Reaching the Tipping Point?: Emerging International Human Rights Norms Pertaining to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Baisley
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 122-145
Author(s):  
Malte Breiding Hansen

Since 2003, the United Nations international human rights framework has moved notably toward increased international human rights recognition for sexual and gender minorities. Most recently, 2016 saw the adoption of an Independent Expert on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Motivated by the nevertheless continued refusal by predominantly African and Middle Eastern countries to recognize any such human rights application, as well as postcolonial critiques of counterproductive moral imperialism and homonationalist strategies by proponent member States, this article asks how dynamics of member State disputes in the UN debates on SOGI-based rights may point to restraints and possibilities for achieving global human rights recognition for culturally diverse sexual and gender minorities. The article demonstrates how interand intradiscursive rules of formation in UN member State debates predicated on either universal or culturally relative readings of international human rights law reproduce normative polarization and obstruct national implementation of human rights protection for sexual and gender minorities. The article therefore finds universality truth claims to restrain transformative change, as well as represent a possibility for achieving human rights recognition through “perverse,” reiterations of the parameters of the universal, wielded from an open-ended multiplicity of sexual and gender minority expressions and articulations. A radical politics of top-down and bottom-up cultural translation is suggested as a possible strategy for human rights recognition for culturally diverse sexual and gender minorities.


2018 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Dhruba Yonzon

Where the expression of sexual orientation and gender identities is one of the fundamental human rights of an individual, there many people still face threat to their liberty and to their lives. Culture and religion play a vital role in establishing such detrimental ideologies; where, despite the understanding that every human being is born equal in freedom and in dignity, millions of queer people are deprived of their right, therefore being discriminated and at worst being persecuted with a simple reasoning that homosexuality is “unnatural” and is a “sin”. This paper will analyze the response of several nations in the Universal Periodic Review regarding their discriminatory law against the LGBT+ (it denotes – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender including other member of the queer community, hereafter "LGBT+") individual. Further, the paper will establish how media and literature have misled to the general public reinforcing ideas that being anything other than “straight” or “cis-gendered” is not “normal” and could be never, which allows States to opt for these inhumane treatments against the LBGT+ people without any recourse. At the end, the paper puts forth approaches to properly implement international human rights law in protection of LGBT+ individuals in law and in daily life.


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