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New U.N. Video Explores Global Cost of LGBT Discrimination
The U.N. Free & Equal (UNFE) campaign launched its latest video last week in honor of Human Rights Day. Titled, The Price of Exclusion, openly gay American actor Zachary Quinto narrates the video and traces the social and economic impact of discrimination against members of the LGBT community. The video also highlights the cost to the wider community, business and the economy.
The Price of Exclusion highlights how discrimination disproportionately harms LGBT people who suffer from higher rates of depression, suicide, homelessness and poverty than the general population.
HRC Foundation’s report, The Cost of Closet and the Rewards of Inclusion, also summarized the impact of workplace inequality. For example. employees having to hide who they are comes at the cost of individual employee engagement and retention, and reveals broader challenges of full inclusion in the workplace. Additionally, over half (53 percent) of LGBT workers in the U.S. hide who they are at work.
Societies also face steep costs from discrimination against and exclusion of LGBT people including lost productivity from LGBT workers. Writing in the Huffington Post, Charles Radcliffe of the U.N. human rights office, who directs UNFE, noted that lost productivity can contribute to reduced corporate profits, a smaller tax base for the government and reduced national economic output.
Radcliffe highlights how bullying and isolation of LGBT students, which is endemic across different regions studied, contributes to LGBT youth abandoning their studies, ending up homeless and becoming a burden on the state. Up to 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States are LGBT.
A World Bank study of India in 2014 found the steep economic penalty of discrimination against LGBT people, discovering that the country’s economy was losing up to $32 billion a year due to the exclusion of LGBT people. Countries can enhance productivity and output by outlawing discrimination against LGBT people and encouraging their participation in social and economic life.
UNFE is an unprecedented global public education campaign for LGBT equality which was launched in July 2013 by the U.N. Human Rights Office. It raises awareness of homophobic and transphobic violence and discrimination and promotes greater respect for the human rights of LGBT people.
Earlier this year, HRC co-hosted an event with the U.N. Foundation and UNFE to mark the International Day Against Homophobia,Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT).
Learn more about HRC’s work abroad here and to learn more about workplace equality, click here.
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