Australia’s missed moment on global LGBTQI+ rights
As LGBTQI+ rights retreat worldwide, Australia’s UN rejection squanders a chance to lead in the Asia-Pacific.
Jess Gifkins & Dean Cooper-Cunningham
5 October 2026
In July, the Australian government rejected all recommendations for improving LGBTQI+ rights made via a United Nations process.
The UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review enables countries to review each other’s human rights record and provide recommendations for improvement. Of 332 recommendations overall, the government accepted 128, but none of those were for LGBTQI+ people.
This matters particularly in the current political moment involving a backlash against LGBTQI+ identities and a regression on LGBTQI+ rights around the world.
The United Kingdom, for example, was ranked first in Europe on LGBTQI+ rights in 2013. By 2026, it has fallen to 22. The deteriorating rights space is so severe that the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has issued “red flag” alerts on anti-trans and intersex rights. The institute also put out an alert for the United States on anti-trans rights.
With states that previously championed protections for LGBTQI+ people taking hostile positions against LGBTQI+ rights, one academic recently argued that the world has passed “peak queer” given that “most ruling parties have abandoned all pretence of advocating for LGBTQI+ rights” and often ally with anti-gender activists. This is a long way from the 2011 proclamation by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that “gay rights are human rights”.
When humanitarian aid targets women, gay male households may be excluded.
In our research on the backlash against LGBTQI+ rights and the prevention of mass atrocity crimes, we have found that there are significant gaps in both research and policy practice where LGBTQI+ people haven’t been factored into risk indicators for atrocities. The underlying assumption is that the community served by people working on atrocity prevention are all heterosexual and cisgender, which is not the case for any large group of people. We argue that researchers and practitioners need to remove the “cisheteronormative blindfold” and consider the specific needs of LGBTQI+ people.
Examples of policies and practices that have unequal outcomes for LGBTQI+ people in conflict or development settings include:
Trans women in Ukraine being unable to leave the country because of identity documents not matching their gender identity while cis women were allowed to leave;
When humanitarian aid targets women, gay male households may be excluded;
Sex-segregated facilities in refugee camps can be exclusionary of trans and gender-diverse people or documents needed to qualify for support might be inaccessible for trans and gender-diverse people;
A UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar that determined acts of sexual violence against cisgender women as “genocide” while “functionally identical” acts of violence against trans women and cis men constituted “crimes against humanity”.
Laws and language that high-profile figures use to discuss LGBTQI+ people also have political effects. In Indonesia, a presidential regulation in 2025 classified “the spread of LGBTQ culture” as a non-military threat. Echa Wao’de, an Indonesian trans advocate, told the ABC that “because of the presidential regulation and discriminatory regional regulations, people feel able to commit violence arbitrarily because they believe the state has legitimised that violence”.
Australia’s rejection of the UN’s recommendations on LGBTQI+ human rights was a missed opportunity for Australia to be a leader on LGBTQI+ rights in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
With Australia now bidding for a seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2029–30, currently uncontested, its positions on these issues carry real weight. In 2023, Australia’s annual statement to the UN General Assembly on the prevention of mass atrocity crimes included references to the persecution of LGBTQI+ people, which was one of the first statements in that forum to make these connections. If Australia does secure an elected seat on the UN Security Council, this is an example of the kind of leadership it could show in this area. Advocacy of this type matters as demonisation and persecution of LGBTQI+ people intensify around the world.
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