The U.N. Human Rights Council voted yesterday to extend the term of its current expert on LGBTQ+ rights by three years. The LGBTQ+ rights expert, South African author and scholar Graeme Reid, investigates human rights abuses against LGBTQ+ people in order to bolster protections and increase dialogue on LGBTQ+ rights.

Twenty-nine countries on the Human Rights Council voted to renew Reid’s mandate, 15 voted against, and three abstained. Before the vote, Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), said that the LGBTQ+ rights expert promotes “controversial views.”

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“The renewal of this mandate is a spark of hope in a time when reactionary powers worldwide are trying to dismantle progress that our communities fought so hard to achieve,” said ILGA World executive director Julia Ehrt, Reuters reports.

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The U.S. didn’t vote on the matter because the president withdrew the U.S. from the Human Rights Council in February of this year (some American politicians of both parties have claimed the Human Rights Council has a bias against Israel). “I’ve always felt that the U.N. has tremendous potential. It’s not living up to that potential right now,” he said at the time.

He has issued several anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders in the few months he has been in office, including orders that legally erase trans people, that require the federal government to work against states that let trans students participate in school sports, and that ban trans people from serving in the military.

Reid has criticized the U.S. president’s anti-trans measures, accusing him of imitating other authoritarian world leaders who have attacked LGBTQ+ people.

The president’s anti-trans executive orders “may seem solely to be a minority rights issue – and no doubt transgender people will bear the brunt of discrimination and violence,” Reid wrote for U.S. News & World Report in March 2025. “But it is also an assault on human rights writ large. This well-worn tactic of authoritarian leaders is a bellwether of more rights abuses to come.”

Reid was first appointed as a United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity in November 2023. He is the author of the book How to be a Real Gay: Gay Identities in Small-Town South Africa.

According to the Blade, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Malawi, Maldives, Morocco, Qatar, and Sudan voted against renewing Reid’s mandate while Albania, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, South Korea, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Vietnam voted in favor. Benin, Ghana, and Kyrgyzstan abstained.

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