Crystal Hendricks

Now, we have shown that intersex people exist. We are part of societies. We are part of communities. We are families. We are daughters. We are children. We are parents. We exist everywhere in society. And I think, now, my hope for the future is us using this visibility as positivity and as power to continue until all intersex people are free.

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Daniele Paletta

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

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Welcome to Making Rainbow Waves, the podcast by ILGA World, where we tell the stories of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide.

My name is Daniele Paletta, and today, we are reuniting with incredible intersex activists from all over the world to discuss some truly historic news.

In September 2025, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations presented its first-ever report on discriminatory laws and policies, violence, and harmful practices against intersex persons.

Now, you may wonder: why is the report such a big deal? Well, because over 190 organisations and activists, including intersex people worldwide, contributed to it. This means that intersex voices are now on official United Nations record in a report. States will no longer be able to ignore the realities they describe and must begin to rectify historic injustices.

ILGA World and other organisations welcomed intersex human rights defenders from all over the world to Geneva as the report was presented at the United Nations. We sat down with them to talk about what it feels like to have this report, how activists can use its recommendations to bring about positive change in their own countries, and their hopes for the future. Enjoy your listening!

Evá Papadakis

Hello, everyone. My name is Evá Papadakis. I’m doing communications for human rights organisations, and it’s a real pleasure to be with you all here today to listen, learn and reflect on the significance of this first ever UN report on intersex rights and what it means for activism going forward. Before we start, I’d love to hear your names, pronouns, and country.

Crystal Hendricks

Hi everyone. My name is Crystal Hendricks. My pronouns are she/her. I’m from Cape Town, South Africa, and I am the Sex characteristics programmes officer at ILGA World.

Kimberly Zieselman

Hello, I’m Kimberly Zieselman. She/her pronouns. I am an intersex woman and the Senior advisor for global intersex rights at Outright International, based in the United States.

Kaisli Syrjanen

Hello, my name is Kaisli Syrjanen. I’m from Finland. I’m an Executive board member of OII Europe.

Jeff Cagandahan

Mabuhay! Jeff Cagandahan. Pronouns he/him, Executive director of Intersex Philippines and board member of Intersex Asia, based in the Philippines.

Obioma Chukwuike

Hello everyone. My name is Obioma Chukwuike. I’m from Nigeria. I’m the Executive director of Intersex Nigeria and the Board chair of African Intersex Movement.

Natasha Jimenez Mata

I am Natasha Jimenez Mata, I’m from Costa Rica. I’m the director of a Costa Rica-based organization called Mulabi – Latin American Space for Sexuality and Rights.

Ale Lopez Bemsch

Hello. My name is Ale Lopez Bemsch. My pronouns are masculine. I’m from Argentina and I’m with an organisation called Intersex Argentina and I am part of the ILGALAC Intersex Committee.

Morgan Carpenter

Hello, I’m Morgan Carpenter. I am the Executive director of InterAction for Health and Human Rights, an Australian organisation by and for people with innate variations of sex characteristics. My pronouns are he/him. I’m an intersex man.

Evá Papadakis

So last year we met with some of you here in Geneva as you advocated for the intersex resolution, which the Human Rights Council approved, mandating the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to prepare a report about discriminatory laws and policies, acts of violence and harmful practices against intersex persons. Could you tell me a bit about what has happened since the resolution was passed?

Natasha Jimenez Mata

Well, since the resolution was passed, something historic has happened for our community because resolutions for other populations had already been passed. There’s already a SOGI mandate. But for a movement like the intersex movement, which has very few resources, to achieve this through hard work until the resolution was passed, I think it’s wonderful, especially for a movement that is relatively small compared to other movements that have many more resources.

Since the resolution was passed, I think we have more tools as a movement to provide more rights for our communities. And I think this is something wonderful, and we need to get more out of it.

Obioma Chukwuike

Last year, when we were here talking about the passing of the resolution, we were all skeptical about it. And we all hoped for joy. Now, we’re here talking about the presentation of the report which the resolution called for.

We welcome it as a great victory, a milestone and a historic one: the first ever panel dedicated to intersex rights at the Human Rights Council, after the first advocacy was done here in 2015!

I think now what we are going to be reflecting on is how this report is going to take us to the next steps: implementation at the national level. Because, at the end of the day, the report is a beautiful piece, but if the things that are mentioned in the report are not reflected in the lives of intersex people on ground in different regions, different countries, rural areas, that means the report would just be a document that is just on the.

So I think: the next step is looking at what can be done with the report and how our allies, different civil societies, UN agencies and even us intersex human rights defenders can use this report as a leverage for the work that we do. So: I’m excited to be here to talk about it, and I’m also here with great friends and colleagues, and we are all in a good mood. I’m looking forward to what we can all do together.

Crystal Hendricks

I think this has been a very busy year for us since the passing of the resolution. As you know, the OHCHR released the call for inputs for the report. So, this left a lot of intersex organisations and different allied organisations very busy this year, compiling data for our submissions to the OHCHR. And now it’s just wonderful to be at this opportunity where the report has now officially been released. And we can see that the OHCHR really centred intersex voices on the report: even the consultation process was in regular communications with intersex community.

So, yes: we know that this report is about us, the resolution is about us, but we also feel some some pride that we’ve been a part of this whole journey and the whole process — knowing that it’s not just been this year: activists for more than 15 years have been working directly with the UN, and we are bearing the fruits of all of their labor. Our work is not in vain, because we can see what is happening from the work that we are doing. And I think it kind of just ignites a fire within you to say that, you know, we can obtain intersex justice, and one day intersex people will be free.

Kaisli Syrjanen

I think it’s been great seeing what’s going on and how this resolution has changed some thinking in some states. Also, it’s really good to see that we are a big delegation here this year: this is like kind of a celebration.

I think the really important thing is that in the report, there was a strong emphasis on how how the harmful practices are based on misinformation and misinterpretation of issues. And then, another thing: in the panel, many people emphasised the need for cooperation among States, international organisations, civil society. And that’s one thing we need to think about — what it means for us, how to go forward.

Kimberly Zieselman

I would just like to add to that as well. I think it is a moment when our movement needs to think more broadly about cross-movement allyship with folks that are doing similar work in children’s rights spaces, disability rights’ spaces, women’s spaces, et coetera.

The bulk of our work so far has been in allyship — largely with the support of some folks in the broader rainbow community, the LGBTQ community. Also: particularly when we’re talking about the number one issue most of us talk about, which is medically unnecessary non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants and children, we really are talking about a children’s rights issue. I think this report and the work that’s gone on for the last 10+ years by many people — including those who are not on this podcast right now — should be celebrated.

And also, we need to broaden our circle of friends and activists, and bring them into the fold as we move forward, to keep the momentum going.

Morgan Carpenter

I think this week has also been a really important opportunity to meet together and celebrate a win in difficult times when there is a shift, a lurch to the right and to the far-right in many countries that is having a big impact on resourcing for intersex organising, which has a huge impact on our organisations, and it also has an impact on how the Human Rights Council might talk about our issues.

So it’s a win in this context, and a moment where so many States and civil society organisations have made statements that really go to the heart of some of the healthcare and human rights issues that we face is really important. But taking stock is also a chance for us to talk about where we go from here, in this radically different and difficult time?

Evá Papadakis

I think I really hear the importance of togetherness and cooperation on so many different levels from all of you. And just witnessing you these past few days all together has been very inspiring. Could you tell me a bit about how it feels, after all this hard work you all put into it, to finally have this report out?

Jeff Cagandahan

I feel a deep sense of pride and validation seeing the OHCHR resolution with the report presented to the Human Rights Council. It is a powerful acknowledgement of the struggles and resilience of the intersex community worldwide, because for years, intersex activists fought for recognition for our basic human rights to be respected and for the eradication of harmful practices.

This report marks a significant step forward in our collective journey towards dignity, justice and equality. But it’s bittersweet, though, because while it’s a major victory, it also underscores the long road ahead.

The work is far from done, but this report provides a global platform for our voices, giving us hope that the world is beginning to understand that our humanity should not be defined by societal norms. And this presentation is a victory not just for us as individuals, but for the whole movement. It signals that the international community is listening and that change is not just possible: it’s happening.

Crystal Hendricks

Wow! That’s amazing, Jeff.

It feels good. I think… sitting in the room yesterday and listening to all the interventions — which were all positive: from States, from UN agencies, from allies, different organisations — and also to witness more than five intersex people make an oral statement in a room at the same time… It’s so historic! Like, I’ve never seen that in my entire life! And I hope this is something that’s gonna continue.

I am excited because I see that, as intersex people, we are changing the narrative and we are ensuring — as the the goal for the SDGs is to leave no one behind — we are making sure that we are not being left behind and we are standing at the forefront for intersex rights. So: it’s a very happy moment, and it’s a moment to just do some introspection and take a bit of stock. But also, as Jeff said, it’s also knowing that this work has begun many years ago, but it’s still a long journey ahead of all of us to do this work. But in this moment… very excited, very happy. I am just having this feeling of intersex joy. Intersex joy.

Natasha Jimenez Mata

As Crystal rightly says, this is a very happy moment for the intersex community. It is a time to celebrate. But this should not stop us from continuing to fight, because this is just one of many steps.

We must keep moving forward, we must keep working so that in these difficult times, when there is a culture of undermining the rights of other populations, this does not set us back. So let’s celebrate now. But we must keep in mind that we must continue working so that our rights are not lost and we gain even more.

Obioma Chukwuike

First of all, I feel very happy — because when you’re working on something and you see positive outcomes from it, it makes you feel happy. Even though we have not achieved what we want as a movement, we are getting there, one step at a time.

And of course, advocacy takes time, we all know that, but one thing that I’m happy about is the visibility that it’s getting at the UN, which is very important. I know most people say: “Oh, the UN is not a concrete law: it’s a soft law that is not binding,” but it puts pressure on member States to see and recognise the importance of what the issues are. And I also feel that it also gives us a glimpse of hope that more can be achieved if we keep pushing.

So it’s not just about us sitting down here, but also about the intersex human rights activists and defenders who are back at home doing the work: when they see the outcome of what is happening here, they also believe that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Because most of the times what we hear from them is “Oh, we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t even know if anybody is going to take us seriously,” but we just need to keep pushing.

And, you know, this week is a testament of that. So I feel so happy, and it gives me more strength to keep moving.

Evá Papadakis

For the people that might be listening to our podcast now but have not read the report, would you be able to share with them like in a one short sentence, what what’s the biggest takeaway from you from this report?

Natasha Jimenez Mata

Joy.

Crystal Hendricks

I think the biggest takeaway for me is that the acknowledgement that human rights are not separate from intersex rights: intersex rights are human rights. Intersex people deserve to live a life with dignity, free from harm. We deserve to live a life where we have self-determination and bodily autonomy, where we can make decisions about our body – whether it comes to our health, whether it comes to making decisions around our education, our involvement in sports, our socio-economic development, everything! — that power needs to reside with us.

A lot of the harm that intersex people go through stems from harmful medical interventions. A lot of the discrimination that we face in our lives is because of our parents were either coerced into making a decision around surgery on an intersex child, or a parent was misinformed about their child’s body.

And this doesn’t end in that medical settings, after that medical settings: there are many challenges that I, as an intersex person, faced, and so many intersex people faces across the world.

And I think if we can get intersex people protected within medical settings, it will set up intersex people for success, for a hopeful future, to know that they deserve a life free from harm and free from discrimination.

And I think this report talks about that: it centers intersex voices, and it talks about that intersex people are human, just like everybody else. And we need to be afforded the same human rights as every other human on this planet.

Obioma Chukwuike

Not speaking as an intersex activist now, but as an intersex person: one thing that the report has done is to validate all we have been saying over the years — that this is true! Most times, people think that what we are talking about is impossible. People have also said to me, to my face, that it is not possible for a human being to have intersex variations. “How possible is that?” But with that report, it shows that all we have been saying in different regions, at every level, is actually true.

Unfortunately, it had to take the UN to bring it out for people to see that it’s true. But it also shows that when a group of people are talking about their issues, it’s important that countries listen. It is important that their agencies back at home listen to what they are sharing, and also work with them to see how they can put a stop to that violence, stop to harmful practices, or a stop to whatever discrimination or stigma that they are talking about.

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Daniele Paletta

Given everything that’s going on — with governments rolling back rights or falling short in respecting them – we can all see it’s a difficult moment for international human rights bodies. So, our question is: how can activists on the ground use this historic report and also keep accessing UN spaces?

Obioma Chukwuike

There are multiple ways that they can use it. For instance, I’ll speak of the African context. The African Intersex Movement has worked with the UNDP – We Belong Africa — to develop a policy brief that talks about the Resolutiuon 552 from the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, and also the UN resolution that was passed last year.

So one of the ways is to look at that policy brief when it comes out: it is going to come out very soon and in multiple languages. And also, to look at how it was broken down for you to understand what you can actually share with your States at national level, to see what they can do in terms of standard operating procedures or policies or laws that can be effective in intersex justice.

Another thing that the report can do now is to also help you to compare what the context looks like, and also channel in terms of working with different treaty bodies and Special Rapporteurs. When they call for reports — maybe on violence against women and girls, or on people with disabilities, or on torture — you can send in some information about it.

