Helping LGBTQI refugees find a safer home: Spectrum hosts Rainbow Railroad

Dean Evangeliou

Devon, Manager of Program Development at Rainbow Railroad, discussed the challenges facing LGBTQI refugees, and her organization’s efforts to help them, in a lecture hosted by Spectrum at the University of Toronto on January 14th. 

Rainbow Railroad is a non-profit organization that helps LGBTQI people around the world escape persecution and state-sponsored violence. Its name is an homage to the Underground Railroad, which provided escaped slaves with a pathway to freedom in the pre-Civil War United States. 

As Devon explained, the group was founded at the grassroots level in 2006 “to provide a solution for refugees and asylum-seekers that are LGBTQI and that are facing intersecting persecution [...] by providing pathways to safety.” The organization relies entirely on private donations to arrange travel for LGBTQI people fleeing persecution in their home countries. 

Since its founding, Rainbow Railroad has grown to include a team of 15 paid staff members, 130 senior-level volunteers, and numerous consultants around the world. In 2019 alone, the organization received 3,000 requests for help from LGBTQI people around the world.

“Every single person that contacts us gets a response,” Devon explained, “with either some basic information about how they can access resources, [...] or we start building a file for them and then understand whether we can assist them after that.” 

When deciding who to help, Rainbow Railroad considers the urgency of the case, the potential travel options, and the amount of funding available to them. With this in mind, they were able to help over 200 people escape dangerous situations by arranging travel to safer countries in 2019.

“We just have to do what we can, and so we have to be really careful about risk,” said Devon. “If somebody has already been attacked, the chances of them getting attacked again are doubled, and so we know that we need to be responsive.”

Calls for help primarily come from countries where the LGBTQI community is criminalized. Homosexuality remains illegal in 68 countries worldwide. In six of them, it is punishable by death. This means that LGBTQI victims of violence cannot turn to their government or the police for help, especially in places where that violence is actively encouraged or carried out by the state. 

Such was the case in the Russian republic of Chechnya in 2017. That spring, Chechen officials launched an “all-out attack” against the LGBTQI community. Police rounded up over 100 gay and bisexual men and tortured them in secret detention centres. Several of the victims ultimately died at the hands of their captors.

The anti-gay purge was a clear call to action for Rainbow Railroad. That year, it managed to evacuate 57 victims of the Chechen purge, resettling them in numerous countries including Canada.

“That really put the organization in the media,” Devon said of Rainbow Railroad’s work in Chechnya, “and so that’s kind of where people started to get to know us.”

Devon also spoke about the various barriers that LGBTQI people face when navigating international refugee and asylum systems.

Many LGBTQI people fall under the category of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) rather than refugees because although they have been forced to leave their homes, they remain within their native countries. As such, they can’t access the programs and protections designed for international refugees. 

LGBTQI women often face additional challenges, especially in countries where they are not granted the same travel privileges as men. Transgender refugees face their own set of barriers as well.

“With trans folks, we have to have this really difficult conversation with people about detransitioning to travel, or using deadnames to travel [to ensure their safety],” said Devon. 

In closing, Matthews stressed the need for international policy to address the needs of all IDPs, and for more recognition of the dangers facing LGBTQI refugees.

A crowd of about a dozen students and guests attended the presentation, which was hosted by Spectrum, the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s LGBTQ+ student group.

“I think why this event was so important was because we don’t get exposed to these things in our everyday policy work,” said Spectrum Executive Director Dean Evangeliou. “These atrocities that are being committed in other countries are not presented to us if we’re not doing the research on our own, so I think in that sense it was a real success.”

He was particularly moved by the stories of individuals that Rainbow Railroad had been able to help.

“Those stories really hurt to hear. It makes me sad that they can’t help everyone,” he said. “I’m thinking now every day about the people there who they could be helping but they just don’t have the resources.”