Georges Azzi

Azzi grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, in a conservative Christian family, during a civil war which divided Beirut between the East (the predominantly Christian side) and the West (the predominantly Muslim side).[3] He moved to Paris in 2000, where he earned a degree in engineering, multimedia, and communications and became involved in LGBTQ activism.[3] As a gay man who had grown up in Lebanon, he wanted to set up a centre in Beirut similar to Paris's LGBTQ Centre, to give LGBTQ people opportunities he had lacked.[1] He co-founded Helem (which means "dream" in Arabic) in 2004.[3]

Azzi is the first openly gay activist in the MENA region and has been described as "a prominent activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights" by the Lebanese Daily Star.[4] On May 14, 2018, Azzi won OutRight Action International's Felipa de Souza Award for his work with The Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality.[3][5]

Georges Azzi is a veteran Lebanese sexual rights and gender activist in the MENA. He co-founded the first LGBTIQ+ organization in Lebanon in 2004 (Helem), co-founded the first sexual health clinic Marsa in 2011, and founded the first regional sexual rights organization in 2009 – the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality (AFE) that aims to defend and raise the voices of LGBTIQ+ people in the MENA region. Under his leadership, AFE became the largest and only regional LGBTIQ+ organization in the MENA that promotes for sexual rights and challenges discrimination.

Being the first gay man in the region to publicly talk about his sexual orientation on live television on a Lebanese local channel. When the Lebanese civil society was refusing to work with Helem when it was first launched, Azzi advocated and succeeded in enforcing the LGBTIQ+ agenda in Lebanon within different organizations and parties. Under his leadership, the first International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) was celebrated in Lebanon in 2005bringing an unquestionable visibility to the LGBTIQ+ community; the first LGBTIQ+ publication – Barra (Out) Magazine – was created; the first awareness brochure highlighting sexual practices for Men having sex with Men and HIV was distributed in Lebanon with the approval of the Ministry of Health, which was a huge step towards the public discussion of sexual rights and discrimination against People Living with HIV under the patronage of an official authority. Working with official and legal authorities was extended to creating the first model plea for lawyers for defending LGBTIQ+ individuals before Lebanese courts.  In addition, throughout his advocacy efforts, Azzi initiated the work of mainstreaming Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) issues in organizations working with refugees such as IOM.

Throughout his career, Azzi challenged social and political constructs, overcoming the many legal challenges he faced with the Lebanese authorities from calls for investigations to the recent raid of the largest regional conference for gender activists organized by AFE that was forcibly shut down by Lebanese General Security in 2018. Being a solution-oriented activist and professional who is driven by the needs of the LGBTIQ+ community, Azzi worked for the past 10 years to create a movement for the LGBTIQ+ in the region, which resulted in increasing the number of LGBTIQ+ organizations from 4 in 2010 to 22 organizations in 2021, making Azzi one of the main pillars of the LGBTIQ+ movement we know today.

• Bickel, Markus (1 February 2007). "Helem ist die einzige organisation in der Arabischen welt, die sich für die rechte von lesben und schwulen einsetzt" [Helem is the only organization in the Arab world advocating for the rights of lesbian and gay people]. Berliner Zeitung (in German).
• https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-georges-azzis-brave-fight-for-lgbt-rights-in-the-middle-east