Lecturer in Criminology
LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) rights are divisive and prone to instrumentalisation, nationally and globally. In the past thirty years LGBT rights have attracted the attention of a diverse set of actors: from civil society to states, from liberal to conservative parties, and more recently from global capital institutions to far-right politicians and movements.
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Over the past decade we have witnessed a human-rightisation of LGBT demands. In this time, the internationalisation of LGBT rights as human rights has seen an important acceleration (e.g. the Declaration of Montréal and the Yogyakarta Principles in 2006, and the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on ‘Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’ in 2011). In this new political territory, the human rights framework has become the official vector for advancing rights claims on the part of LGBT groups globally. To various degrees, these standard-setting resolutions have been trickling down to the domestic legal apparatuses of different countries.
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There are continuities between what happened to women’s rights in the late 1980s and what’s happening today to queer and trans people’s rights demands. The formation then of international NGOs dedicated to protect women from gender-based violence is comparable to the establishment of international resolutions, treaties and structures protecting LGBT rights today. However, more than women’s rights, LGBT rights have been extremely schismatic within the various international political platforms to which they have gained access. They have become symbols of civilisation and progress: Western politicians have instrumentally used them to reinforce the righteousness of their neoliberal states—those very principles of liberal tolerance under threat today with the spread of right-wing populisms. They have also been used by African political leaders to point to what they denounce as a neo-colonial plot from the West in imposing the adoption of a (Western) LGBT rights framework domestically.
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LGBT rights also now feature within the World Bank and the UN. In this context it is relevant today to think through how LGBT activism has diversified in the face of the new geopolitics of sexuality. In the summer of 2016, the UN Human Rights Council created the new role of an independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity—to monitor and report on violence against LGBT people globally. A few months after the appointment, the African Group of the UN tabled a resolution seeking to suspend the work of the LGBT independent expert, stating that they were: ‘strongly concerned by attempts to introduce and impose new notions and concepts that were not internationally agreed upon’.
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Some LGBT activists from a number of different countries contested the role of an LGBT independent expert at the UN, even before the official appointment. Among those who opposed it were members of the Coalition of African Lesbians. They did not support the creation of a Special Rapporteur that addresses issues of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in isolation from broader issues related to gender and sexuality rights. Through their opposition, the Coalition of African Lesbians hints at the question: what do we do with the human rights language if it perpetuates exclusion (of reproductive rights claims or issues concerning sex workers) and creates false exceptionalisms (under which LGBT issues are understood as exceptional and unique)?
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Some other LGBT advocates did not see much value in problematising the LGBT expert’s mandate at the UN as they uniquely saw the UN African Group’s move as an abuse of human rights. A divide here became evident. On the one hand, those we can call the ‘pro-human-rights’ activists view the UN role as fundamental in ensuring the human rights of LGBT people—thus it must be defended at all costs. On the other, the ‘questioning-human-rights’ activists are saying that the human rights framework must be constantly put under scrutiny in order to challenge its inherent universalising drive, which privileges some livelihoods over others.
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Foregrounding the experiences of LGBT people at the UN is important, but it does not have to imply that LGBT rights claims be treated in isolation from the other ways in which people are oppressed; on the grounds of race, class, disability and very importantly geography. Today most activists refer to the analytical tool of intersectionality, as this term has officially entered the lingo, but they utilise it in different ways. The intersectionality we should strive for should overcome the additive logic that often sustains it, as this tool can quickly be compromised when it comes face to face with the workings of power—particularly at this historical moment when some forms of hegemonic feminism and burgeoning LGBT rights groups are tightening dangerous liaisons with global capital.
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