SOGI at the U.N. — Gender Identity in Sports and Other Debates

Rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) remain highly contested, including within the U.N. system. In recent years, as discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity have been addressed in a more systematic way within the U.N., opposition has intensified. This has led to a highly polarized environment in which some States are highly supportive, and others vehemently opposed to advancing rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity within the U.N. 

Dylan Lang, Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. State Department, who recently delivered an intervention on behalf of the US on the floor of the UN on this topic, and Graeme Reid, U.N. Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and research scholar at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, will discuss the tensions regarding international protection of rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including at the U.N. 

Please note that Dylan Lang's remarks are on behalf of himself, not the US State Department or the US Government. Lunch will be provided.

This discussion will be moderated by Professor Claudia Flores, member of the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls and Co-Director of the Schell Center.

Dylan Lang is a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs’ Office of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.  In this role, he serves as a senior expert on human rights at the United Nations, with a focus on LGBTQI+ issues, environment and climate, health, and issues in the East Asia and the Pacific region.  He is currently detailed to the United States Mission to the United Nations to negotiate human rights resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly.  Previously, he served as a Presidential Management Fellow working on Congressional Affairs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dylan earned his Juris Doctor from New England Law (Boston) and a Masters of Social Work degree from Boston College. 

Graeme Reid is the U.N. Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In this capacity, he assesses the implementation of international human rights law, raises awareness, engages in dialogue with all relevant stakeholders, and provides advisory services, technical assistance, capacity-building to help address violence and discrimination against persons on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He is a South African scholar, who has conducted research, taught and published extensively on gender, sexuality, LGBT issues, and HIV/AIDS. Reid attended the University of Witwatersrand where he received his bachelor's degree in literature and master's degree in anthropology. He also holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. He is currently a research scholar and lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Before his appointment as Independent Expert, Reid acted as director for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, an organization he joined in 2011. He has taught as a lecturer in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology at Yale University and at the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University. Reid is the founding director of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, and previously worked as a researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. Reid's published monographs are How to be a Real Gay, Gay Identities in Small-Town South Africa (2013), Above the Skyline, and Reverend Tsietsi Thandekiso and the Founding of an African Gay Church (2010). He also co-directed the documentary Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free (2000).