Belarus

Overview

Homosexuality is legal in Belarus since 1994, but there are no anti-discriminatory measures in place to protect LGBTQ people in areas of employment, housing etc. Same-sex unions are not recognised, and homosexual people cannot serve in the military. It is legal to change one’s gender, but the procedure is lengthy. There are a few organisations advocating for LGBTQ and gender equality rights in Belarus listed below.

• An overview of rights and legal acts by ILGA Europe.
• Country ranking by ILGA Europe.

Academic research

Some academic research has been published on the topic of gender, but research on LGBTQ is very sparse (but check the link below, as well as repositories for references).

• Centre for Gender Studies, European Humanities University

Resources

Books

• Fedor, J., Umland, A., & Khromeychuk, O. (2016). Gender, nationalism, and citizenship in anti-authoritarian protests in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Journal of Soviet and post-Soviet politics and society ; v. 2, no. 1.
• Fejes, N., & Balogh, A. (2012). Queer visibility in post-socialist cultures. Bristol: Intellect book.
• Healey, D. (2017). Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Mole, R. (2019). Soviet and post-Soviet sexualities. (First ed., Routledge contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe series).

Periodicals

• Гендерные исследования - an academic journal on gender studies in the countries of the former USSR that publishes materials on gender, covering the entire spectrum of social and human sciences. 

Repositories

• A coverage of LGBT rights in Belarus on Lithuanian Gay League Website [English].
• E-library of Belarussian State University [Belarusian]. 

Data and statistics

• Belarus hate crime data by OSCE ODIHR [English].
• State-Sponsored Homophobia report: latest edition, includes maps and dataset, ILGA Europe - a world survey of sexual orientation laws + older editions [in English]. 

Reports

• World Report 2020 (PDF). Belarus. Events of 2020. (Online report). Human Rights Watch [English].
• Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex People in Hungary covering events that occurred between January-December 2020. ILGA Europe [in English].
• Belarus. Amnesty International [English].
• Less equal: LGBTI human rights defenders in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Amnesty International. London: Amnesty International Ltd. December 2017 [English].
• Муканова А., Йорский Ю., Джума В. Анализ национального законодательства Республики Беларусь, связанного с правами ЛГБТ и ВИЧ. Евразийская коалиция по мужскому здоровью (ЕКОМ). Таллинн, 2017. 26с. [Russian].
• Legislative analysis related to LGBT rights and HIV in Belarus. Eurasian Coalition on Male Health 2017 [English].
• Human Rights of LGBT People in Belarus Submission for the Universal Periodic Review 2014. GayBelarus [English].
• Challenging hate: Monitoring anti-LGBT “hate speech” and responses to it in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. Article 19, February 2018 [English].
• Queer History of Belarus in the second half of the 20th century:  a preliminary study. Minsk, 2016 [English].
• Situation of Individuals with non-standard sexual orientation in Belarus. Warsaw: Heinrich Böll Foundation [English].
• LGBTI Human rights defenders in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Amnesty International, 2016 [English].
• Universal Periodic Review of Belarus 22nd session. Joined submission by Gay Belarus and SRI, May 2015 [English].

News portals

• A collection of media articles about LGBT in Belarus [Russian]. 

Organisations

• Makeout - a Belarusian feminist anti-discriminatory project about gender and sexuality that seeks to heighten the awareness, promote mindfulness, and strengthen the LGBTQ-community and other vulnerable groups, which face sexual and gender identity discrimination [Belarusian and Russian].
• Delopi - a project fighting against homophobia in Belarus [Russian].
• Dotyk - a noncommercial cultural and educational organization that in its work deals mostly with matters of identity and self-determination, raises the problems of homophobia, transphobia, sexism and other forms of xenophobia in the Belarusian society [Belarusian, English].
• Gender - a project dedicated to promoting gender equality in Belarus. It also contains articles about LGBTQ [Russian].
• Journalists for tolerance - a non-profit, civic association of people working in the media sector focused on equality and non-discrimination [Russian].