Fighting For The Freedom To Breathe: LGBTQIA+ Asylum Seekers In Iceland

It’s no secret that Iceland is broadly regarded as a safe and accepting place for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Laws criminalising same-sex sexual activity were repealed in 1940, same-sex couples have been legally permitted to register their partnership since 1996, marriage was made gender-neutral in 2010, the Law on Equal Treatment in the Workplace took effect in 2018, trans folks were granted broad access to healthcare by informed consent in 2019. Iceland was also the first nation to elect an openly gay head of state when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became prime minister in 2009.

Iceland consistently ranks high on the ILGA Europe Rainbow Map, which assesses LGBTQIA+ rights in European countries across the categories like equality and non discrimination, family, hate crime, legal gender recognition, intersex bodily integrity and asylum.

“Legally speaking, we are at the top in the world,” says Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, a project manager at Samtönin 78, Iceland’s national queer association. “Well, Malta is higher than us when it comes to legal rights, but they’re not being enforced in the same way as they are here, so I would say we are already at the top; societal acceptance is very high here and has been for quite some time.”

There are seemingly countless reasons Iceland can be characterised as a queer utopia. But you have to get here — and be able to stay here — to reap the benefits. So how much of a dream land is Iceland for asylum seekers?

Waking from the dream

“In a dream world for me, borders would not exist,” says Bergrún Andradóttir, the office manager of Samtökin 78. Through her role with the queer organisation, Bergrún works closely with queer asylum seekers and refugees in Iceland. The organisation’s outreach to the community includes providing counselling, opening their office as a safe space and contributing to the legal cases of those seeking international protection in Iceland.

“In a dream world for me, borders would not exist.”

“When they come here, they have a meeting with us. In some instances, it’s just that people need help with legalities, with their cases and then they seem to settle in and they do not have the need for our help anymore,” Bergrún says. “But other people come in and continue to be involved in the community.”

Most often, as Þorbjörg explains, queer asylum seekers make their way to Samtök quite late in the process. “It’s very common that queer people don’t want to reveal that they’re queer to authorities, because that’s what they’re used to in their countries — you cannot trust the police, you cannot trust authority overall,” she explains. “So sometimes it has been a matter of asylum seekers speaking to other people and realising, ‘oh, okay, I can actually say this out loud and get support.’”

Due to changes to the Foreign Nationals Act passed this spring in Alþingi, however, both Bergrún and Þorbjörg are concerned about the number of people Samtök will be able to reach with their support.

The amended Foreign Nationals Act has been criticised for further eroding the human rights of refugees seeking international protection in Iceland. The bill absolves the Icelandic state of fulfilling international humanitarian laws such as the UN Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Children. Among other things, the bill permits Útlendingastofnun (the Directorate of Immigration or ÚTL) to deny basic services, such as health care, to applicants of international protection once 30 days have lapsed since their application has been rejected.

This gives Iceland greater opportunity and freedom to apply the Dublin Regulation, which Iceland signed on to in 2001. In broad strokes, the regulation deems that the first European Union member state in which an individual applies for asylum is responsible for processing their claim. The person seeking international protection is then not permitted to claim asylum in another member state and any subsequent state in which the individual seeks asylum can deport the applicant back to their first point of arrival in the bloc.

Able to fight

Being an island nation in a fairly remote part of the North Atlantic, the vast majority of people coming to Iceland are required to first land elsewhere in Europe before continuing their onward journey.

“Essentially, almost nobody can come directly to Iceland. So people who will seek asylum here after the new foreigner laws were passed this spring — if they’ve already been to Greece; if they’ve already been anywhere else in the Schengen area — they will be deported, no matter their specific situation,” Þorbjörg explains. “So we won’t even be able to fight those cases anymore, because they won’t be here.”

What this means in practice is that people fleeing their country of origin, who are most likely to land first in southern Europe, will have to seek international protection there. If they continue their journey further north, they have little legal chance of being able to stay.

“Many of the people that come here have already experienced violence on the streets and in refugee camps for being who they are.”

“In some of the countries in southern Europe there’s basically no help to be had either on the street or in refugee camps, where queer individuals are especially vulnerable to violence,” Þorbjörg says. “Many of the people that come here have already experienced violence on the streets and in refugee camps for being who they are. So it’s just sad that we’re closing this off.”

Adding to the complexity of queer folks seeking international protection in Iceland is the point that the law doesn’t explicitly include sexual orientation or gender expression as a protected class. “Iceland has always been open to LGBTQ individuals coming here to seek asylum,” says Red Cross program manager Guðrún Brynjólfsdóttir. “But it does not matter that a person is LGBTQIA+ — what matters is where they’re from, or if they have another legal right to seek refugee status here.”

“But if their case has merit then maybe in some cases, it can help if they come from countries that are hostile to LGBTQIA+ people.”

ILGA-Europe, the purveyors of the aforementioned Rainbow Map which ranks Iceland so highly, even recommends that Iceland introduces laws on asylum that contain express mention of all SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sex characteristics) grounds.

Challenge the system

The problem ingrained in the system that doesn’t list LGBTQIA+ people as a group eligible for international protection is that members of that community are less likely to identify themselves as such until it’s potentially too late.