The UN mechanism is broad and complex: I understand that not everyone understands it. What you can also do, then, is to reach out to other intersex groups — maybe in your region or your country —to collaborate, to see who understands what best. You can put heads together and see how you can reach out to your country office, Ministry of Health, National Commission, or any body that works in your country that supports human rights.

You can also use the report to even write proposals. There are a lot of things you can use that report for, because that report is very comprehensive. So when you read it, it gives you a guide on what you can do or even how to speak about these issues concretely — because, sometimes, the language framing is also a challenge for most intersex activists. So, that report can also help you to frame your language in a way that people understand what you are sharing on ground.

Then you can also use the report to also make simple messages — online information, education and communication messages — for your social media platforms that people can also understand. A lot of people might not want to read the whole report but, if you read it as an as an intersex human rights defender or your organisation reads it, people can be able to bring out some excerpts from it and use it for dissemination and talk about what the report is sharing and also linking it back to your own context, where you are from.

Crystal Hendricks

As activists within the UN, the resolution and all those reports… it’s soft laws and it doesn’t necessarily have to be adopted by your State. However, it’s a very vital entry point into conversations with your States that you are having.

A lot of other States has ratified a lot of treaties within the UN: in that way, we could keep them accountable. As Kimberly mentioned earlier, intersex children are facing intersex genital mutilation: this is an issue around children’s rights. Yesterday, the Special Rapporteur on Health mentioned that children are being forcefully sterilised. A lot of our countries has anti sterilisation acts when it comes to children!

There’s a lot of avenues and conversations that you can use with the report and a lot of different angles — especially when it comes to rights of children, rights of women, rights of girls, right to partake in sports… different things that you can do.

And you shouldn’t see it like, “Oh, but this doesn’t have to be adopted by my State, so… you know what? What power does it have?” It has a lot of power, because a lot of our States also come to the UN to get reviewed on what they are doing in their country — not just in the human rights space only, but also within the development space.

In the past, many reports from the OHCHR, for me in South Africa, were an opportunity to speak with my Department of Health, with my Department of Justice. I can quote the report, and I can quote the recommendations, and then it becomes so important and it just adds more power to your advocacy.

And, you know… advocacy looks different for everybody. But I do see that, as intersex people, having this resolution and having this report and also many other reports that have been done by the OHCHR before this, are important tools for us to keep our States accountable, but also to strengthen our own national, regional, and global advocacy.

Evá Papadakis

Now we’re moving on to the last question. What are your hopes for the future after this report launch?

Kimberly Zieselman

I guess my hope for the future after this report is an acceleration awareness raising around the intersex community and our key issues, and also an increase in outrage over the discrimination and violence that so many of us have experienced — and continue to experience — in different ways across the globe.

Again, a call for a broader group of allies, more resources. More funding is needed for our global movement that has made quite a great deal of progress in a short period of time — particularly given the diminished resources that we have been working with, so, you know… that’s a testament to so many intersex activists who have been tirelessly working very, very often at a volunteer level for many years. But, we just can’t do it alone. So my hope is that we have a broader coalition of peers and activists.

Morgan Carpenter

I completely agree with Kimberly here. I think that we, as a movement, have been able to secure some really important benchmarks and reports, which really set out how the human rights system and the norms and principles in the human rights system can and should be applied to our situation. But we have a massive undertaking to do to make sure that those norms and principles are applied in all of our countries.

And that takes people locally, in every State, organising, doing a lot of community development work, developing skills and expertise within our local groups and spaces, engaging in peer support, and providing psychosocial support for people that need it as well. And, with that, going and talking to our national and in some cases our subnational federal jurisdictions as well, to make sure that this is implemented. That takes a huge amount of legwork and that that takes resources. And I think at this point, I think we can all be fairly confident in saying that resource limitations are the main constraint that we face.

Crystal Hendricks

I think for me, my hopes for the future is that… About nine years ago — when I started doing intersex advocacy, when I found out I was intersex — I used to Google a lot, and I used to always see these little posters that said “The ‘I’ in the ‘LGBTI’ is not for ‘invisible’, it’s for ‘intersex’”. And at that time, I didn’t understand it, because I was obviously not working in this movement at all.

And then, when I came to the movement, around 2016, I saw the invisibility of intersex people’s issues. I saw intersex people being raised out of conversations, I saw how people would sensationalise our stories, how they just want to speak about our genitals… they don’t want to speak about us as intersex people, but they want to find sensation in our story.

And I think my hope for the future now is, with all of this visibility, that it will be used as a tool of power. Because I know what visibility comes a lot of things, right? There’s also a lot of harm with visibility, there’s also a lot of discomfort, there’s also a lot of discrimination with being visible.

But I think with this visibility within the UN, I think there’s… I don’t know: in Africa, we always had this thing where intersex people would be seen as a myth, you know? That “Oh, intersex people don’t really exist.”

But now, we have shown that intersex people exist. We are part of societies. We are part of communities. We are families. We are daughters. We are children. We are parents. We exist everywhere in society. And I think, now, my hope for the future is us using this visibility as positivity and as power to continue until all intersex people are free.

Morgan Carpenter

I think those those words are so powerful, Crystal. And thank you for articulating that. For me… I mean, I completely see it as well, this notion that intersex people are invisible, and it seems like we often are invisible.

But I think it’s more than that. I think there’s something else that’s often true as well, and that’s that intersex is usually treated as a tool in the armor, or the toolbox, of people working on other issues.

Particularly every debate out in the world right now about biological sex is talking about bodies in ways that are often incredibly reductive and simplistic, talking about models of sex determination that are only model representations of the real world and don’t respect or reflect the true diversity of bodies and traits that exist in the real world. Because they’re models are representations, they’re not reality!

Often people talk about intersex as part of a debate about the rights of women and the rights of trans people, and we’re just a battering ram, with very simplistic arguments on both sides of that debate, which can be really harmful and can really alienate a lot of people with intersex variations in our communities.

So, there is actually some direct harm, I think, from the ways that people talk about who we are — and not just talk about who we are, but talk about how we should be, how we should be treated. And those are often, you know, again: ideas or models or norms that don’t actually have any grounding in what actually happens to us. And this report is a way of bringing that debate back to talk about the human rights of the people in our population in our own way.

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Daniele Paletta

Making rainbow waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Evá Papadakis and edited by Daniele Paletta. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms. A transcription of this episode in English, and its translation to Spanish, are available on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

Transcript: “The global call to #RenewIESOGI”

Hi, I’m Daniele from ILGA World. What you’re about to listen to is a special episode brought to you not just by ILGA World, but by a global coalition of organisations and human rights defenders. I hope you’ll enjoy listening.

00:29 Intro

In July 2025, the Human Rights Council will vote to renew the mandate of the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. This is the only human rights expert within the United Nations system that is specifically dedicated to addressing violence and discrimination against LGBT and gender diverse persons, and to help states, UN agencies, other mandates and bodies in the international and regional systems to address them.

Its existence is a big deal for our communities across the world and really for everyone who cares about equality! The mandate has existed for more than 10 years now. It has conducted official visits to Argentina, Georgia, Mozambique, Ukraine, Tunisia, Cambodia, the US, the United Kingdom, Albania, Poland and Colombia. It has produced 16 reports documenting discrimination and violence on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. And it has sent 171 communications to countries from all regions documenting allegations of violations so they could act upon them.

A global coalition of organisations and human rights defenders is asking the Human Rights Council to renew the mandate for three more years. Hear activists from every region of the world about what it means to have this mandate and why it should be renewed.

01:57

We are not free and we are not equal! We’re not asking for anything new. All we want is to elevate our humanity so it is the same with everyone else.

So many people around the world are being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. And that’s the reason why we continue to push that this mandate continues.

Coming together as a global community to resolve the issues of violence and discrimination that our community faces is one of the priorities of the international community.

A renewal of this mandate at this time, more than ever, where we are seeing rollback in many policies, is much needed and much necessary.

To have a mandate which has the support of governments behind it, saying this matters, is so crucial and it must continue. Sadly, there are those out there who would want to take that away. And so the fight must continue to hold on to this mandate.

I think what this mandate does is uniquely elevates those voices that are not being heard and often being crowded out by those making so much more noise.

There is a clear point of contact you can turn to when it comes to your work with the UN.

The mandate represents two things for the global LGBTI population. Firstly, for sure. is the visibility that we have at the UN level to be able to address our needs, but as well to have a mechanism that answers to people in a direct manner and that can interact with other mechanisms within the United Nations to answer to very specific issues. Which brings me to the second element of why it’s important: the capacity of intersectionality that this mandate holds.

I think it’s really important for the UN to have a perspective, not only perspective, but have really clear guidelines and an action plan around violence. Violence extends to the workplace, it extends to communities. We don’t have a true perspective, a true community perspective, unless we’re learning about the impacts of violence and then what are the ways that we’re going to work together to address them.

After his country visit, we received so many contacts from our governments who became more open to cooperate with us. So I think it is very crucial to push for this mandate to be there for the next years.

04:19 Host

Okay, we heard what the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity can do. But what does it mean to people to have this mandate? To know it exists?

04:34

There’s been moments when we’ve felt as a global movement that things are just on an eternal, upward spiral, and we are not feeling that right now. A renewal right now shows that governments are committed. It shows that we are a movement that is together, united, forging alliances for the future. It will give us hope.

To be there under this rainbow sky in Room 20 of the Human Rights Council, to see that LGBTI people are acknowledged and named through this mandate, is something truly worth it.

We have a voice through this mandate in the international community.

It’s the only space we have and we cannot back down. We cannot take a step back.

To me, this is a powerful mechanism, something that represents us, something that we can turn to, something that must not get lost.

Because this is one thing that we can all agree upon, that we must have a voice within the UN.

We’re only just beginning to shed the kind of light that’s needed on issues facing our communities around the world.

There is a huge lack of data around the world on the realities of LGBTQI people, and the Independent Expert makes it possible to compensate for some of this lack of information, bringing to the forefront realities that are sometimes not seen.

So I really… I can’t imagine how it could possibly be justified not to continue this mandate.

The mandate itself has built a wealth of evidence around discrimination and violence on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. And it is obvious and clear that this mandate needs to continue because the problem is still there.

It is vital that this is renewed.

The work is still not done.

06:24 Host

Around the world, millions of people are forced to be resilient, despite the continuous threats they face. We’re talking about killings, rape, torture, violence, discrimination in access to healthcare, housing and employment. All of this to punish them for who they are and whom they love — something that they cannot change. States and institutions will say that issues of sexual orientation and gender identity are too sensitive. But no matter the colour of our skin, where we come from, or the faith that keeps us going, we can all agree that no human being should face violence, discrimination, torture, stigmatisations, or abuse. And there is simply no exception to that. More than 20 years of treaty body jurisprudence recognise that international human rights law prohibits discrimination, including based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Living free from violence and discrimination, that’s all this is about.

Before we go, there’s one last thing that our communities would like everyone to hear.

07:35

Renouvelez l’expérience independent. Renew. Renew. Renovation. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. Renew. It’s time to renew the mandate.

08:26 Host

In July 2025, the UN Human Rights Council will vote to renew the mandate of the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. There is someone fighting for you, and with you, at the United Nations! If you too want to be a part of this, there is so much you can do.

Share this podcast episode so that more people can understand why it is so important that this United Nations mandate continues. Look out for the #RenewIESOGI campaign on social media and like, comment, share to amplify its reach. Engage with LGBT and allied organisations in your country or region to understand who’s involved in the campaign, what you can do, and how you can work together. Every action matters. Join us and ask states to #RenewIESOGI. Thanks for listening.

Transcript: “We intersex people are human, just like you”

“Coming down to this resolution, it’s just an important thing and I think it’s something that we’ve been trying, for the last ten years, to say is that… intersex people are not different from anyone else. We are human, just like you. We are not a special kind of humans. We are just humans and we, as humans, we deserve human rights. And intersex rights are human rights.”

00:26 Intro

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World

00:37 Host – Daniele Paletta

Welcome, welcome everybody to Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World in which we tell the stories of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide. My name is Daniele Paletta, and today is a very special episode because we usually have only one person that I speak to and this time we have four. And actually, in the same room and not in a virtual meeting so this is really, really, really amazing! Welcome to all of you and I will maybe briefly ask you to introduce yourselves for your audience.

01:08 Kimberly Zieselman

Sure! Hi, I’m Kimberly Zieselman, I’m an intersex human rights defender and an intersex woman. I am currently working as senior advisor for intersex global rights for Outright International and am delighted to be a part of this podcast today hosted by ILGA World.

01:25 Obioma Chukwuike

Right, hello everyone! My name is Obioma Chukwuike. I’m from Nigeria and I work with intersex Nigeria, as an Executive Director. I’m glad to be part of this podcast today and I’m looking forward to the conversation.

01:39 Kaisli Syrjänen

Hello everyone. My name is Kaisli Syrjänen. I’m an intersex activist from Finland. I’m the chair of intersex Human Rights Finland (ISIO) and a board member of OII Europe. Good to be here.

01:52 Crystal Hendricks

Hi everyone. My name is Crystal Hendricks. I’m an intersex woman and intersex human rights defender from South Africa. I’m at the Sex Characteristics Programme of ILGA World and I am happy to be here today.

