversible, even if courts later determine the subpoenas were unlawful.”
In announcing the lawsuit, Brown, Goldstein & Levy attorney Eve Hill stated, “History has shown what happens when the government collects lists of the members of groups it disfavors. We cannot allow that history to repeat itself.” That comparison is not rhetorical. Perhaps most concerning is not just the legal mechanics of this subpoena, but what history tells us about where such list-making leads.
For years before the Nazis came to power, police across Germany had kept lists of suspected homosexuals. In fall 1934, the Gestapo instructed local police forces to send those lists to Berlin, centralizing—for the first time—a national registry of men believed to have engaged in same-sex behavior. These lists have come to be known as the “pink lists.” They were used to identify, arrest, and deport gay men to concentration camps. The 1942 Japanese American internment followed a similar pattern: federal agencies had spent years compiling lists before Executive Order 9066 authorized mass incarceration. When the order came, the lists were already ready.
At least seven federal courts have resisted the civil subpoena campaign, but none more directly than the US District Judge Mary S. McElroy. Her May 13 order quashing the Rhode Island subpoena found that the DOJ was “unworthy of trust;” a senior DOJ official’s sworn declaration was “clearly misleading, if not utterly false”; the government had engaged in “subterfuge” to obtain a Texas enforcement order while concealing its tactics from her court; and the subpoena itself lacked any congressionally authorized purpose. As McElroy wrote, “the off-label prescribing conduct at the core of the DOJ’s theory is not illegal under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.” The DOJ immediately appealed to the First Circuit, sending the conflict between her order and the Texas enforcement order to appellate courts.
Right now, the Shield Law offers protection, but most states lack such laws. Families in those states may not even know if their children’s records have already been sent to the government. Lawmakers in states without these protections should act now—not wait for the next subpoena. Hospitals have both the legal right and the moral duty to fight these subpoenas before handing over any records.
NYU Langone has 30 days, and the countdown has begun for every hospital that received a subpoena. All eyes are on the Maryland court. If emergency relief does not come before hospitals in unprotected states comply, it will be too late to wonder what the government will do with those records. History is clear: the time to protect people is before a list is created, not after it falls into government hands.
The post US dispatch: federal grand jury subpoena marks first known criminal probe into gender-affirming care at major New York hospital appeared first on JURIST – News.
Brussels argued it does not have the legal authority to ban the practices and feared encroaching on the prerogatives of member states. It will therefore leave it up to them to take action.
Poland’s capital, Warsaw, registered its first same-sex marriage on Thursday, implementing court rulings that require the country to recognise same-sex marriages registered abroad.
OSAKA – Japan’s family register system, which only allows male and female designations in its gender entry, infringes on Article 14 of the Constitution, the Osaka High Court has said.
Gender identity is “directly linked to an individual’s personal existence, making it a significant legal good,” the court said in its judgment, dated Friday, in a case filed by a nonbinary person in their 50s registered as female.
More: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/05/13/japan/crime-legal/family-register-nonbinary-ruling/
Article 14. Racism and other discriminatory conduct
See also: Real Madrid fans’ gay chant was ‘discriminatory’, court rules
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 