The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), is only two weeks long. But for lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LBTI) women and girls experiencing forced displacement, the fight for justice can last a lifetime.
Rainbow Railroad will be in New York this March to confer with civil society partners and remind policymakers that access to justice for all women and girls must center their lived experience.
Around the world, women and girls continue to face barriers to legal recognition, protection, and safety. LBTI women are particularly vulnerable, and their realities of global forced displacement should remain an urgent priority at global gender equality discussions.
Rainbow Railroad sees this firsthand. Our recently-submitted report to the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity focuses on violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer women, including trans women. For people looking to migrate, and particularly those under the LGBTQI+ umbrella, the mere right to mobility and protection is disappearing. It is even worse in contexts of forced displacement. Rainbow Railroad sees this as part of a broader erosion of access to justice and safety for forcibly displaced and refugee LBTI women and girls who must navigate complex humanitarian and refugee protection systems. Access to justice is not equal for women facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics (SOGIESC).
Between 2015 and 2025, more than ten thousand LBTI women and girls reached out to Rainbow Railroad requesting help. The United States topped the list of countries where individuals were sending the most requests for help, with over 9,500 requests, followed by Afghanistan with 2,936, and Uganda with 2,886. Although these requests come from different regions with distinct political and social conflicts, they reveal a consistent pattern: When laws criminalize, stigmatize, or fail to protect the most vulnerable women and girls, displacement follows.
Digging into our data, we see that a significant proportion of LBTI women requesting help were asking for international relocation support. Sometimes, the only way for LBTI asylum seekers and refugees to escape persecution is to get away. But many of these women lacked secure pathways to regularize their legal status in transit countries, further complicating their path to safety.
Rainbow Railroad’s data also shows that for many LBTI women, safety risk is not defined only by their exposure to violence linked to their SOGIESC identity. Our data shows that risks are enhanced when women are unable to leave environments where persecution persists.
Rainbow Railroad looks at humanitarian protection with a queer lens. This helps us uncover the often invisible and unrecorded struggles faced by LBTI women navigating forced displacement. Guided by the lived experience of the people we work with, this perspective helps illuminate how policy environments are impacting safety and mobility in real time.
Recent policy developments in the United States are increasingly harming global progress on gender equality. Domestic policy shifts directly affect the safety and mobility of LGBTQI+ people. For example, recent federal and state-level policies affecting gender recognition have challenged and narrowed access to identity documentation for transgender and non-binary people. Changes to these regulations have created harsh new administrative barriers that contribute to internal displacement. Our requests for help from the United States show that people are seeking safer jurisdictions even before they are forced to cross an international border.
Rainbow Railroad’s data is not alone in showing these changes. Research on humanitarian protection responses for LGBTQI+ refugees in emergency and crisis contexts highlight that existing protection systems can’t see the lived realities of forcibly displaced LBTI women and girls. Existing risk-assessment tools often rely on broad categories such as “women and girls” or “LGBTQI+ persons,” which can make LBTI women seem invisible. We see them. And we see the safety gaps that are failing to protect them.
In the context of the global displacement crisis, protection pathways must ensure that access to safety is not limited by geography. In our work, sometimes geography is the only thing that keeps people safe. Over the last two years, through the Queer Forced Displacement Initiative (QFDI), Rainbow Railroad has done consultations in multiple regions to better understand the risks facing LGBTQI+ people in situations of forced displacement. These convenings have provided us with real-time insights into the threats impacting queer and trans migrants, but more importantly, have helped Rainbow Railroad identify community-led solutions that are absent from mainstream humanitarian protection systems.
At the same time, Rainbow Railroad is maximizing its use of the Government-Assisted Refugee program (GAR) partnership with the Government of Canada. GAR is proof that protection systems can be made to lower barriers and respond to the realities of people who are invisible to international protection schemes and ensure they are meaningfully accounted for in resettlement and humanitarian protection systems.
Over the last 20 years, Rainbow Railroad helped thousands of LGBTQI+ people escape persecution. The world needs more resettlement pathways that are inclusive by design. States should also show their commitment to international humanitarian protection by ensuring real access to justice for queer people to reflect the lived experiences of the most vulnerable.
For Rainbow Railroad, CSW70 is an opportunity to remind the world that access to justice must extend to LBTI people living in crisis. Rainbow Railroad will be having these conversations with partners, including ORAM, Outright International, and the Government of Canada. We will collaborate with other leading LBTI advocates in this work.
Rainbow Railroad calls on states and refugee-serving organizations to make commitments on gender equality into real protections for LBTI women and girls by:
- Increasing resettlement slots for LBTI women through existing LGBTQI+ Government-Assisted Refugee pathways, in Canada and internationally.
- Investing in LBTI community-led initiatives such as Rainbow Railroad’s Queer Forced Displacement Initiative.
- Ensuring that gender analysis and ethical LGBTQI+ data collection are hallmarks of humanitarian protection efforts, so the world can respond directly to the causes of LGBTQI+ forced displacement.
- Ensuring meaningful participation of LBTI women with lived experience in shaping durable solutions for women impacted by forced displacement.