02:06 Host

Thank you! Thank you very much. So as all of you heard, I’m together with four intersex human rights defenders today. We are in Geneva, in a beautiful sunny day, which is almost coming to a close, and the reasons that we are here in Geneva is because the Human Rights Council is working on a resolution explicitly dedicated to combating violence, discrimination and harmful practices against intersex persons. And my understanding is that this is an absolute first. So, I’m going to ask you if you can explain to our audience, what does the resolution mandate and why is it important that this is happening.

02:46 Kimberly Zieselman

Well, I can jump in, um… the resolution will mandate that the UN office of the High Commissioner issue a report and hold a formal report, which has not been done before, and hold an expert panel. The reason that this is important is it’s another step in the UN processes for achieving recognizable human rights for intersex persons globally.

03:15 Host

How did we get to that resolution? I know there’s been a pathway, let’s say, in how intersex human rights have been discussed within United Nations spaces. Could you give us a history of how we got to this point?

03:30 Crystal Hendricks

Um, yeah, sure. So, there’s been a history of intersex activism at the Human Rights Council and within the UN space. Starting from 2015. So, in 2015 the UN member States, mostly pushed by civil society, have increased their attention around the human rights violations that intersex people face. In 2015 we saw the OHCHR that convened the first ever intersex expert meeting, and Kimberly was a part of that meeting, and we were talking about that it’s been ten years later!

We saw in 2016 a group of human rights experts and mechanisms, as well as from the African Commission of Human and People’s Rights and the Council of Europe issued a joint statement urging to end violence and harmful medical practices against intersex people.

And… but like what we can see with the timeline is that nothing has been very different from, you know, what this resolution is asking for and calling for.
In 2019 we also saw the OHCHR published a background note that focused on specific human rights violations that intersex people are facing and I think what it’s been so important and essential when we look at this timeline is that intersex people have really been holding the narrative and we’ve been given an opportunity to ensure that our voices are with whatever report, whatever statement, has come up. And I think we’ve been following this notion about “nothing about us, without us” and maybe someone else wants to add further…

05:04 Obioma Chukwuike

Yeah, I will jump in there to see that, um, thank you Crystal for the background and also this… this also shows the visibility of the work that intersex human rights activists have been doing around the globe. It also shows the similarities of the context of our challenges, our issues, that we face in different contexts between the Global South and the Global North. It also shows that there is a need for an important step to be taken to protect intersex persons from the different forms of discrimination, violations and misinformation that have been flying around about what our body really means. So, it calls for bodily autonomy, self-determination, integrity of our body, which is very important and the core point of what we advocate as intersex persons.

So, I feel that this resolution is long overdue and it should be happening at this point. It also shows that the effort of intersex advocates and activists around the globe is not a waste and whatever we are fighting for is a just cause and it’s time for us to be upheld in a very important state as the UN is doing right now. So, I think it’s something that we have been hoping for, for a very long time. We have had conversations about it, have dreamt about it, and this is the first start of our utopia.

So, I’m happy to see that this is happening and I hope that it doesn’t just stop at the resolution, and that the implementation takes place after the resolution is passed.

06:31 Host

It’s really fascinating to see, like, how much time it can actually take to get from one thing to this resolution…

10 years is a very long time, right? and especially when we talk things that impact people’s daily lives. And, um, I think there also needs to be an explanation of why this matters, because usually – if I’m thinking of people outside the activist circles- they think of the UN as something that’s very remote, maybe not useful on an immediate practical level and we know of course that this is not the case. So, how would you explain why this resolution actually matters for everyone, not just for us who are here doing the advocacy work?

07:16 Kaisli Syrjänen

I think that’s, like, a really big thing that UN give some guidelines, which really encourages or can encourage States to have national legislation and that would directly impact people’s lives.

07:34 Host

And we’ve already seen like a core group of StatesStates pushing for these resolutions. So, do you have a message for them?

07:43 Kimberly Zieselman

I think the message for the intersex core group is a huge thank you… And I think we all sigh a little bit. We all sort of breathe a sigh of relief when we see member States like the core group really step up and articulate our issues and defend our issues, because we’re not used to having other people, particularly people in such powerful positions, defend our human rights. So, for me, it’s very meaningful.

08:11 Crystal Hendricks

And… I think it’s also important to have allies, but allies that still allow intersex people to hold the narrative. I think we’ve been working with the core group, um, since last year when they released the first statement asking for the adoption of this resolution, and then we also saw civil society groups also releasing a statement for the adoption of this resolution. But what I can say about the four StatesStates in the core group is that they’ve ensured to have continuous communication with the intersex groups. They’ve allowed the intersex groups to, in a way, formulate the resolution for us to provide input and for us to make sure that the language that gets used in the resolution also leads us, you know, to safety as intersex people.

Because we’ve seen resolutions that actually have been more problematic than, you know, that it didn’t really have good influence on States because of language in the resolution. And I think with the core group working with us and, I mean, we are so grateful for the core group is that they’ve really allowed us, you now, to lend our voice because we are intersex people. You know, we face this violence. We face this discrimination. So, I feel like there’s no one better than us to speak on these issues. But I feel like the process has been a process of inclusivity where, even though we do not have the authority to sit at the UN and really speak to States and all the time, but to have these people that are in allies but also allies that are leaning on us. Not allies that are, in a way trying to take away from your voice, but allies that actually include your voice in the conversation. And I feel like that is so important for intersex people.

10:00 Obioma Chukwuike

Yeah, and I mean, to contribute through the previous question about what does it mean for all the persons who are not intersex… I think this is, actually, the most important part of it: because for us as intersex people, we understand our body, we understand our issues; but for people out who are not intersex, they may not understand the need to protect and promote intersex rights. And that is why this resolution is very important, because right now it’s not going to look… It’s going to look at it holistically from the intersections of intersex issues, how it affects us differently, including the SDGs that the UN is very big on. So, I think the resolution also calls for how we have been marginalised for years and also how it will protect intersex that are yet unborn, because intersex is not stopping now is something that will continue to happen, intersex births is still going to happen tomorrow. So, I think it’s important that this resolution highlights the importance to specifically address the issues of marginalidation, discrimination, and harmful practices that intersex persons have faced over the years. And how we can actually collectively ensure that intersex persons are incorporated into different systems that have structurally discriminated us over the years. So, I think it’s important not just for intersex persons, but for everyone at last to understand how they can play a part

11:20 Host

And, yeah, I was actually wondering, how do you think the awareness around intersex human rights is at the moment? Because, as you were saying Crystal, there has been lots of international human rights mechanisms, even at a regional level, that have spoken up about intersex issues, and there are more States that have established legal protections -to date nine States worldwide have nationwide restrictions on interventions on intersex minors-, and there are a few who officially protect against discrimination in health settings based on sex characteristics. So, it looks like from an outside perspective that things are moving forward, but I was wondering: what do you think about how is the general public, and even the LGBTI community at large, aware of what intersex means? And if it’s still not enough, what can be done to make this awareness grow?

12:21 Crystal Hendricks

Yeah, and I think… We were having this conversation and I was telling Kimberly, Obioma and Kaisli that we still have so much work to do because we’ve seen the advancement of intersex rights, and we are seeing that more people are becoming aware of the violations that intersex people face, but there’s still a huge lack of awareness around intersex issues. I mean, we could be publicly on national TV, you know, and you could still walk into a room and people don’t know that you are intersex and they don’t understand anything the intersex community is facing. And I think we’ve been seeing in the last few years people have been trying this whole intersectional approach when it comes to intersex rights saying that, like, the same as how female genital mutilation is a feminist issue, intersex rights are also a feminist issue; the same way as feminists speak about forced sterilisation, do we not see that intersex children are also being forcefully sterilised by having healthy sexually productive organs removed from their body? So, it’s like: intersex issues are a human rights issue. And there’s so many intersections that we can work on these issues but we also don’t see a lot of groups coming together. You know, we don’t see feminist groups coming to the intersex groups and say “How can we help you? how can we raise more awareness and how can we support you?” And even within the LGBT community, there’s also a big lack of knowledge. Like, most of us attend regional and global conferences and sometimes there’s just no conversation around intersex, and you find intersex people speaking to intersex people about our issues and in my thinking, it’s like, so how are we advancing this? Because we are speaking to each other. We should be speaking to the broader community. We need to speak to feminist groups, to women’s rights groups, to children’s rights groups. We need to speak to this thing of… how bodily autonomy is essential for intersex people just how it is for feminists, for children, for women, you know, for everyone that’s being marginalised.

And I also feel like we are also challenged… like, how do we start having these conversations? because I’m also tired of intersex people speaking to intersex people about our issues.

14:28 Kimberly Zieselman

Preach. I mean, everything Crystal said, and more… I do think that is one of the most important next steps for our movement is, because the issue is so intersectional, to actually be more intersectional in our advocacy work and have more allies from the feminist movements, from the children’s rights movements, from the women’s movements. And I think we’re starting to see some progress. Um, I’ve noticed in Europe some of the coalitions against female genital mutilation and cutting FGM are starting to embrace and collaborate with the intersex communities around intersex genital mutilation. I think that’s an excellent sign of progress because there are so many similarities, and this is an issue of bodily autonomy. So, I think, yes, I think in not just talking to each other but talking to other organisations, activists, and people with a platform to raise the issues around intersex genital mutilation and other forms of intersex violence and discrimination is really, really, important.

15:33 Host

I have to say I, again, from an outsider perspective, but I’ve also witnessed st the same conferences how like after a while there seems to be like groups that are already grouped by, I mean, identity is not a term that refers to intersex people but like as a broad term, I mean…

15:42 Kimberly Zieselman

Experience, baby, experience. Yes, we group together by experience. I wonder if this is something that some of the international human rights organisations, LGBTQI+ organisations, could do is be more intentional about integrating when there are conferences or there are webinars, um, be more intentional and having like a designed interaction between different groups of people. Because education is needed, I mean, we all need to learn from each other and I know even in the most well-meaning LGBTQ+ spaces there’s still a lot of, there’s a lack of understanding around what iintersex is. And I think a hesitancy to get involved because of not understanding what it is and wanting to do the right thing. So, I feel like educating our allies even within the LGBTQ+ space is really important, still, on intersex.

16:51 Host

Coming back to the resolution… yeah, I was positively surprised by the text. There’s a passage, and there has been since the beginning actually, that mentioned misinformation and disinformation among the root causes of the harmful practices against intersex people. And as I was telling you, of course, as a communication person I heard speaking about misinformation and disinformation and my brain went ting! … So, it was really interesting to see, because, I think we are all seeing all across the world, how the anti-gender movement is pushing for bills and policy initiatives that target trans people but impact on intersex people as well. And the impact on the intersex community is very, very, rarely recognised. And actually intersex issues are often instrumentalised by those defending those bills, right?
There was a report by interACT, an organisation in the US, that had this very effective sentence I found, it said: “The core belief of anti-gender opposition is that transgender people must be prevented from changing their bodies while intersex people must be prevented from keeping theirs”. Which is something that I found really enlightening, and so on point unfortunately. So, I was wondering whether you can elaborate on that and on all the impact that this is having on your community.

18:26 Kimberly Zieselman

I mean, I can speak a little bit coming from the United States and what’s been happening in the US over the last couple of years with a wave of state-level anti-trans bills and specifically laws that are being passed banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth, that are specifically carving out exceptions, or I should say including exceptions, for intersex babies and children. So, in other words, a law will be banning doctors from providing gender-affirming care that a trans youth wants and needs, but specifically in the same bill stating it’s okay to do genital mutilation or irreversible surgeries on intersex infants and children. So, it’s actually the anti-trans movement, if you will, and the legislation and the push against gender-affirming care for trans youth has in some ways lifted the intersex issue to the surface in the United States, because of these bills specifically noting intersex, but not in a good protective way: in a way that, just as you stated, is very much like “We don’t want you to have this body that is not typical” or, you know, in their eyes “not normal.”

And I think that’s what it is. It’s all about kind of controlling bodies and controlling the narrative, about what is normal, what’s healthy, and what’s acceptable. And this is what’s happening in the United States and around the world to the transgender community, to the intersex community, and let’s be honest, to women everywhere. The common theme here is control over bodies and a lack of bodily autonomy. So, this is much larger than just an intersex issue. This is an anti-gender, anti-rights, I think anti-women movement globally, that really requires all of us to work together to push back against.

20:37 Crystal Hendricks

Yeah. And I also think with the movement, I think we’ve been seeing it a lot with the anti-gender movement, when it comes to intersex people is that they really want to pathologize our bodies, right? Like, even we see languages such as “disorder of sexual development” and it’s in a way proving like they’re using us as tokens to say: “if we can fix these people and assign them a sex or a gender, this is something that could be done to anyone, right?”

So, it’s putting the notion out there that we can normalise intersex people’s bodies. And if we can do that, then, how can we not, like, normalise the entire world?

And that is the actual notion that was going on. And that’s the big debate. And as intersex activists, we should be part of the conversation around the anti-gender and anti-rights movement because intersex people always had their bodily autonomy stripped away, intersex people always didn’t have a voice around their self-determination, about who they are as an intersex person, and these surgeries have been happening for years and years and years. And a lot of intersex people have, you know, dealt with a lot of physical problems related to this but also like around their gender and around expressing themselves and who they are.

And it’s so essential that, even though the trans experience, like, being trans and being intersex is completely different from who you are – being intersex has nothing to do with your sexuality, has nothing to do with your gender identity, when being trans is directly about someone’s gender identity, about who they believe that they are and who they are… But somehow there’s this intersecting where people confuse the themes of, you know, of trans and intersex people.

