Intergovernmental Organizations and Nongovernmental Organizations

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Erin Aylward
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Conceptual Overview

This article traces the origins, evolution, and effects of LGBT advocacy by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in global forums. In particular, the article focuses on LGBT advocacy in intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. The first section provides a historical overview and traces the rise of LGBT NGOs—as well as the transnational networks linking them—from the interwar period to the present day. In doing so, this section discusses the strategies that such organizations have leveraged to gain clout and highlights how LGBT issues have gained salience and have generated contestation within UN human rights bodies and mechanisms. The second section provides a conceptual overview of how advocates have advanced LGBT issues and discusses how the frames of sexual and reproductive health rights, public health and HIV/AIDS, and, increasingly, LGBT human rights have been leveraged by NGOs to legitimize and to further propel LGBT advocacy. Finally, the third section discusses some of the challenges facing global LGBT advocacy. In particular, this section highlights North–South power inequalities in shaping and driving a global advocacy agenda and the tensions arising from limited emphasis on non-Western notions of sexual and gender diversity. This section concludes with a discussion of new directions in LGBT advocacy, highlighting in particular the increased efforts to combine human rights advocacy with inclusive development policy.

Intergovernmental Organizations and LGBT Issues

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Kiel ◽  
Jamie Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international institutions have proliferated since the end of World War II. This development has changed the landscape of international relations not only for states, but also for nongovernmental organizations and social movements. The advocacy of international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) plays a central role in pushing IGOs and their member states toward action. INGOs’ success in doing so depends on a number of factors, opportunity prime among them. Political opportunity structures (the institutional arrangements and resources available for political and social mobilization) determine lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) INGO access to power holders and thus their chances of bringing their concerns, and possible solutions to those concerns, to IGOs. The opportunity structures vary significantly from one IGO to the next. For example, the political opportunity structure offered by the European Union (EU) has been favorable to LGBT activism, while the United Nations is much less open to comprehensive inclusion of LGBT and sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) human rights. As LGBT issues move onto an IGO’s agenda, a symbiotic relationship develops between the IGO and advocacy organizations. The changing opportunity structures influence NGOs’ structure, strategy, and resource mobilization. Coordination between advocacy groups with similar goals becomes easier when many organizations have physical offices at IGOs. For diplomats and bureaucrats working at the IGO or national representative offices, INGOs can be beneficial, too. In particular, advocacy organizations are experts and purveyors of information. However, the interdependence between INGOs and IGOs has the potential of silencing voices that do not neatly fit into the internationalist, liberal rights-based discourse. Besides the political opportunity structures in IGOs, the frames INGOs use to advocate for issues have been found to be essential for campaign success. One tactic that often constitutes successful framing is the grafting of issues to existing norms. In the LGBT context, the frames proposed by activists include human rights, health (specifically HIV­-AIDS), and women and gender. International institutions assure that similar issues will be politicized in multiple countries. In order to meaningfully affect domestic populations, the policy needs to translate to the local level through norm diffusion. The mechanisms of diffusion include material inducement (e.g., conditions for membership), learning, and acculturation and socialization.

scholarly journals Criminalization and International Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 83-84
Author(s):  
Alice M. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Hiv Transmission ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
International Human ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Human rights advocacy today engages with criminal law at international and national levels with a new and rather conflicted posture. It is reorienting from an approach that primarily treated human rights as a shield from (unjust) prosecutorial and carceral power, and toward one calling for criminal penalties and vigorous prosecutions as a remedy for harms. The human rights abuses for which state prosecution is invoked today include not only past and present state violations, such as torture, but crimes by non-state actors, such as sexual and gender-based violence. At the same time, paradoxically, many rights groups are calling for the review and reduction of criminal regulation of a range of sexual and reproductive health practices, including abortion, consensual sexual conduct outside of marriage (same sex, heterosexual, and sex for money), and HIV transmission.

Welcoming gender diversity in the early years: Interpreting professional guiding documents for gender-expansive practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 146394912097852
Author(s):  
Kristy Timmons ◽  
Lee Airton
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Gender Expression ◽  
And Gender

This research takes up the challenge of interpreting the two newest grounds of human rights protection across Canada – gender identity and gender expression – for professional practice in early childhood education. To date, no human rights tribunal ruling on these grounds has engaged early childhood education, and while the legal duty remains for early childhood educators to provide an environment free of gender-identity and gender-expression discrimination, the Ontario profession’s governing bodies have provided no explicit guidance as to how. This research bridges early years educators’ new and likely unfamiliar legal responsibilities in relation to both grounds and everyday life in early years contexts. The findings demonstrate that ample support exists within the profession’s key guiding documents for ‘gender-expansive’ practice, or an approach to teaching children and supporting their development that both expects and sustains gender diversity. A similar analysis of guiding documents is needed internationally.

scholarly journals Sex and Gender Diversity in Southeast Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
Douglas Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Discrimination In Employment ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Legal Sex

