Can the U.N. Protect Queer Rights?

On March 20, for the second time in its history, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) convened an Arria-formula meeting that focused specifically on the integration of the human rights of LGBTI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and other sexual and gender minorities) people in conflict into the work of the council.

Arria-formula meetings are informal, ad hoc gatherings that allow the convening member to invite parties outside the council’s membership to testify. The session’s chairperson, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, stressed that this was the first time that Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the U.N. independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, had briefed the Security Council.

The significance of a Security Council meeting on LGBTI+ issues is not to be underplayed. Madrigal-Borloz and his office have created significant momentum since receiving the mandate to investigate these issues in 2016. The mandate has proved an important tool for engaging with national and local LGBTI+ civil society organizations, gathering on-ground insight during country visits about experiences of peace and conflict that have previously been absent from these international conversations. The U.N.’s most conservative organ is now moving toward entrenching and mainstreaming the protection of queer people as a mainstay of peace and security policymaking globally, as well as integrating attention to sexual orientation and gender identity in its work moving forward.

But there are still difficult questions around the future course of such measures. Is going down the UNSC route the right way to ensure the protection of queer people? How can the council ensure not just participation, but also leadership for deciding the next steps for international action from those outside the global north? How can actions account for the many diverse populations within the wide community of LGBTI+ people as a part of not only rethinking security responses, but also thinking about gender as a dimension of peacebuilding? What is the role that the broader U.N. LGBTI Core Group will take in bringing forward this agenda?

Speaking before the meeting, Thomas-Greenfield stated her desire to see momentum build toward the formal inclusion of LGBTI+ issues on the agenda. The potential integration of these issues and queer perspectives into future Security Council work could establish a UNSC-level mandate for the protection of queer communities.

We do not dispute that it is the UNSC’s responsibility to protect queer people globally. Indeed, we have each individually argued—in research on queering atrocity prevention and the responsibility to protect, and queering the women, peace and security agenda, as well as at the Arria-formula meeting—that the integration of queer people and perspectives into frameworks for peace and security is essential. For us, queering means not only highlighting the insecurity some people face because their gender and/or sexuality is constituted as abnormal or perverse by cisheteronormative standards, but also adhering to a queer political commitment of always interrogating dominant power structures and examining who benefits from the status quo. All people have a sexual orientation and gender identity. All people should, therefore, already fall under the work the council does to ensure international peace and security—regardless of their identity.

What troubles us, however, is that the United States and United Kingdom are leading the integration of LGBTI+ issues in the work of the UNSC while their domestic situations for queer people, especially transgender folks, are becoming increasingly fragile.

In the United States, there are an increasing number of legislative moves against queer people. Targeted legislation against the community includes what critics call the Don’t Say Gay law and the Stop WOKE Act, both passed in Florida and promoted vocally by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as the rollback of federal guarantees for reproductive rights with the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

In the United Kingdom, reported violence against queer people doubled between 2016 and 2021. And the country has been seized by a narrative of transphobic panic pushed by both mainstream media and politicians of both parties, resulting in the U.K. government’s halting of nationwide reforms of legal gender recognition as well as the blocking of Scottish reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, despite broad support for reform amongst the public. In his end of mission statement following his U.K. country visit, Madrigal-Borloz stated that he has a “deep concern” about the rise in anti-LGBT harassment, threats, and violence in the country.

Most worryingly, even with the worsening U.S. and U.K. domestic records and international virtue-signaling on queer issues, many other countries—including fellow Security Council members—have adopted anti-queer politics in nationalist discourse and as a key feature of their challenge to liberal world order. Russia has marketed itself as the world’s defender of so-called traditional family values for more than a decade, positioning itself in opposition to Europe, which it has constituted as “Gayropa” in its foreign policy. Part of that foreign policy includes a gendered and sexualized element, in which Russia presents itself as the savior of the morally corrupt Gayropa. Promoting so-called traditional values in opposition to supporting LGBTI+ rights was also a remarkably successful tactic in Colombia leading up to the failed peace referendum in 2016, and the appeal of such values is gaining further international support.