But now what we are seeing in the US with the bills that are saying “no surgeries for trans youth” but the same bills will say “but if you are born with a variation of whatever sex characteristics, then we could still perform surgery on you”. So, it’s almost like they’re putting us up against each other as well, and I feel like in the movement we also, you know, have to be able, like I always say, trans rights are also a feminist issue.
The same as intersex rights. And at some point, we meet each other, especially when it comes to legal gender recognition, because intersex people face the same problems as trans people. Also, when it comes to gender-affirming healthcare, like, I’ve spoken to Kimberly and I’m like: “there’s no adult care for intersex people.” Like, they will have surgeries performed when you are a child and they just let you go and now you are this person growing up in this intersex body but there’s no healthcare, like, you don’t know really what to do and there’s no options for you.

We see similarities happening in the trans movement. So, when I look at the anti-rights and anti-gender movement… it’s like Kimberly says, like, it’s not only just targeting trans people, it’s targeting intersex people, but it’s also targeting women, you know, trying to strip away their bodily autonomy. So, I also feel there’s a bigger conversation we need to have, to come together, and talk about the anti-rights and the anti-gender movement.

23:45 Obioma Chukwuike

Yeah. I agree, I agree. I think, speaking of the anti-rights or anti-human rights movements, on how they try to control… because if you look at it from the broader view, it’s about controlling what you should look like because of the binaries. The binary notion of black and white. And it also makes me wonder how we actually think that in a world that is as diverse as people, not just people even plants and animals, how then do you decide for people how their body should look like?

Because if you look at the irreversible surgeries, the medicalisation of intersex bodies, nobody speaks about the effects, the impacts. They only speak about how to fix the body. Nobody wants to ask you how do you feel. I’ve met a lot of intersex children who have undergone these surgeries. And I see them and I know what they’re going through, what their lives will look like. Even though I cannot tell them, because I don’t want to make them lose hope. When the parents ask me “Is this ever going to be all right?”, I don’t have an answer for them. And I think that is the bigger conversation about the consequences of what we don’t want that they are forcing on us.
Meanwhile, they are group of persons that want this for themselves, that have chosen that they want this for themselves, they are not given them the right to do what they want to do. So, for me I think it’s about robbing it from people: what’s the sense of this? it’s destabilizing the two communities. It’s making the two communities lose their purpose and ownership of their body. And if we’re talking about human rights not being indivisible, why are we dictating for a group of persons that have said that these particular procedures are harmful to our body? These particular procedures leave us with lifetime effects that affect not just our medical situation or status but the whole life. Because if you look at the chain reaction of what the surgeries, the medicalisation, the harmful practices do to you, it doesn’t only affect you medically, it affects you socially.

It excludes you from having families, it excludes you from having relationships, it excludes you from having even employment or even education. Because I’ve met intersex children who are no longer in school because of the complications from these surgeries.

So, I think the conversation should be about how do we look beyond what we want aand look at what the people that actually face these experiences need. The ownership of these issues is what we should be looking at. And I think that is why this resolution is very important because, like I said earlier, is not just about the community now, but it’s about the wider society understanding the impacts and consequences of some of these harmful practices and violations on our bodies.

26:56 Kaisli Syrjänen

I would like to add here the perspective of children’s rights. In my national organisation, our main cooperation is with three children’s rights organisations, and that really leads the discussion to some other levels than just about… it’s about children’s rights issues simply.

27:23 Crystal Hendricks

Yeah… I also just think, like, coming down to this resolution, it’s just the important thing and I think it’s something that we’ve been trying to, for the last ten years, to say that…intersex people are not different from anyone else. We are human, just like you. We are not a special kind of humans. We are just humans and we, as humans, we deserve human rights. And intersex rights are human rights. So, I feel like we are at this big stepping stone and regardless of all the… everything that we face around anti-gender movement, around our bodies being pathologised, our bodies being medicalised, all the, you know, discrimination, the stigma that we go through as intersex people, I think the important thing is that we need this resolution at the UN to be used as an advocacy tool, in one sense. But also, just use it as a tool to say that intersex people are here, we exist and we also deserve human rights, and I think that is so essential and important.

28:31 Kimberly Zieselman

And we’re not asking for special rights.

28:32 Everyone else

Yeah, exactly!

28:33 Kimberly Zieselman

That’s the other thing, you know… We’re not asking for anything unique or special. We’re just asking for human rights like everybody else.

28:41 Crystal Hendricks

Yeah, I always tell people, like, sometimes I wish I could just exist. Yeah, like, you know, just like other people I see them walking and just existing, like, I just want to be like… you know, I don’t want to be questioned, I don’t want to be…

28:51 Kimberly Zieselman

Also, a burden… as a human rights defender, as an intersex human rights defender. To all these people who are in the room talking about this, to be, you know, fighting against it, telling our own stories over and over again. Um, there’s a real huge emotional price that we all pay, and that’s another reason for needing allies too. I’m a big believer in and the importance of allies in our movement… intersex- informed, ideally intersex-led, but supported by allies, it is so, so, important for many reasons.

So, that’s my call to action, to all you listeners out there in podcast land: please become allies. We need your support, including the trans movement. The trans movement also. I’m going to say this, and it’s maybe a bit controversial, but I think they need to step up. You know, I see at least in the United States, I used to run interACT, you mentioned interACT earlier, and they’re reaching out and being very inclusive of their intersex siblings in the United States, and collaborating. And I think that’s a really great thing. I also want to see more well-funded and powerful trans organisations do this impact to the intersex communities because I think we’re better together.

30:08 Crystal Hendricks

And I think I can’t leave this out of the conversation… but if we speak about stepping up, then my call to action is also to donors, like, to donors and to funders. intersex people are the most underfunded group because we don’t have funding. You know, we only have so little resources to have four people at the UN, at this important and vital time. We were supposed to have funding to have more, you know, like at least 20 to 25 activists taking up space, talking to States, changing the narrative, letting them see that intersex people exist. But because funding is so limited for intersex organising, I really want donors to step up and not just, you know, speak on it, but actually implement and make sure there’s funding available for intersex groups and also understanding that intersex groups are also very small. Our organisations are not often set up like standard LGBTQI organisations. But also, to meet us where we are at, because I feel sometimes the process of applying for funding can be so difficult and daunting for intersex organising that intersex people give up, you know, at the end of the day.

So, my call to action is to donors to also fund intersex groups, but also meet intersex groups where they are at and make sure that your funding can be flexible, your application process is flexible, and you know, just meeting intersex people where they are at.

31:33 Obioma Chukwuike

Yeah… Nothing about us without us. We can’t be left out. And I think it’s just like the resolution, it’s high time that everyone, including the funders, step up in the game to include intersex-led focused projects and programs because it’s not that we don’t appreciate the fact that sometimes they lump us into other larger LGBTQI programs or project, but we want something that we can use to address some of these issues that we have talked about in this podcast. You know, unique issues. We also need allies and support other groups, but sometimes we need to speak about some of the issues that we face. And it’s very vital that… is one thing that we have been seeing for years now. I see changes but I think we can do better, that’s my take, I think the donors can do better and I know they can do better. And I also think that it’s important that we realise that we cannot be on the same capacity, just like you mentioned Crystal, organising or other spectrums that have been organising for years, you know. We are trying to build a movement and we have been trying so hard with the little resources that we can grab. Imagine if we are given access to more resources what we can do.

So, I think is about opening up more space for us and allowing us to grow too. Because sometimes I hear from and say: “You don’t have the capacity to do this”, but I cannot have the capacity if I’m not doing that… I can just sit and have the capacity; I have to access some funds for having the capacity… so, who is going to give me those funds?

Capacity building is very important for us, and that is what we need right now.

33:24 Kaisli Syrjänen

And that’s also a question of the misinformation and disinformation, lack of awareness and understanding. If there is not enough funding, there is not enough information out there.

33:36 Host

It’s really the moment for me, as a person who is not part of the intersex community, to commend what you’ve done. Because, again, as you said, you are very small groups and you’ve really been moving mountains. And the fact that in 10 years it’s gone from grassroots activism that continues alongside this. And that’s too the biggest part of what I guess you do, like, to the United Nations and on having a resolution approved. I mean, this is really moving mountains.

And, I’m very sure about that, but maybe, tell me if I’m wrong, but this also comes at a very high emotional cost for you. Because, I mean, you’re here in the room with me after a very long day of speaking with people who have not always been friendly and kind, right? And you’re still here talking to me and talking about your work and your personal experiences. And this is about your personal life, right? Like, it’s a lot. So, I’m not sure people tell you this enough, but please, let me: you all deserve a shout for what you’re doing!

[laughs]

34:54 Crystal Hendricks

Thank you! And I think… when we were just finishing in the room, I said something and I told someone from one of the States that it’s difficult being in this room, but it’s also important to be in this room. Because I’ve always lived with the notion that if I could change one intersex person’s life and if they don’t have to go through all the trauma that I’ve gone through, I feel like I’ve done my work on this earth. And I think it’s so important that many others are afforded opportunities where they can fight for their rights. So, while we have this privilege and we have this opportunity, it’s important for us to do it. But it’s also important for us to go back and take care of ourselves and make sure that self-care is a priority, take a moment, step away, and come back to fight another day.

35:49 Host

I think we’re coming to the close of our conversation today. And I just wanted to thank you so much again for being here. I wanted to close with the last question, which is: What happens next with the resolution being passed? Like, now what? And how does intersex civil society, grassroots groups and allies maybe even, how they can all get involved at this point?

36:14 Obioma Chukwuike

I mean, there are many ways they can get involved. Because the resolution is passed, the next step is implementation, because the resolution is a text, a binding text, it’s call to action, more or less, so it’s about how do member States start acting on the resolution – including the ones that voted and did not vote for it. That is the bigger picture. Because we’re not hoping that it’s only the people that voted for it that will implement it in their country, but also people that did not vote for it just understand that there’s a need because this is a human rights call. And it also calls for more grassroots mobilisation, development of legislations, laws, policies, that can protect and also bring out the issues at the grassroots level. So, I think is about how we can pick the pieces from what the resolution have said to use it as a national advocacy tool and also a global advocacy tool.

And I also think this is where the work actually begins, because now we have given a mandate to go into the world and, you know, continue to advocate. And it’s also more work for us as activists to actually organise more, and also find ourselves in spaces where we have not been before conversing for allyship with other groups to also speak about these issues, and also bring out solutions, sustainable solutions, that can actually better the lives of intersex persons around the globe.
So, I think it is more about taking it to the next level, after the resolution is passed.

37:53 Crystal Hendricks

But I also think that it affords us really an opportunity within society. I think, specially someone coming from Africa being intersex has always been seen as a curse or a bad omen or there’s something negative on the family, and that’s why your child has been born intersex… and also, I’ll give a trigger warning but, in many instances, being intersex has also led to the infanticide and the killing of intersex children. And I think when we saw the resolution 552 at the African Commission of Human and People’s Rights, it was an acknowledgement that intersex people exist and we are part of the community, and we are part of the society, and that was just so important, like, we are not a bad omen, we are not a curse. We are human like, you know, just like everyone else. And I think this resolution is another tool for us to use within our advocacy, and even though it might not be binding, but we can hold our States accountable to say that this is what the UN calls for, because we know that intersex people are not included in many things.

If we look at the sustainable development, even LGBTQI is not mentioned there, but we look on SDG3 – on good health and well-being- when our countries do statistics, they don’t include intersex people when they speak about sexual health rights and sexual reproductive health rights, like, we are not mentioned, right? And being intersex… IGM: these surgeries that happen, it’s linked directly to sexual reproductive health rights, but we are not mentioned.

And I feel like this now gives us an opportunity to take from the human rights perspective, but also then merging it with sustainable development, and then as intersex people we could then go to our States, you know, and hold them accountable and have conversations: “So, this resolution has been implemented, what are you going to do about it?” Right? Speak to our States and have conversations. And also, I mean, we are excited for the mandate on the report to be developed by the OHCHR.

Because, also, for intersex activism, it’s been 10 years at the UN, but for others they’ve been doing this for longer than 10 years. But also, we have so little tools, because we’ve been so underfunded, and I feel like every tool that we could get is essential for us to, you know, successfully advocate in actually obtaining this world where intersex people are protected.

So, for me, I’m like, how intersex groups, grassroots groups, any high-level groups, they will be able to use the report from the OHCHR, take what’s happening to their own national activities and hold the States accountable. So, I feel like we are building the toolbox for intersex advocacy, and now it’s not just coming from intersex organising but it’s coming from the UN. And, you know, so I feel like it has no power even though it’s not binding but it will be a powerful tool that we could use to make our States aware and to make the world awake that we exist, we are 1.7% of the population, there’s millions of intersex people. You cannot deny that. And now the UN has recognised us, so, what more do you need? Now we need to be protected.

40:58 Host

It’s really wonderful to feel the energy in all what you say and the power and the commitment that you all put into your work. So, I just, yeah, I just wanted to thank you once again for having been here. It’s getting dark outside and in this room as well. So, I really wanted to thank you very, very much for all the work that you’re doing. And for having me here with you today…

41:22 Everyone

Thank you!