“Often, people come [to Samtökin 78] very late in the process, because it’s very common that that queer people don’t want to reveal that they’re queer to authorities, because that’s what they’re used to in their countries — you cannot trust the police, you cannot trust authority overall,” Þorbjörg says.

“Cases are being dismissed is because the applicant did not openly talk about their sexuality or gender at their first interview.”

Bergrún would like to see authorities educate themselves further on the societal and legal intricacies of the countries asylum seekers are fleeing in order to inject more empathy into the system. “One of the reasons the cases are being dismissed is because the [applicant] did not openly talk about their sexuality or gender at their first interview. But coming from a hateful or unsafe environment, of course they didn’t do that. They don’t trust the authorities!”

“So I would like to see a better understanding of what queerness is and what and how it makes you [adopt a] method of surviving, of concealing it, of hiding it — that’s hard to switch that off.”

Þorbjörg adds that Samtök, in collaboration with a number of other human rights organisations in Iceland, have “put out statement after statement after statement” opposing the legal amendments that negatively impact LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers, but the government has been dead set on moving forward as they see fit. “They are set on making it as hard as possible to seek asylum,” she says.

“[LGBTQ+ folks] are, of course, facing the same challenges as everyone was seeking refuge in or seeking asylum in Iceland,” Bergrún says, “but, it’s layered. They are probably facing more isolation. Because I think people who are coming from countries where you cannot say that you’re queer, they come here and they are not embraced immediately about their identity. They are careful with it, and sometimes they withhold it, which is their right, so we’re seeing some isolation.”

In addition to censoring themselves as a means of self-preservation, Bergrún also notes that LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers are more likely to face discrimination within the system, whether it be the potential of being assaulted in the shared housing environments in which they are placed while their cases are being processed, or services being withheld by Icelandic authorities.

“We’re seeing with trans people coming in, there have been multiple instances of the system actually withholding things,” Bergrún explains. “There’s some resistance to actually complying with people’s wishes to change the name, change their legal gender marker, or something like that. So we’ve had to have difficult conversations within the system, both with ÚTL and Vinnumálastofnun, or other institutions involved in the process.”

Bergrún further notes that it has been her observation that queer refugees have a more difficult time finding work and housing in Iceland.

Seeking support, building community

Whether queer asylum seekers make their way to Samtökin 78 or the Red Cross, there is support to be had and community to be built. Both organisations provide counselling and peer support for queer folks taking their first steps in Icelandic society and adjusting to cultural differences.

“They get emotional support no matter what happens to their application,” Þorbjörg explains. “At least they will be met as who they are and be accepted and be welcomed into a queer space — I think it’s a huge thing for many people.”

Þorbjörg relays the story of a Spanish-speaking support group that has met regularly at Samtök — Venezuelans are the second largest demographic of people seeking international protection in Iceland, with 130 individuals arriving in the first six months of 2024, according to ÚTL data. “Sometimes it’s couples that have never been able to be out in public together and they come here and they get to hold hands and just be here in this building alongside other people from the same country,” she shares, “and it’s just such a beautiful, beautiful thing.”

The Red Cross has been hosting a weekly community support group for LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers and refugees for the past several years, even providing bus fare for those being housed in Keflavík to be able to make their way to their offices in Reykjavík. However, its time and location is circulated solely by word of mouth, at the request of organisers concerned with the privacy and safety of those who attend.

Asylum seekers can no longer seek legal support directly from the Red Cross, though. A contract with the Ministry of Justice to employ 15 lawyers through the Red Cross was allowed to expire in 2022, with the ministry claiming there was a more cost effective way to provide legal assistance to asylum seekers and other immigrants..

“So now the Directorate of Immigration handles it,” Guðrún explains. “They’re on both sides of the table. The lawyers [that would be employed by the Red Cross under the old system] are working as contractors for ÚTL and then ÚTL also has lawyers on the other side of the table asking people, ‘why should you be able to stay here?’ So, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is here.”

Freedom for everyone

So is Iceland the queer utopia it’s presented as being in the Rainbow Map and in countless articles that circulate every year in global media espousing the many merits of the system for members of the LGBTQIA+ community? What’s clear is that it depends very much on who you are and where you’re from.

“I can only imagine that there’s a sense of freedom that people experience when they come here.”

“I’m very privileged, being born and raised here, with white parents — you know that very typical Icelandic experience,” says Bergrún. “ I think as a queer person there is so much privilege living here and being able to be open about your sexuality in many spaces — though not all spaces.”

The ideal for a nation as progressive and proud of its international reputation as Iceland, one would think, would be to extend that same privilege and to create that same feeling of inclusivity and safety for queer people seeking international protection as well.

“I can only imagine that there’s a sense of freedom that people experience when they come here,” Þorbjörg says, reflecting on the experiences of the people she meets at the Samtök offices. “If you’ve grown up with prejudice your whole life, where nobody speaks about LGBTQIA+ issues, where it’s something that is considered a sin, or even a crime, coming to Reykjavik and seeing the rainbow flags everywhere in the stores, I think it’s indescribable. People say it is just being free — like you’ve been holding your breath your whole life and suddenly you can breathe.”

“There’s so much beauty and diversity,” Bergrún concludes. “I think most Icelandic people can agree to that.”

Read more about LGBTQIA+ issues and queer culture in Iceland here.