The United Nations human rights system has recognized rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual,  transgender and intersex individuals (LGBTI), with key decisions in 2011 and 2016. To what  extent are the rights of these groupings respected in Southeast Asia? The visibility of LGBTI is  low in Southeast Asia and government attitudes vary.  Criminal laws, both secular and Sharia,  in some jurisdictions, have prohibitions, but active enforcement is rare. Discrimination in employment is prohibited by law in Thailand and in local laws in the Philippines. Change of  legal ‘sex’ for transgender individuals is sometimes possible. Legal recognition of same-sex relationships has been proposed in Thailand and the Philippines, but not yet enacted. Marriage has been opened to same-sex couples in neighboring Taiwan. Laws on adoption and surrogacy generally exclude same-sex couples. So-called ‘normalizing surgery’ on intersex babies needs to be deferred to the child’s maturity, to protect their health and rights.

scholarly journals De la diversidad sexual y de género (lgbti) a las disidencias sexuales, de género y corporales. Tránsitos necesarios e ineludibles

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-234
Author(s):  
Walter Alonso Bustamante Tejada
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
And Gender ◽  
P 53

En las últimas cinco décadas se han alcanzado logros significativos en el reconocimiento de derechos de los sectores lgbti, desde una apuesta por la “diversidad sexual y de género”. Estos logros se han dado gracias a las políticas sexuales que, mediante reformas para la inclusión, han beneficiado parte de los sectores sociales en mención, sin que se hayan generado transformaciones en el orden heterosexual y patriarcal, en el marco del capitalismo neoliberal. En ese sentido, la diversidad sexual, aunque ha posibilitado logros, también ha mostrado sus limitaciones. En este artículo se evidencian algunas de esas limitaciones y se plantean las “disidencias sexuales, de género y corporales”, como alternativa para retomar luchas de manera articulada, parafraseando a Wittig, “con muchos otros diferentes, todas las mujeres y numerosas categorías de hombres” (2006, p. 53), para pensar y actuar por cambios estructurales. From Sexual and Gender Diversity (lgbti) to Sexual, Gender and Corporal Dissidences. Necessary and Unavoidable Transitions Abstract: Significant achievements towards the recognition of rights of lgbti segments have been reached over the last five decades, from the perspective of “sexual and gender diversity”. Within the scope of sexual policies through reforms for the inclusion, these achievements have benefited part of the aforementioned social segments, without transforming the heterosexual and patriarchal order in the framework of the neoliberal capitalism. In that sense, sexual diversity, though providing achievements, has also shown its limitations. In this article, we show some of these limitations and we propose the “sexual, gender and corporal dissidences” as an alternative that resumes the struggles in an articulate way, with many other different people, women and various men categories, in order to rethink and take action for structural changes. Keywords: sexual and gender diversity, sexual, gender and corporal dissidences, sexual policies, lgbti human rights.

scholarly journals EXPLORING THE CYC CIS-TEM: A LITERATURE REVIEW OF QUEER AND TRANS TOPICS IN CHILD AND YOUTH CARE

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 23-54
Author(s):  
Mattie Walker
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Youth Care ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Child And Youth Care ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Two Spirit ◽  
And Gender

Although Child and Youth Care (CYC) sees itself as a field that embraces diversity and complexity, there is a notable lack of discussion of sexual and gender diversity: queer and trans topics are rarely taken up across CYC research, practice, and pedagogy. Through a systematic literature review of articles published between 2010 and early 2020 in six journals with a focus on CYC practice, research, and theory, this article assesses how queer, trans, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary identities and topics are being discussed in the current CYC literature and reveals a conspicuous absence of publication on these topics. In a 10-year period, across six CYC publications comprising over 4000 published articles, only 36 articles focused on queer and LGBT issues (by covering both sexual and gender diversity) and, of those, only eight articles specifically focused on gender diversity or trans topics. No articles were found within any of the reviewed publications that specifically focused on Two-Spirit identities or topics and only one article mentioned nonbinary identities. Through exploring how and where queer and trans, Two-Spirit, and nonbinary identities and topics are being discussed, this review asks how we as a CYC field might begin to make space for these topics within our field and practice, in order to work towards social change that shifts our field and challenges the cis-heteronormative CYC system.

Gender and human rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-166
Author(s):  
Birgit Schippers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Diverse World ◽  
International Human ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Lgbt Populations

Chapter 12 addresses international human rights provisions in relation to gender. It critically assesses some of the major debates about rights for women in a culturally diverse world, such as universality versus cultural relativism, how gender has been approached within different international human rights mechanisms, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and how this has influenced the development of social policy and rights for women. It challenges the notion that gender rights should be limited to a two-sex dichotomy arguing that gender diversity as reflected in LGBT populations should be reflected in human rights provisions by the development of inclusive sexual and gender identity (SOGI) rights approaches to human rights and an engagement with the needs and entitlements of sexual and gender minorities.

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