41:33 Outro

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Daniele Paletta and edited by Daría Poncio. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms. A transcription of this episode in English, and its translation to Spanish, are available on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

00.08 Intro – Suelle Anglin

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

Welcome to another episode of Making Rainbow Waves. I’m Suelle Anglin, and I work on communications at Ilga World. In this episode, we are talking to Nazima, who leads the communication engagement with the Guyana Together campaign by SASOD. SASOD, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination, is a human rights organization and movement leading change to end discrimination based on sexuality and gender in Guyana. Welcome, and thanks for joining us, Nazima.

00:47 Nazima Raghubir

Thank you so much for having me, Suelle.

00:59 Host – Suelle Anglin

I am so excited to talk to you today, one, because we’re in the region and I love hearing stories about what happens in the Caribbean region. And two, I’m so excited to hear more about the Guyana Together campaign. But before we get into the excitement, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you started in your advocacy journey?

01:12 Nazima Raghubir

Thank you so much. So I am a journalist. I am based in Guyana. I started my career in television. and I’ve worked in magazine, which is print, I’ve done online. Most of you, you know, anybody listening would say that as multimedia. And I’m a freelancer today. I’m also a consultant. And I got involved in the Guyana Together campaign last year.

And, you know, it’s so interesting because I’ve been asked this question before, you know, as a journalist, what are you doing in advocacy? I see a role for myself in advocacy and that is why I got involved in the Guyana Together campaign. It’s something I absolutely believe in and I wanted to be able to lend my face and my voice and my expertise to something that I feel is grounded in human rights and that is very important.

02:22 Host – Suelle Anglin

Awesome. And so I know a lot has happened in Guyana over the last couple of years. Can you kind of give us just like a general feel of what the atmosphere is like for LGBT people living in Guyana at the moment?

02:39 Nazima Raghubir

There is absolutely more visibility and there are a lot more conversations that are happening surrounding issues, both positive and negative, affecting the community. And, you know, it bodes well for the types of conversation that needs to be had regionally about LGBTQ rights. But. There is a lot that is also being unsaid at the moment.

A lot of things are not spoken about. And a lot of that is also rooted in the legislation that a lot of our countries have and how those affects the very basic of rights for members of the community. The atmosphere here may not be as aggressive as in other countries. And there is a general acceptance, but there are still things that affect people like access to jobs, you know, access to health care in some instances, and obviously discrimination sometimes by the police because a lot of, I mean, when I say a lot, it’s relative. Because of the issues with access to jobs, many of our members turn to sex work. And when they do that, the police, for instance, can discriminate against them. And there’s a whole cycle of abuse that happens there. When I say visibility, I mean, like there is a lot more that we can see from where we are. There is a lot more.

The person’s been able to be themselves on the streets. There are more conversations happening around LGBTQ issues. And I’m saying this because of my involvement in the Guyana Together campaign, also what I’ve been seeing on social media, my own conversations that have been happening with people. And for me, that is an important indication. that we are prepared to have some conversation or prepared at least to talk about the community.

04:46 Host – Suelle Anglin

All right, so let’s just jump into talking about the Guyana Together campaign. Can you tell us what led to the campaign and what exactly is the focus of the campaign?

05:10 Nazima Raghubir

So I’ll talk first about the campaign. So Guyana Together campaign is a grassroots effort to really increase acceptance levels among Guyanese and reduce the level of stigma and prejudice for the LGBTQ community. And the campaign really focuses on sharing the stories of persons within the community who have found acceptance and support from family, co-workers, neighbors, friends, and even religious leaders. you know, among those persons that provide support. For us, and we have launched two videos to date, it’s really about the support system and hearing from those people who have provided support over the years. So our first video is actually with Crystal and Sebi. Crystal is a lesbian. She is a contributing member of society. She works in the oil and gas industry. She actually works offshore. And Sebi is sort of like her adoptive mother. Crystal had lost her mother at a very young age. And Sebi stepped in. She is a social worker. That is her job but she also has this unique connection with Crystal

06:37 Nazima Raghubir

And that is something we wanted to highlight because there are many other persons out there who have similar stories and similar relationships of acceptance and love. And we really wanted to highlight that sort of story and say, look, this is already happening in your life, and you’re already showing support, you’re already showing acceptance. And, you know, it’s okay to be able to do that more publicly or talk about it. So that was our first video. Our second video was with Nash, a designer in Guyana, and his friend Crystal, who is a social media influencer, a businesswoman, and a model. And that also was able to bring out the same messages of love and support. Here is this mother of one supporting her friend who is gay. She really doesn’t care about those things at the end of the day. This is her friend.

07:36 Nazima Raghubir

So that is like the core messages that we’ve been able to use or to put out there. The idea is really to start this type of nationwide conversation on how we can help each other to make a change in terms of promoting acceptance and promoting support. I feel these things are already happening, you know. behind, well, I don’t want to say behind closed doors, but they’re already happening in some way or the other. And, you know, why not put a spotlight on them and, you know, help to promote a very genuine, organic conversation to be had. And it’s interesting, I’m going to answer your first question now.

08:23 Nazima Raghubir

When… It was in 2013 when there was a survey that was done by the Caribbean Development Research Services, CADREs, and it was a national poll, and the national poll had found that there was a 28.5% increase in support for LGBT people from the community. And that, by the way, we really noticed that acceptance level had risen and there was more tolerance than we had previously seen. Of course, there could be a number of contributing factors to this. Um… It could be that there was more discussions happening in the family years. They were seeing campaigns that were happening internationally. People were traveling more and more exposed to different norms and culture and changing tides. And also, obviously, the internet, social media were bringing real stories about members of the community. and acceptance and love and so many other things. So I think that was also a very crucial endpoint for us with this campaign to really ride that wave and say no.

10:08 Nazima Raghubir

this is the right time to have this conversation. And how can we contribute to that conversation? And we thought it best is you find real people, real voices. They’re not being paid in any way. They are willing to tell their stories and willing to show their love in a very public way. And the launch has been very public. Since the launch, the videos have had airtime. They’re played on prime television in prime television spots, for instance, news spots. And for us, that is like a core audience because there’s a certain age group that sit and look at the news at 6.30 or 7.30. And we’re also riding the wave on the Internet. So we are on TikTok. We’re on Facebook, Instagram. Instagram. Twitter, well, X, formerly known as Twitter. And we have our website. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because you see the instant reactions on those platforms. And they’ve all been very warm and welcoming, minus the few Bible verses that we get from time to time, which is expected.

11:24 Host – Suelle Anglin

It’s so exciting and I’m so happy. I always love to hear stories, especially when it comes to human rights campaign. I always love hearing when people incorporate stories of, you know, families and friends and allies, because I think allyship plays such an important role in moving the movement forward overall. So I’m excited to know if people want to engage with the campaign, people want to know more about SASOD. where can we find you on social media? And if we want to engage, how can we do that?

11:52 Nazima Raghubir

The website is guyanatogether.gy. And on Facebook, it’s Guyana Together. On Instagram, it’s Guyana Together. On TikTok, it’s Guyana Together. And likewise with X.

12:30 Host – Suelle Anglin

So I know you talked a little bit about the role of allyship and partnership in the Ghana Together campaign. But if you could expand a little bit more, can you tell us how do you think the stories of allies will really impact societal and behavioral change in Ghana? And if you have any specific examples that you can share with us, that would also be great.

12:52 Nazima Raghubir

You know, it’s interesting because at our launch, we did have a religious leader. given remarks at our launch. We also had somebody within civil society. On our list of partners, we have the Guyana Press Association, of which I’m a part of, the Black Entrepreneurs Association, which is a vibrant body of Black entrepreneurs in Guyana. And we have a list of endorsers, and they range from private businesses to organizations to civil society bodies and persons who had no hesitation or organizations that had no hesitation. to getting on the campaign or endorsing the campaign. We also have as a partner, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, which also is a very reputable body with members being from the business society. So that for us was a good indication of the types of visibility that is there, but also the type of support and people actually wanting to be part of something that is progressive.

14:07 Nazima Raghubir

When we had a session And in January, with the Rotary Club of Georgetown, we did have young business leaders along with the mature business leaders coming out to that lunch meeting for our presentation. And that presentation was delivered by a female businesswoman in Guyana who spoke of the need for inclusivity in the workplace and as an indication of the type of support that is there. Thank you. You know, like the type of organic support that we’re seeing, that is always going to be tested when legislation or talks about legislative changes come up. And I’m a little bit confident that we live in a progressive society where people are going to say, You know, let us consider having this as something that we can discuss openly. And I am willing to put my name and my voice and my organization to a cause to ask you to repeal whatever discriminatory laws there are. I feel that is the road the Guyanese are going to go down. when you see the levels of support that you’re getting. Because, as I said, we are being a little bit more observant to the things that are happening around us.

15:41 Nazima Raghubir

And we are on that trajectory of recognizing what is human rights and what isn’t, and what is a violation. And I think the endorsements and the partnerships that we’ve seen so far speak to the support that is necessary. Even as I say all of this, we have not engaged any politicians. We have not engaged the government. We have not engaged parliament, the opposition parliamentarians. We wanted to keep this very politics-free for now because we wanted to promote… and also show the fact that it’s so much organic support that is out there. And that is what we needed to highlight. And I think that is very important for us. Down the road, if this comes, you know, if we have to get to this, I think there’s room for discussion with the politicians on how this can be addressed.

16:52 Host – Suelle Anglin

All right. Interesting. So now a few countries throughout the region have decriminalized already.

17:02 Nazima Raghubir

Yeah

16:55 Host – Suelle Anglin

How do you think the Guyana Together campaign and all the work that you’ve been doing on the ground, engaging different stakeholders from government to allies to persons in the private sector, how do you think all of this work together might help towards the decriminalization movement in Guyana?

17:13 Nazima Raghubir

So, you know, Suelle, when we did that poll back in 2013, it was a very clear majority of 53.9% of Guyana’s who… said they would likely support the elimination of the law that criminalizes sex between men. On 76.3% of Guyanese said that eliminating the law criminalizing sex between men would have a positive or no impact on their lives. And this was in 2013. Here we are 2003, 2000, sorry, 2023, 2024, a couple of years from then. talking about this.
And I think that is a very important indication of the type of support that exists for this campaign, but also for decriminalizing the same-sex acts that are so criminalized. A couple of years ago, we did have the CCJ ruling on cross-dressing, and Guyana’s actually struck. that law which is a colonial law like most of our Caribbean countries from its law books and I think for us it’s just a matter of time and a matter of having that homegrown support being shown

18:40 Host – Suelle Anglin

Okay so I know you spoke about like the launch that would have happened and like the videos that you’d have done so far. Is there anything else that you have done? relating to the camping, like any other activities that have been done so far? And what have those been like?

19:00 Nazima Raghubir

Most of our activities have been around other than the sessions that we did with the Rotary of Georgetown. We did some amount of media training and we’ve also been doing media support through interviews. And we have been doing some amount of… People have wanted media coverage of some of the candidates. And I think that’s important for them to tell their stories, not only of the persons from the community, but the love and support. So a lot of our work has been surrounding that sort of coverage to amplify the campaign, amplify the persons involved in the campaign and let them talk about their own stories outside of what we have featured. So a lot of it has been related to that.

20:01 Host – Suelle Anglin

Okay, that sounds really great. So what else can we look forward to from the Guyana together campaign? I know you spoke about the different ads on TV, you know, the launch and all of that. What else can we look forward to from the campaign?

20:10 Nazima Raghubir

We do have a few things that are coming up. I’m not at liberty right now to talk about them. Excuse my voice. I mean, those will have to come as some among the surprises right now. We do have a couple more videos that we are going to release, and this is going to be during the year. But we do have some key public engagements with stakeholders

20:30 Host – Suelle Anglin

And is there anything else you want our listeners to know before we close out? Is there anything else you want persons to know about the campaign? Anything else they can look out for on the campaign? How you can share that with us?

20:44 Nazima Raghubir

sure, um our website um guyanatogether.org all the information is there um you can you know visit you can take a pledge because um there is an opportunity for you to take a pledge there and on our socials on facebook on twitter on tiktok on instagram you can find us and like a video share a video we’re also on youtube all our videos are there and um you You can share anything, you can share your thoughts with us, and let us know what you thought about the videos or the campaign. I think that feedback is absolutely necessary. And just let us know what your thoughts are or just share them.

21:31 Host – Suelle Anglin

Okay, Nazima, thank you so much. This has been such a really great episode. And again, I always love when we’re able to share stories of what happens across the Caribbean region. So thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for sharing on the campaign, you know, all the activities that’s happening in Guyana. And we really look forward to everything that’s going to unfold. We know lots of exciting things are coming. And, you know, the partners throughout the region and our ILGA World family at large, we’re here to support. and to cheer you on in whatever activities you do.

22:14 Host – Suelle Anglin

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by me, Suelle Anglin. You can find this and every episode on all streaming platforms. A transcript of this episode in English and its translation to Spanish are available on ilga.org. Thank you for listening.

“We are lesbians and we have rights”: a conversation with Gulzada Serzhan

00:00:08 Gulzada Serzhan

We know our rights. We know how it works. We are out. We can come out and say that we are lesbians and we have rights. I think that’s very essential.

00:00:26 (intro)

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

00:00:37 Daniele Paletta (Host)

Welcome to Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World, where we tell the stories of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide. My name is Daniele Paletta, and I’m here today with Gulzada Serzhan, from a Kazakhstan Feminist Initiative “Feminita”. Welcome, Gulzada.

