Muslim nations ban LGBT groups from UN meeting on AIDS

Groups representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been blocked from attending a high-level United Nations meeting on tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic next month.

The ban was requested by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, made up of 57 states including Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and sparked immediate global condemnation.

What has happened?

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The group did not give an explicit reason for the ban, but Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said the vetoed NGOs "appear to have been chosen for their involvement in LGBTI, transgender or youth advocacy".

They include the Ishtar Men Who Have Sex With Men group from Kenya, the Asia Pacific Transgender Network from Thailand and the Eurasian Coalition on Male Health, based in Estonia.

"It's not the first time that the UN has seen tensions over LGBT rights," says Pink News. Last year Russia attempted to block the UN from extending benefits to staff members who are in same-sex marriages. It received the backing from countries including China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, with the latter saying it believed such relationships were "morally unacceptable". The motion failed.

"The body also sparked fury by appointing Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most repressive and homophobic countries, as the chair of a UN panel on human rights," says the LGBT rights website.

What has the reaction been?

The US, EU and Canada have written to the UN general assembly president Mogens Lykketoft to express their opposition to the move.

Power said the movement to block the participation of NGOs "on spurious or hidden grounds" is becoming "epidemic" and "severely damages the credibility" of the UN.

"Given that transgender people are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV than the general population, their exclusion from the high-level meeting will only impede global progress in combating the HIV/Aids pandemic," she added.

Power has long been a vocal campaigner for LGBT rights, says the Gay Times. "In March she took her Russian counterpart to a Broadway production about closeted gay people."