Between 1998 and 2002, he organized a project bringing many grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists from the global South to speak and advocate before the then United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Long also gave UN bodies extensive information and analyses on abuses against LGBT people. This lobbying brought about an unprecedented commitment by key U.N. human rights officials to work on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2001, six independent experts—high-level individuals appointed by the UN to investigate patterns of human rights abuse—publicly reached out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities, formally declaring that these issues lay within their official mandates. Long said of the move, "Today the United Nations has lived up to its promise: to defend the dignity of all people without exception."