00:00:56 Gulzada Serzhan

Hi, Daniele.

00:00:58 (Host)

Thank you so much for being with us today. This is going to be a conversation about your story as an activist and the human rights situation for our communities in your country. And also, for you to tell us a little bit more about your advocacy experience, especially in international human rights bodies. Could you tell me more about your story as an activist? Was there a key moment that made you want to get involved in first-person activism?

00:01:35 Gulzada Serzhan

Yes. My name is Gulzada Serzhan, and I’m 51 years old. I live in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I’m an activist, feminist, lesbian, women’s human rights defender, co-founder of Kazakhstan Feminist Initiative “Feminita”, which is based in Almaty. We advocate for the rights of lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender women’s rights in Kazakhstan. I started my civil rights activism when I first time went to a protest with my colleague Zhanar Sekerbayeva in 2014. It was the very first time when I joined a civil rights protest. I didn’t know anything about how it is to be an activist. We shouted a famous slogan which is against patriarchal autocracy, autocratic, social, and democratic government. When in media, they started to discuss these two women, they started to confuse us: “Are they men or women? Why do they look different?” So, Zhanar and I decided to make this initiative to protect the rights of the LGBTI community rather than to be mistaken, and to be part of the civil society movement in Kazakhstan. That’s how we started in 2014.

00:03:23 (Host)

And you have continued your work since. I imagine it must have been something pretty new for you to dive into activism all of a sudden, right? I imagine you were doing something completely different before. But over the years, I know you’ve been very active in advocating for our communities in your country and in the region. So, how would you describe the human rights situation of LGBTI communities in Kazakhstan, and how do you think it has evolved over time?

00:03:59 Gulzada Serzhan

Yeah, you’re right. We are really involved in advocacy for LGBTI rights in Kazakhstan, probably because both Zhanar and I have our own backgrounds. I’m from academia, and she’s from journalism. That’s probably why we joined this path. As you probably know, Kazakhstan was a former Soviet country. If you compare the situation of human rights in former Soviet countries, in my opinion, in Kazakhstan, it is better than Russia and some Central Asian countries. However, it is worse than in, for example, Baltic countries. So I should say that Kazakhstan is better than all our neighbouring countries, is because we have some refugees coming from Russia and Central Asia. We, as activists, try to help them get some legal help or health help.

00:05:30 Gulzada Serzhan

The officials do not want to make it (look like it) is feasible. They don’t brag about that because, overall, Kazakhstan is not a friendly country for refugees. However, for LGBTI people, the recent years, especially as in Russia and in other neighbouring countries, the human rights situation for LGBTI communities is really worsening, and the anti-gender movement is rising up really highly after this war, in comparison, I would say that it is better than all these terrible situations in our neighbouring countries. I think it is also due to the advocacy and activism of the LGBTI community and LGBTI activists in Kazakhstan.

00:06:35 (Host)

Thanks for sharing that. Since your name, of course, “Feminita” is a grassroots queer feminist human rights organisation. And, as you said, it works to protect the human rights of lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans women, but also women with disabilities, women who engage in sex work. I was wondering what it is like for “Feminita” to be a feminist organisation within the LGBTI movement at large. And what does feminism mean to your LGBTI advocacy? How do you make intersectionality work in your daily practice?

00:07:16 Gulzada Serzhan

In daily practice, when we introduce “Feminita” to any auditorium, we say: “We are intersectional feminists, a collective of lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgender women’s activists.” In my opinion, hate against the LGBTIQ community and misogyny have similar features backed by a patriarchal society. Therefore, we put ourselves as a part of a feminist movement. For example, we actively take part in the organisation of feminist rallies and marches, and we support all other women or feminist organisations. We try to hold these feminist values. Being part of a larger movement and having allies is really important. We see these feminist and grassroots organisations as an ally, very strong movements. We feel like a part of it.

00:08:44 (Host)

I hope they have been welcoming to you as well, of course.

00:08:49 Gulzada Serzhan

Well, time to time. It depends.

00:08:51 (Host)

It depends, okay. That’s an ongoing process. But I think I can also speak for our experience at the ILGA World; the alliances with feminist and LGBTI movements are becoming extremely, extremely important for us. It has always been present, but I think we’re trying to make that even more explicit, especially in this climate of anti-rights, anti-gender movements that are really being very loud and aggressive. You also mentioned that they’re having an impact on your country.

00:09:32 Gulzada Serzhan

That’s true, yes.

00:09:34 (Host)

I know your advocacy is not limited just to your country or your region, but it has also often reached international human rights bodies. Like the United Nations, for example. Only last year, we know that the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), thanks to your advocacy, heard about the detention of LGBTI activists. And you obtained a recommendation on the issue. Of course, this is a great result because you managed to bring to light a situation that normally remains hidden. So, I was wondering whether you could share with us your experience with engaging in UN mechanisms, both last year, on the occasion that I mentioned, and in the past. How has that evolved over time?

00:10:28 Gulzada Serzhan

This advocacy at Geneva, the UN Committees, was started in 2016 by Zhanar Sekerbayeva, the co-founder of “Feminita”. She went for the first time. It was UNHRC, and we got the very first recommendation on non-discrimination of LGBTI persons based on SOGI, sexual orientation and gender identity. It was the first time. It was very successfully advocated by my colleague. Later, the next, I don’t precisely remember. I think either 2017 or 2018, I went to CESCR, the Committee for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. And we also got the support of the committee regarding the registration.

00:11:37 Gulzada Serzhan

It is very essential for these organisations like us, “Feminita”, to be able to legally register, but we are still not registered. It’s one of the discriminations against the community because when some collectives of LGBTI activists try to also register, whenever you have on your statute the words related to lesbian, bisexual, etc., then they try not to register it. We see this discrimination, but we are not giving up. We are still trying to register. And later, at the end of 2019, it was UPR (the Universal Periodic Review). Again, with the help of ILGA, I went to UPR, and Kazakhstan got 11 recommendations, one of which was supported. It is creating an enabling environment for LGBTI community rights activists. It is a very important recommendation which was supported. We praised the officials for supporting it.

00:13:06 Gulzada Serzhan

However, when we got back to Kazakhstan and we were invited to discuss these supported recommendations from UPR in the Ministry of Justice, it was online because it was COVID time, Kazakhstan was declaring that we are going to make it in a national plan and we are going to work on it.

But a few days ago, a couple of weeks ago, we got attacked by a mob in Shymkent. So it was opposite of what we supported as a country. So we made it very clear in other discussions with Ministry of Justice that they were doing the opposite; “You have to tell all those offices in other cities that Kazakhstan supported that recommendation, now we have that obligation.”

I think maybe it was a good thing that it happened to show how it’s not to be done and how they are violating it. If nothing happened, then we could say they support it, and let’s move on, right? Now, we are explaining the officials, the Minister of Justice, and we regularly meet with them and tell them how we see the implementation of the recommendation.

00:15:03 Gulzada Serzhan

Probably, it is very new, and it was not common for activist groups to advocate at the national level to explain what should be done, how it should be done, and how to deal with the perception of this heritage from the Soviet times. In Soviet times, we had this legal prosecution in our criminal code; we had an article against homosexuality, so how to get rid of all this past? I think it’s the step-by-step process; we are working on it, and we are very loud. We are out lesbians in Kazakhstan. We don’t hide it. We go to the meetings and face these officials and the Ministry of Justice or Minister of Internal Affairs to explain to them what should be done and how it should be implemented. And why it is beneficial for all citizens and for all people living in Kazakhstan. We are very out loud to tell this also for the community, spreading this courage to make them feel more or less sure about their rights. So we are doing our best.

00:16:43 (Host)

Thanks for sharing all of that. And first of all, I’m so sorry that you got attacked, and I hope you and all your colleagues are doing okay. I imagine it must be hard. So first of all, I want to send you all my solidarity. And it’s just really terrible that visibility always has to come with a cost, right? Because, of course, the more you expose yourself and the more people are trying to put you back in your corner. So I think it’s extremely important what you’re doing, but it’s also very hard and comes with a cost. So again, my solidarity and my thanks for what you’re doing. In the specific…

00:17:29 Gulzada Serzhan

If I may, I would mention that it’s not only LGBTI activists who are attacked but also political activists. I think the way autocratic government oppresses the civil society movement is similar. If you’re part of, for example, the working union or political activists or other group which they see as a threat to the autocratic ruling, then they might organise this. The biggest one was in January 2022. We have to see that the LGBTI rights movement is one of the civil society movements, along with other movements. So they do not differ. If this is the LGBTI community, then let’s do it this way and another way. The oppression is similar. So, we stand together with other civil rights movements. Sometimes, some groups do not want us to be part of the civil society movement, but we don’t listen because they’re not making the agenda. The agenda is made by all parts of the civil society movement.

00:19:10 (Host)

Yeah, and that’s exactly where the solidarity comes in, right? Different groups may have very different paths and very different goals and life stories, but everyone is united in these cases. Yeah, it’s really important.

Coming again to the recommendations that you received last year with the Committee Against Torture, I wanted to quote what the committee said, if I may: “The Committee is seriously concerned about the allegations of violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, inflicted on person deprived of their liberty, and harassment and sexual violence, inflicted on female detainees by male guards in exchange of favours. The committees said the government should ensure that all allegations of violence against detainees, including violence on the basis of SOGI, are thoroughly investigated and the suspected offenders are persecuted and, if convicted, punished appropriately. With specific attention paid to allegations of violence against female detainees.”

00:20:20 (Host)

Of course, this is extremely relevant. As we said, it’s not something that… The situation of prisoners is a reality that has not always come to light. So I was wondering, now that the shadow report has been submitted and the recommendations have been made, what happens next? How do you follow up on them? Maybe you already have. If so, have you seen any changes in how the government is responding or interacting with your groups or other groups that have made shadow reports to the UN bodies?

00:20:58 Gulzada Serzhan

First of all, we informed the LGBTI community that we got this recommendation. So when you explain to the community what these recommendations are and what they mean, it is very important to give them some… They may become more confident. Especially for LGBTI activists. It is important, essential, to know that they have rights. And the government received this recommendation because, with all these anti-gender groups, they’re throwing this fake information. They’re making it seem as if “You are so alone. Nobody is going to help you. You have no rights, and the whole world is against you. And you are the only one living in this world and have no rights.” So this feeling of insecurity is making some activists and some LGBTI members become vulnerable. And after also the COVID time, this situation of their mental health is not good. At that time, we spread the information that Kazakhstan went there, and we explained the whole process: how we were sitting there, who said what, what was the response of this state, and how they behaved. We shared all these details with the community to let them know that they were not alone, and the state accepted this. So they received this recommendation, and they have to follow these recommendations. And we are watching it, we are monitoring it. We explain that we monitor, and we come up with that. Any time when the government makes a discussion, a roundtable discussion with civil society about this recommendation, we show up and say, “We like this” or “We don’t like what you are doing.”

00:23:39 Gulzada Serzhan

I think this work is done very well, and that’s why we have different young activists showing up. They’re so bold. They’re not afraid. They’re making some projects for youth, for other groups in the LGBTI community. I think that’s the result of making seen that we know our rights, we know how it works. We are out. We can come out and say that we are lesbians and we have rights. I think that’s very essential.

00:24:22 Gulzada Serzhan

These recommendations are in a very official language. It’s hard to understand, especially for young people. So we try to explain them in a very friendly way in our meetings, in our group meetings, etc. When we go online, we make video talks with the community, and we explain all of its importance. I think it gives some confidence; I think that’s an essential part of other than advocating at the national level and the international level. In my opinion, it was a mistake of the other groups who were advocating before not to connect with the community. Before “Feminita”, there were some attempts at advocacy. We can see some recommendations, but we never see anyone who did this work with the community explaining what those recommendations mean, why it is important for us, how it works, and what you can do to use those changes in your life.

00:25:52 (Host)

Yeah, as you said, the bottom line is really to make people understand that they’re not alone. Because I think even if our context and where we come from are very different, I think in our community most of us can relate to having experienced that loneliness. And that “Am I the only one”, right? And finding out that that’s not true, I think it’s what opens us up to the world… I’m sorry, I’m getting a little bit moved by all of this.

Because doing this advocacy work, I find, can also seem very remote, very strange. The UN can seem this gigantic, very remote mechanism that has no real impact on people’s lives. So as you said, it takes explaining, it takes bringing people in and telling them why this is not true, that this actually matters a lot. And so once again, thanks for all the work that you’ve been doing.

00:27:06 (Host)

I think we’re reaching the end of our conversation. Or maybe not; maybe there’s more you want to share. And, of course, you’re welcome to!

00:27:15 Gulzada Serzhan

Yeah. So, I want to share one of the ideas that we say to the communities about the UN mechanisms because of the anti-gender movement and all the propaganda saying that the UN is a useless organisation. There’s a lot of information like that saying that the UN has no teeth, that’s all blah, blah, blah, “it doesn’t help you.” We explain to the community that the implementation of the recommendation is in our own interest. So you have to feel, “That’s for me, and that’s my right”. It’s not because somebody in Geneva wants that; it is because I want that. So, all these recommendations are about us, and it’s our own ownership. You have to make it your own and it is very… The benefit of it is for Kazakhstan, not any other country. So we can’t do that. We cannot ignore all those recommendations. The “throw it away, right? Nobody cares. Nobody wants us to be a democracy except us, it is beneficial exclusively to us”… How we explain, though, all that rhetoric of crumbling propaganda against the UN is not helpful to you? So I think all LGBTI communities have to discuss it and prevent spreading all this information against UN mechanisms to make it seem like it is very useless.

