Audacity in Adversity : LGBT Activism in the Middle East and North Africa

This report accompanies a series of videos produced by Human Rights Watch and the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality (AFE). The videos feature individual activists reaching out in Arabic to LGBT people living in the Middle East and North Africa with messages of support and encouragement. The report thus focuses on those parts of the region where Arabic is predominantly spoken. The report provides context for the videos, highlighting and detailing the existence of movements that are making change in the face of significant obstacles, including criminalization of same-sex conduct (and, in a few countries, gender non-conformity), arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment, forced anal examinations, lack of gender recognition for transgender people, violence by state and non-state actors, restrictions on freedom of expression and association, family rejection and community stigma. Activists in the countries that are the focus of this report must contend with state hostility, to varying degrees. Many governments in the region reject the concepts of ?sexual