Embracing and Supporting LGBTQ Perspectives in Gender and Peacebuilding

Peace News interviewed Dr. Jamie Hagen to reflect on inclusive peace and the Queering Women, Peace and Security project in Colombia.

Although LGBTQ organizations are not often invited to peace negotiations, when given the opportunity, they can offer new ways of understanding peace and building a post-conflict society informed by the day-to-day needs of the queer community. Efforts to bring a gender perspective to peace and security work often neglect how members of LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) communities experience conflict, seek security, and work for peace. Initiatives that address this shortcoming allow opportunities for intersectional feminist collaborations across movements to confront violence. This is especially true for those human rights activists who bring the needs of LGBTQ individuals to the national and international agenda.

As I write in my work about Queering Women, Peace and Security, the Women, Peace and Security agenda is based on heterosexual (straight) assumptions about gender. This can lead to the erasure of queer experiences by scholars and policymakers. There is also a risk of invisibility for lesbian and bisexual relationships which in some contexts are takens serious because they do not involve men. 

Research focusing on the lived experiences of queer and trans women highlights the increased vulnerabilities certain women face because of their intersectional identities including sexuality, race, class, and disability. For example, trans women are at risk of compounded violence as a result of the intersection of homophobia, economic insecurity, and sexual harassment as documented in research by Human Rights Watch about trans women in Lebanon. It is equally important to recognize how LGBTQ people are leading protest in peacebuilding work in places like Lebanon, Colombia, and Myanmar. 

Queer women in peace and security

One of the most common questions I get is: We are a women’s peace organization – shouldn’t an LGBTQ organization be supporting lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women? In reality, LGBTQ organizations, especially those working in conflict-related spaces, are understaffed and overstretched. Worse yet, those supporting lesbian, bisexual and queer women are severely underfunded globally which leads to a lack of data about these communities and lack of services for them when other women’s organizations focus solely on supporting heterosexual women.

Most importantly, women as a group should include queer women. While not every member of the LGBTQ community aligns with a binary gender (male or female), many do. Thinking intersectionally includes also thinking about sexual orientation and gender identity for everyone. Sexuality is not something only relevant to those who are part of the LGBTQ community. 

The four pillars (participation, prevention, protection, relief and recovery) of Women, Peace and Security certainly apply to transgender women, bisexual women, and lesbian women. Research also shows these communities in many instances are even more vulnerable to harms like sexual violence, and experiencing homelessness and displacement. As research by International alert finds, it is imperative that those working to include the voices of women in peacebuilding also prioritize working with lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women as a dimension of intersectional peacebuilding.

Queering WPS in Colombia’s first National Action Plan (NAP)

Our Queering Women, Peace and Security (WPS) project, a British Academy funded Innovation Fellowship led by Anupama Ranawana from Christian Aid UK and me, focuses on improving engagement with lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LBTQ) women in WPS Programming. The year-long fellowship focuses on the role of including LBTQ women in the development and implementation of Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans and contributes to a larger effort of taking a critical security studies approach to understanding peacebuilding. The full research team also includes María Susana Peralta Ramón of Colombia Diversa who serves as research coordinator on the project, and Nathalie Mercier of Christian Aid Colombia who serves as research assistant.

The project engages with and supports ongoing work to queer gender, peace and security efforts through collaboration with the leading Colombian LGBTIQ+ organization Colombia Diversa. The research is also exploring what queer theory and LGBTQ advocacy might offer for improving Women, Peace and Security implementation practices internationally when ensuring a gender perspective in all peace and security efforts.

This project comes at an important time with the recent launch of the United Kingdom’s’s fifth National Action Plan for implementing Women, Peace and Security and plans for the first Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan in Colombia. The fifth UK NAP includes mention of LGBTQ people, as have previous UK NAPs. Our hope is that the Colombian NAP will go even further, drawing from expertise from LGBTQ organizations like Colombia Diversa to queer approaches to key ideas in the NAP, most importantly security, in a meaningful way to impact the lives of the queer community.  Recognizing this is important not only for Colombia, but for all future NAPs, one of the key publications from the project will be a toolkit which will provide training opportunities for Women, Peace and Security practitioners and enable knowledge exchange from LGBTQ organizations in the future to be published this Spring. Workshops in Bogotá with people from the LGBTQ community are central to the research project.

Ways to support queering peace and security

Though I’ve faced challenges and hardships, I’ve been really pleased by the extensive support we have received throughout the project. Although this is a marginalized project, there are many who are very interested in supporting it, including attention to sexual orientation and gender identity as a part of their peace and security work. I also recognize my privileged position as a white lesbian queer woman doing this work based in a secure position within a university in the Global North.

As ever, there is the challenge of how this work will remain funded. For example, while Colombia Diversa was initially invited to engage on LGBTQ issues during the consultations on the drafting of the first Colombian National Action Plan, the Colombian government did not offer any funding for this. Fortunately, Outright International has offered funding for this work.

Based on my experience working across policy, practitioner and academic spaces related to gender, peace and security, many people are interested in supporting LGBTQ people. At the same time, there is still some confusion about what it means to queer peacebuilding and queer security.  In response to this I have started to make resources including a Frequently Asked Questions page and a postcard resource with details about how to engage queer women in the WPS agenda. I also recently co-hosted a Conversation Cafe: How Do we Queer Peace and Security inviting civil society actors to join in casual conversation to think through how to continue to do more for engaging queer communities in peace and security work. You can read the outcomes of those discussions. Other helpful resources include the Centre for Gender in Politics Queering Women, Peace and Security Policy Brief series including the most recent publication, Supporting Queer Feminist Mobilizations in Peace and Security.

We all have a personal stake in addressing the exclusionary practices that leave out queer women, that exclude trans people from peace and security. What I would like to share with other peacebuilders above all, is everyone can and should think about both gender and sexuality as a dimension of your peacebuilding work. While it is important to understand the vulnerabilities of LGBTQ communities, it is even more important to recognize members of queer and trans communities as agents of positive change.

---

A Spanish translation by Carlos Andrés Lara Ruiz is available here

Featured images: Jamie Hagen