00:29:39 Gulzada Serzhan

It is useless if you don’t use it. Nobody is going to make a rule in your home. So all these rules that are written on the paper are our own rules because we advocated for them. Zhanar and I went with these requests, and we got that recommendation according to the convention that we accepted in Kazakhstan. So Kazakhstan is our country, and we make the rules. I think we have to talk about that a lot and not throw away all those efforts that we are making.

00:30:24 (Host)

I completely agree. I really want to thank you for being here, for explaining all your work and the human rights situation in your country. I think your words are going to resonate with a lot of people that hopefully will be listening to us. So thank you so much for having been with us today.

00:30:46 Gulzada Serzhan

Thank you, Daniele.

00:30:47 (Host)

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Daniele Paletta and edited by Kevin Mwachiro. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms, and transcriptions are available on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

Transcription of the episode: “Celebrating the 10th anniversary of our United Nations programme”

00:07 (intro)

Making Rainbow Waves

00:14 (Host)

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World in which we tell the stories of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide. And this one is a special episode for us because we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of our UN program. Our guest today is actually the program manager of our UN program, Kseniya Kirichenko. Welcome, Kseniya.

00:35 Kseniya Kirichenko

Thank you, Daniele. It’s a really nice experience to be here.

00:40 (Host)

Great. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us. And as I said, today we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of our UN program. So, actually, my first question for you is really if you could tell us the story of how the program was created and how it developed during the years.

00:57 Kseniya Kirichenko

Yes, sure. Well, I was with ILGA World, working for ILGA World, since 2016. But I also know the story behind it, at least some part of it, and I’m happy to share it with you. And well, speaking about the history of ILGA and the UN program at ILGA, we also need to think about the history of civil society or NGOs at the UN. Because initially, of course, the UN was created as a state-centered mechanism institution machine. But then with time, more and more mechanisms for civil society to engage were created.

Initially, or I would say… Let’s say in the late 80s, 90s, the participation of civil society within the UN spaces was related to ECOSOC status. And when ILGA initially didn’t have this status, we still already started to engage with the UN.

As a UN nerd, I did some research some time ago and I found really old documents that already mentioned ILGA or people who were speaking on behalf of ILGA. And one of the first such experience was in 1992:

We haven’t had yet at that point the ECOSOC status, but Douglas Sanders, who unfortunately passed away a year ago, he participated there already through Human Rights Advocates, the organisation that had ECOSOC status at this point.

And he made a speech at the Commission on Human Rights, now Human Rights Council, but at that point it was called Commission on Human Rights, and in 1992 he was telling that there is ILGA; at that time with only 500 members. And he also said that: gay and lesbian people live in all the countries in the world, they are a part of the population, but at the same time are not represented at the UN. So, he requested basically the representation of gay and lesbian people at the UN. Also, he mentioned that by that point ILGA already had engagement with the WHO, the World Health Organization, and contributed to the Fernand-Laurent study on sexual minorities.

So, it was also a very interesting document, a historical document that ILGA contributed to. And if people are interested in the history of LGBTI rights, I think it’s really like a gem for all the nerds like me.

03:27 Kseniya Kirichenko

This study was from the late 80s, and it was perhaps the first official UN document and a report on the topic. And while it’s sometimes funny, because it’s still 1980 And it says things such as, for example: “lesbians are the counterparts of homosexuals in the female world, and they usually meet their partners in the homes of friends”. So, it’s a little bit weird and funny.

But still, already in this report, there were chapters on lesbians and chapters on trans people. And ILGA was able, already there in 1980s, was able to contribute to this report. So that was one of the first appearances of ILGA in 1992.

Then a year after, already on behalf of ILGA, because at that point we had ECOSOC status, also Douglas Sanders again participated and shared that our representatives, about a dozen open lesbians and gay men from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Mexico, Peru, and the United States (so different countries, not just the Global North), participated in the World Conference on Human Rights. The 1990s was a decade of World Conferences on Human Rights: the Vienna Conference, the Beijing Conference focusing on women’s rights, and we were there already.

So that was also a little bit of history and, well, that’s how things were initially developed. We didn’t have for a long time a dedicated UN program. But this changed in 2013, 10 years ago, with ILGA World first hiring the UN advocacy and program manager André du Plessis, who is now with Outright – but yes, André was the first specific UN employee at ILGA World.

05:18 Kseniya Kirichenko

And then also, at that time, ILGA World moved from Brussels to Geneva, and one of the reasons was also to, you know, to leave the European institutions to ILGA-Europe, and also for us, ILGA World, to work closely with the United Nations, which is based in Geneva.

So that was one of the reasons also why the office moved. And then soon after that, one and then another person was hired to do work on UPR Human Rights Council and Treaty Bodies. And then in 2016, I joined ILGA, initially as an officer working on treaty bodies and special procedures.

So that’s where my herstory with ILGA World started as an employee, because I was working for member organisations before. But yeah, so that’s already a part with my presence. And now I’m the UN program manager, I’m leading the program. When I joined, we only had three people working for the UN program, André, who was the manager, and then Diana, who was doing work on UPR and Human Rights Council, and I was doing Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures.

Today, we are four people who are working full time for ILGA. So, it’s me, myself, who is managing the program, and I’m doing treaty bodies work; we also have Gabriel leading our UPR and Human Rights Council engagement; We also have Guillermo, who is doing Special Procedures work, and SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, so it’s also the addition to our portfolio.

And then last, but not least, we started to do more systemic work on implementation of UN recommendations, so we have Gitau, who is leading our National Advocacy Engagement, plus also two Junior Professional Consultants and one consultant specific for Treaty Bodies. So yeah, we grew quite a lot during this decade and even before, and I’m happy to be a part of this process

07:18 (Host)

Thank you so much. It’s really fascinating to go through all the story of our engagement with the United Nations. And I know, actually, that there are also other parts outside of human rights-specific Bodies. For example, I know from our history the then Co-Secretary General Lisa Power, in 1991, for example, raised homosexuality – and she was the first out person to do that – as the United Nations in New York, as part of the ILGA delegation that went to the ECOSOC NGO committee and that was about ILGA’s membership application.

So, there are literally bits and pieces of ILGA’s history all around the history of the United Nations in the past 30 years. And it’s really fascinating because my next question, actually, is: from your unique vantage point, how do you describe how the United Nations has helped advance the recognition of the human rights of LGBTI people throughout all these years?

08:15 Kseniya Kirichenko

It’s a good question. And, of course, because the idea of international human rights law, at least from this positivistic view, it’s connected directly to the United Nations, we have core human rights instruments that protect human rights adopted at the UN, at the United Nations, and therefore the UN has contributed enormously to the development of the discourse of human rights.

The idea and the establishment of LGBTI rights or SOGIESC human rights was also happening at the United Nations. And, well, the beautiful part of it is that, because it’s a universal system, a global system, the standards, when they are formed, they are not formed just in one country. But they’re spreading throughout the world, and the perfect example is the decision on the Toneen case.

So: Toneen v. Australia is a groundbreaking case from 1994 when the Human Rights Committee for the first time recognised that criminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual acts between, well, men for Australia, is a violation of the international human rights, specifically the right to privacy. But this decision that was made against Australia, this decision influenced a lot of legal jurisprudential developments throughout the world. And just to mention that this decision was cited by regional and national courts, by the European Court of Human Rights, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. And, also, by different courts – from India and Nepal to the Philippines and Fiji, to Colombia to South Africa and Zimbabwe. So, it’s a really very strong standard that was developed in 1994 at the UN, by the UN, and then traveled globally.

And today we see that, despite the fact that LGBTI people, LGBTI human rights and SOGIESC, are not explicitly mentioned in the human rights conventions, the treaty bodies and other bodies of the UN that interpret that implement these conventions, they made LGBTI human rights language their own language. For instance, the Human Rights Committee, which is monitoring the implementation of the International Cabinet on Civil and Political Rights: today they literally do LGBTI recommendations on every country under review. So, every country is asked about LGBTI rights, and this is the part of the human rights language today, now, for sure.

10:54 Kseniya Kirichenko

Or we can also think about special procedures. These are groups of independent experts, or individual independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, and they are more flexible because they are not really bound by the convention’s texts. But they were really those who developed the language speaking for the first time about corrective rapes, for instance.

One of the latest reports by the Special Rapporteur on Health where she introduced and explained what is the inclusive non-binary approach to gender-based violence. So, really, we’ve seen how the language was formed, how it is developing, how it is adapting to new concepts and the living realities of our communities.

But also, I think that it’s not just the UN. So, it’s not just the UN that decided one day that we want to protect LGBTI persons’ human rights, of course. I would dare to say that behind all these victories, there are real people, LGBTI activists, and movements. The Toonen decision, if we talk about this decision, it was brought by an activist from Australia. And a lot of other victories or developments were also supported by activists.

12:13 (Host)

Thank you for this very thorough explanation. I think this is important, not just for you and other self-proclaimed nerds, as you have described yourself during this conversation, but as you said, all of this, even if it sounds remote and abstract to many, it has real-life implications for people and on our communities. So, it’s really important to make it known.

And as you said, over the years, ILGA World’s UN program has supported hundreds of human rights defenders and grassroots activists to engage within UN spaces. So, can you describe a little bit the work that we as an organisation do with them?

12:53 Kseniya Kirichenko

Sure, thank you, Daniele. And I think that the basis of our approach as a membership organisation is to share our privilege and to provide this space, to give this space to activists. So, I think that this is the basis. And our mission, if you want, is to really support those working on the ground. So, we are not just developing strategies sitting in Geneva and then, you know, just imposing them on activists in different parts of the world. But we are trying as much as possible to ground all our efforts in the needs and realities of the movement.

And what we are specifically doing with this principle: We provide training on technicalities on how to engage with the UN. Because ultimately, of course, it’s the activists who are experts on their own situations, the country’s situations. Then they know what is happening, they know what the problems are. But sometimes the UN can sound like really this ‘huge monster’ that’s only available to governments or international human rights lawyers with, I don’t know, Oxford diplomas or whatever. Wh. This sometimes is true, but also: civil society now, today, after all the years, has much more space to engage with the UN. And our task is to explain how to use this system, because sometimes it can really be, well, not super easy, but it’s not rocket science.

So, what do we do? We provide training, we help activists to put their demands, their needs into the UN language. We also help them sometimes, when needed, to write reports to the UN, because there are also, you know, some tips and tricks, how to present the situation, how to formulate recommendations, what examples, what illustrations to use to prove the point, and so on and so forth. Then also we are helping activists to come to Geneva or to New York, and to engage with these spaces. Because one thing is, of course, to write a report or to submit a communication to the UN. But it’s also important to give the advocacy a human face and to talk to UN representatives because after all, they’re also humans. And it’s important to have the opportunity to talk to them, to explain to them what is important, why it’s important. We have seen a lot of very interesting examples of such advocacy; so, we’re also bringing activists to UN spaces, and we help them to engage with the friendly UN representatives, such as committee members or officers of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights or Special Procedures and so on and so forth.

15:45 Kseniya Kirichenko

Then also we help with the implementation of UN recommendations when needed. So, we also have some best practices, good practices, related to the implementation of the recommendations. And in doing so, we are also trying at least to use an intersectional approach and to give space to people who may be usually not that present within the movement as well.

For instance, we had projects in the past when we worked with LGBTI people and groups with disabilities, and we engaged with the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We also prepared quite a lot of submissions on the intersection of race and SOGIESC. So, we are also trying to work from this perspective. Also, to support trans groups, to support intersex groups, to support LBTQI women’s groups. So that’s how we do it.

And, also, to make sure that we are not only focusing on the so-called Global North, but we support as well, and maybe first of all, groups from other parts of the world.

17:03 (Host)

Thank you. Thanks for that. I have to say that I’ve been watching all your work on the side, documenting your work on the side for all these years also. And one of the best parts of our work, I think, is also to get to know all these activists who do such an amazing work on the ground, and to support them in the way we can.

There is one thing that one of these activists said one time that has really stayed with me over the years, she said: The United Nations need us more than what we need the UN, because without civil society, the United Nations doesn’t really know where to look when it’s time to address the practical matters. Right?

So, I was wondering whether you have a memory or an engagement with an activist or a moment in all these years of works that has particularly stayed with you.

17:52 Kseniya Kirichenko

Yes, yes! I have so many memories, of course, and so many examples of really beautiful projects, advocacy campaigns, passionate fighting for LGBTI human rights. So, it’s really difficult to pick one moment. But maybe I would share this story, herstory, and it’s maybe not very traditional for the UN, but still.

So, it was a few years ago, we were at Palais des Nations, the main building of the UN here in Geneva. And there was an activist from Angola, a feminist queer activist. And it was something like, you know, quite traditional; a panel where people were speaking in microphones, and there was an interpretation and there were diplomats in costumes. But then after the meeting, we just stayed together, the civil society group, and I was talking to her and we were just like chatting about how to organise this advocacy, how to make it more meaningful for LGBTI communities. And she took a book from her bag and showed me this book and it was bell hooks, All About Love. And she told me “Well, this is, I think, how we need to do our advocacy”.