In China, there are no explicit legal protections against discrimination or violence on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Increasingly, groups that were established to support the LGBTI+ community are targeted and censored by the state, and there has been a resurgence in the propagation of the idea of queerness as correctable and foreign. This accompanies a shrinking space for advocacy, as the state’s censorship and security apparatus explicitly targets any positive queer representation and discourse. This has included a systematic campaign to eliminate “effeminate” men (niangpao) from mainstream media.

In Europe, countries such as Hungary and Poland have passed legislation that paints queer people as dangerous threats to order and the fabric of society. As we see the political currency of so-called traditional family values spread and harden internationally—along with a growing resistance to the imposition of “Western” queer values, Gayropean values, or so-called woke agendas—the UNSC adopting a queer agenda risks whipping up existing tensions about sexual morality, tradition, and culture in human rights debates, and adding fuel to the increasing attack on LGBTI+ people that is already underway.

Taking all of this together means that proponents of a queer agenda in peace and security chart a very cautious path forward when considering positioning the UNSC as a defender of queer people. Russia, a state actively perpetuating a discourse about the threat that queerness poses to international order and so-called tradition, and the United States and United Kingdom, states where there is significant and increasing polarization on LGBTI+ issues and gender more broadly, sit as permanent members of the UNSC. That means that there are huge risks in how Western, highly militarized states approach this move to, as Thomas-Greenfield put it, “institutionalize and regularize the Security Council’s approach to LGBTI+ issues.”

The often broad-strokes nature of UNSC resolutions leaves little room for the social and political nuance that is important when responding to queer people’s vulnerabilities. As such, a focus on the role of the UNSC, to some states and civil society actors, may end up reading as the imposition of Western values; an argument that already has incredible discursive traction among homophobic actors and often violent consequences for those targeted by anti-queer violence.

UNSC-led initiatives may also serve ends that are antithetical to its initial purpose: namely, justifying interventionism in a similar way to other interventions motivated to protect against gendered harms, such as the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan that was clad in colonial tropes concerning the subordination of Afghan women.

Language that dehumanizes and instills fear can quickly spread from traditional and social media, leading to the escalation of violence based on identity. Past instances of atrocity crimes, such as those perpetrated by the Nazis and those that drove the disintegration of former Yugoslavia, demonstrate that the persecution of LGBTI+ individuals and queer communities frequently serves as a precursor to the persecution of other marginalized groups. Lessons can be learned from organisations such as Colombia Diversa, which documented the integration of LGBTI+ folks in the Colombia peace process and is leading the way on queer approaches to peace and security.

Other research informed by LGBTI+ people working in conflict-affected societies can guide these next steps. The aforementioned study on queering atrocity prevention, funded by the U.K. government, called on states to engage in LGBTI+ inclusion and protection first and foremost at a domestic level and in a bottom-up, context-sensitive way, rather than adopting resolutions that may inadvertently make certain queer people in certain spaces more insecure and subject to targeting for persecution or eradication by actors seeking to use homophobia and transphobia for political gain.

A 2022 report titled Breaking the Binary, also funded by the U.K. government, recommended including LGBTI+ rights in national action plans; facilitating gender sensitivity training for international donors, international agencies, and civil society; developing LGBTI+ inclusive risk indicators and monitoring systems; investing in locally rooted organizations doing work to challenge heteropatriarchal gender norms and values; broadening the definition of “woman” used in Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820; and undertaking “joint internal learning, planning and implementation across different teams working on LGBT+ rights, on the WPS [women, peace, and security] agenda, and on conflict.”

We see the greatest opportunity for success in the building of contextually sensitive and less broad-stroke approaches to queering peace and security by working through the U.N. Human Rights Council and the Joint Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect. These U.N. organs are well-placed to work with states and local partners to build devolved mechanisms to protect queer people whose needs differ over space and time.

With a new independent expert taking up the mandate in October 2023, we urge them to make an unflinching effort to integrate queer people, queer perspectives, and LGBTI+ rights into peace and security practices, particularly through the aforementioned U.N. organs, but also through the Peacebuilding Support Office.