Global LGBT Rights Activity

While the UK has introduced legislation in recent years that protects the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people, in other parts of the world the law actively discriminates against members of the LGBT community. In her article ‘LGBT Rights: The Global Picture’, Ruth Davies looks in particular at the situation in Uganda and Russia and offers suggestions as to what we can do here in the UK to support LGBT rights internationally.

Ruth has also created a ‘Global LGBT Rights Activity’ that can be used with students, youth or community groups to explore LGBT rights around the world.

Global LGBT Rights Activity

Posted by Ruth Davies

The basic idea of the activity is to see if participants can match the description of a country’s LGBT rights with the country.

You will need:

• 1 set of ‘Question Cards’
• 1 set of ‘Answer Cards’
• Key Card
• Large map of the world
• String and pins or paper arrows and blu-tack

Preparation

Print off a set each of the ‘Question Cards’, ‘Answer Cards’ and the Key card. If you think you might play this several times it might be worth laminating them.

Get a large map of the world that can be laid on a table so people can sit round it. You need to identify each of the 18 countries involved, either by using a pin and piece of string going from the country to the edge of the map, or by cutting out paper arrows and sticking them with blu-tack to the map.

How to run the activity

This can be adapted according to your situation. Give participants one or several cards from the ‘Question’ set and challenge them to decide which of the marked countries matches the description.  You will need the key card to check their answers. Some of the answers can be quite hard to figure out so you may want to give clues or prompts to help, such as:

• ‘It’s an African country’; or
• ‘Where might religious views be important?’

When people correctly identify the country, give them an ‘Answer Card’ with the country’s flag on it – this can then be attached to the end of the string/arrow pointing to that country.

When the activity is finished your map will be surrounded by cards with flags on them.

Possible adaptions of the activity

• Make the activity easier by using only some of the countries

• Make it harder by not locating the countries on the map

• Make it collaborative by having a group work together on a set of card

• Make it a team game: either give each team a set of cards and see who finishes first, or give each team one card at a time and give them a new one each time they correctly identify a country and see who gets most in a certain time.