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New Explanatory Videos Answer Asylum System Related Questions
LGBTI individuals who apply for asylum in Germany or who are planning to do so, find themselves facing an entire spectrum of challenges. On the one hand there is the asylum application process and the legal allocation of the persecution they have experienced; on the other hand there are housing questions as well as issues related to the protection from violence at housing facilities. As early as 2017, the Germany-wide LSVD project Queer Refugees Deutschland developed a guideline covering these issues, which provides well-founded answers to these questions. On the website, it is currently available in nine languages. In collaboration with the LGBTI consulting office Rosa Strippe in Bochum, this guideline has now been used as the basis for the development of explanatory videos to provide the most barrier-free access to this information possible.
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Four “Queer Refugees Deutschland” refugee activists in a debate with judges and attorneys
The asylum applications of lesbian, queer and bi-sexual refugees repeatedly pose particular challenges for government agencies in Germany; most especially the Federal Migration and Refugee Agency (BAMF). Many of the BAMF notifications are seized by the courts. Given this situation, the Catholic social “Akademie Franz Hitze Haus” invited the LSVD and four refugee activists to discuss issues related to homosexuality and bisexuality in the asylum process with judges and attorneys. The event was hosted as an online seminar of March 16, 2021 in close cooperation with the Catholic Office, the Commission of German Bishops and the Caritas organization.
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Hostility and violence targeting the LGBTI Community in shelters for refugees: protection concept study of the German federal states uncovers massive deficiencies
An article entitled “Sofern besonderer Bedarf identifiziert wurde” (“If special needs have been identified”) recently published in the science magazine “Freiburger Zeitschrift für Geschlechterstudien” uncovers massive deficiencies affiliated to the protection of LGBTI refugees in the violence protection concepts of Germany’s federal states. Authors Alva Träbert and Patrick Dörr compared the states’ violence protection concepts that were available in March 2019 with the measures identified as “minimum standards” for the protection of LGBTI refugees on the federal level. First and foremost, it is striking that of the 16 states in charge of housing refugees, only nine even have such a concept for their state-run shelters. Not even a third of the measures described in the “minimum standards” for the protection of LGBTI refugees can be found – on average – in these concepts.