So that was such a beautiful moment… And this connection between our, you know, foremothers, our all the people who stand behind us and all the people who developed these ideas who were fighting for intersectional justice. So, yeah, that’s how bell hooks became about the UN for me.

And like she said, for example, awakening into love can only happen as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. And I think this is exactly about what we are doing. Because for me, this domination and formal power is already there, and the UN is also to some extent it’s about there. But when we do our advocacy, I think that we need to think about love as a healing force. And love as a longing for communion and to do it together as a movement, and to share this love, and to show this love in a broad sense to the United Nations and to change even the meaning of the power, the formal power, and to bring our understanding into these spaces.

So, that’s, that’s the story.

20:23 (Host)

Thank you, that’s really beautiful.

20:25 (Interlude music playing in the background)

20:35 (Host)

And, yeah, speaking about community, I think one of the greatest achievements of civil society worldwide at the UN within SOGIESC issue has been really, you know, civil society coming together and advocating for a mandate that specifically addresses violence and discriminations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The mandate was first created in 2016. But of course, that’s the result of years-long battle and commitment. And now we’re seven years in the existence of the mandate. So how would you describe the impact of the mandate having been so far? And how do you see ILGA World support in the mandate continue going forward?

21:16 Kseniya Kirichenko

Yeah, here I have another story, just to say that even the establishment of the mandate is already a very important point. So, I was engaged with LGBT human rights long before I joined ILGA and in the beginning of … maybe it was 2013 or 2014, there was a convening here in Geneva with the activists, LGBT activists, working in different countries. And we were here talking about how we would love to see the UN, the world, how we can use human rights. Then someone said “Well, ideally, we would have a convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” and we were all laughing because it sounded like a very utopic dream. Then, someone says “Well, let’s be a little bit more modest and maybe we can have a special rapporteur on SOGIESC,” and everyone was also laughing, saying “maybe not in this era, maybe not in this century.” But then just two, three-years after that, the mandate was actually established.

In 2016 for the first time on the global level at the UN we managed – together with efforts by, yes, friendly governments and sister movements, other movements – we managed together as a collective effort to establish this mandate. And during the seven years of the existence of this mandate we’ve seen a lot of important achievements made by this mandate, through this mandate and thanks to this mandate. It can go from, you know, just establishing connections with difficult subjects. Because, for instance, Victor Madrigal, the previous already mandate holder, was speaking to different groups, to religious groups in countries that he was visiting, and he was speaking to difficult governments, to subjects that sometimes are not really accessible to LGBTI movements or activists; but he was able through his position, through sharing his power, sharing his privilege. So, he was able to establish connections and to talk, or at least to open the dialogue.

But we also have seen, you know, bills that were postponed or not adopted with the engagement of the independent expert on SOGI, who was explaining that these bills are against human rights. And then it goes to really very simple stories of sometimes life saved through communications, but not only. But I know of the stories when people are still with us just because the independent expert intervened at the right point. And this is a huge support for all of us. This is about also mainstreaming the SOGI language, mainstreaming LGBTI human rights.

24:15 Kseniya Kirichenko

Also, I would say that throughout the seven years of the mandate, a lot of very important critical conversations have started, and have been opened, for example, on intersectionality. What does intersectionality mean for LGBTI human rights? For example, colonialism is a very important topic for our movement and for LGBTI human rights, and this is one of the latest final reports of Victor Madrigal. So, I hope that with the new mandate, with the new years of the mandate, we’ll be able to gather with the movement, with activists. We will be able to develop further these important concepts, these important ideas of intersectionality, of decolonial approach, and to also show how it should look like in practice, how it should look like for the lives of real people on the ground.

So, I think that was very important and of course we will continue working with the new mandate and building bridges when needed between grassroots activists and the UN system and this mandate.

25:18 (Host)

We’re almost at the end of our conversation today. But maybe one last question would be: With all that’s happening in the world these days, I think that trust in the effectiveness of international human rights law seems to be at a very minimum. So, how do you think that global human rights spaces like the United Nations can restore people’s faith in the power of international human rights law and the mechanisms that the global community has established?

25:55 Kseniya Kirichenko

Thank you for this difficult question. I think that, of course, the United Nations is not a magic pill. It is the United Nations. And it is the system mechanism institution focused on governments with everything that goes from there. But, also, it’s a system where we create and develop human rights. And I think that the human rights idea is our shared idea, something that does not belong to governments, something that does not just belong to the United Nations, but something which is about us, and which is about our lives.

And I think that the human rights discourse is a discourse. It’s created and owned by civil society as well. So, if we talk about ILGA specifically, in our constitution, the constitution of ILGA World, you can open it and see the conventions, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. So, we even adopted these conventions. We put them into our Constitution because that’s about our values. And of course, the UN has a lot of weaknesses, especially since we see it right now. But also, sometimes we can use these to challenge the systems of patriarchy, of ableism, of cisheteronormativity, of racism, through this system-through the United Nations mechanisms.

And I think that, you know, human rights are also a discourse. We can challenge the system already by our participation there. And sometimes it also can be a healing experience, and I know it for myself from my own experience, from my personal experience. But I’ve also seen it with other people, other activists. Sometimes even going to this system and talking about your pain, telling about situations when you haven’t been seen, when your community was discriminated, marginalised, and having the approval in a way, having the recognition of the violation, it already can be healing. Especially when your own government, your own country, really just excludes you from all these discourses and the ideas of human rights.

28:14 Kseniya Kirichenko

So, sometimes the recognition of the violations by the United Nations is already something very important on a personal level, on the community level. It’s also creating history, writing histories down. The stories of people from our community who were suffering, sometimes killed, not to make these experiences just disappearing, but writing them, keeping them, putting them into the human rights language through the UN mechanisms, through the courts, through the cases, and so on and so forth.

Also, sometimes it can be really just pressure, or additional instruments for national authorities, when we know that, for example, we need certain legislation. When we know that we need to develop, for example, healthcare system to make them friendly and accommodating for queer women, for lesbian women, for trans women, for trans people, for non-binary people, intersex people. And then we know that we need training. For instance, training education for healthcare professionals, and we can use the United Nations system for this, and to go to, for example, UPR, or treaty bodies, and to explain that this is the problem in our country, and we want a recommendation, we want a discussion with the state authorities to make this happening, to make changes happening.

And then, because it’s like a high-level discussion with the participation of civil society, we can also reach out directly to, for instance, health ministers in certain countries, and to have this discussion. And this discussion, not just from activists, but the discussion initiated by the UN system. So, from this perspective the UN can be used to balance a little bit the power dynamics and imbalance existing between the state, the community, and activists. And this UN power can be also shared with activists through these experiences.

30:16 Kseniya Kirichenko

So that’s what I see. But also, human rights and the UN because I think that we need to… well it’s not just like I think we need to, but I see human rights as also something that belongs to us. And this discourse is also our discourse. We are in power of changing this perspective because, as I said, it’s not just the UN who wants to develop LGBTI human rights, but it’s what we bring to the UN human rights discourse. How we talk and develop a decolonial, feminist approach, intersectional feminist approach? How do we want to deal with the discrimination and violence, but also the systems of oppression and intersecting systems of oppression in terms of human rights.

And this is also about solidarity. Solidarity is a very important point,I would say here. This is also part of our work. And recently, with all the horrible things that were happening at the UN and in the world, what is really great and healing for me is to see how we build solidarity with other movements. For instance, ILGA World works a lot with the Center for Reproductive Rights. We also work with the Sexual Rights Initiative, IWRAW Asia Pacific. So, all these feminists, for example, organisations who are also targeting the same systems of patriarchal oppression that we do. And when we are together, of course, we are stronger, and we can support each other.

So, I think that LGBTI human rights advocacy should also be, and maybe first of all, should be about solidarity. Understanding that, for instance, abortion is also a queer struggle. Understanding that, you know, queer fight for justice is also about queer Ukrainians, queer Palestinians, and all the people who suffer. Because after all, it’s all about domination and power structures. So, that’s what is important for me: to be able to use this human rights discourse, but also understand that it’s a shared value. It’s something that we share together. It’s not just a shared pain, but it’s also shared values with other movements and with the intersectional identities and movements within our own movement.

32:37 (Host)

Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s really great to hear the passion in what you do, and what not only you, but all the UN program does, and all our colleagues, and all the skills, and the capacity, and the commitment that you all put into everything that you do. And I think that’s, together with what other organisations are doing, what in the end will be truly transformative. So, here’s to that!

32:59 Kseniya Kirichenko

Thank you, Daniele. And if anyone wants to know more about the UN, if there are any activists who want to engage with the UN system or want to know more about how to do it, we are here to support you and just reach out to us to see what we can do together.

33:15 (Host)

Thank you, thank you so much.

33:17 Kseniya Kirichenko

Bye

34:32 (Outro)

Making rainbow waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Daniele Paletta and edited by María Alejandra Gonzales Silva. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms or on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

Transcription of the episode: “We are part of humanity”: a conversation about the importance of trans depathologisation

00:07 (intro)

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

00:14 name redacted (host)

Welcome to Making Rainbow Waves, the podcast by ILGA World where we tell the stories of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide. This episode is dedicated to the International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation marked on 21st October. My name is (name redacted), and in today’s episode I will be speaking with not one, not two, but four wonderful guests: Dr. Anna Coates, who is the Lead Technical Adviser and Unit Head for Gender at World Health Organization; Anil Padavatan, who is the Health Program Officer at GATE – Global Action for Trans Equality; Andie Sophia Fontaine, from Trans Ísland; and Joey Joleen Mataele, from Tonga Leiti’s Association. Welcome, everyone.

01:00 Anil Padavatan

Hi. Welcome.

01:05 (host)

So I want us to begin by contextualising this conversation. Anil, could you share with us a little bit about what we actually mean when we say the words “trans depathologisation” and “trans psycho-pathologisation”?

1:20 Anil Padavatan

So, thanks, (name redacted). The idea of pathologisation: it’s a long word, but what it really means is the idea that someone – just by existing, so just by being trans – is somehow intrinsically disordered. That can refer to the idea that we might have some sort of physical illness or the idea that we have some sort of mental disorder.

01:42 (host)

Thank you very much. Could you describe the historical developments leading to medicalisation and perhaps describe the processes that led to Trans Depathologisation or trans de-psycho-pathologisation?

01:56 Anil Padavatan

Just very briefly, in most pre-colonial societies around the world, there was some recognition of trans and gender-diverse identities. But despite this, the pathologisation of trans identities was introduced into Western medical systems at a very early stage.

By the 1700s, being trans was considered some sort of physical disease in men in Western medical writings. By the 1800s, trans and gender-diverse people were also increasingly considered a danger to society. This view was then exported to the rest of the world during colonisation. Gender identity and sexual orientation were conflated by the colonial European powers, and laws were introduced that criminalised trans and gender-diverse persons in a number of ways. Either based on perceived sexual orientation or based on gender expression, which was often framed in terms of laws that criminalised cross-dressing or impersonation.

By the 1900s, there was an interesting development where there was a sexology approach to transgender studies, which developed in Germany. But this work was destroyed by the Nazis, and several of the transgender community members who were working as staff members of the Institute that was developing these studies actually died in Nazi death camps.

In post-war Europe and the USA, there was an increasing social awareness of trans and gender-diverse persons, and medical studies started, but these developed a psycho-pathologising approach where trans identities were actually framed as some sort of mental disorder.

As modern gender-affirming healthcare developed, so did the role of gatekeeping, with doctors seeking to identify what they were terming “true transsexuals,” who were given early forms of gender-affirming healthcare, while other trans and gender-diverse persons who didn’t meet their diagnostic criteria were refused treatment.

In the 1960s and 1970s, at the same time that activists were successfully campaigning for homosexuality to be removed as a diagnostic category, the diagnostic categories related to trans and gender-diverse persons were being included in the DSM and the ICD under “sexual deviations and psychosexual disorders.”

And in the 1990s, when I was studying psychology, I can remember opening a textbook on psychiatric disorders and finding a page on something called “gender identity disorder.” This was the first time I’d encountered any information about being trans, and I can still remember the feeling of panic, asking myself “Do I have a mental disorder?”

04:30 Anil Padavatan

Fortunately, the trans community has a proud history of activism and actively opposed pathologisation throughout the 20th century. This activism gained increasing traction in the 2000s, with the International Day of Trans Pathologisation being commemorated from 2009 onwards.

In 2018, after extensive engagement by trans and gender-diverse state organisations, the World Health Organization removed “transsexualism” and “gender identity disorder of children” from the mental and behavioural disorders chapters of the ICD. In the ICD-11, we now have “gender incongruence” included in the chapter on sexual health, not as pathologisation, but in order to facilitate access to gender-affirming care.

This has been a great step forward. Unfortunately, around the world, pathologisation continues. Governments continue to put in place and enforce laws and policies that require a medical diagnosis before allowing trans and gender-diverse persons to access gender-affirming healthcare or legal gender recognition. Religious groups continue to use pathologisation as a rationale to push the use of so-called ‘conversion therapies’, despite the scientific evidence that these are harmful. And so, we are still continuing in our struggle against pathologisation.

05:48 (host)

Thank you so much, Anil, for providing the insight. I really appreciate how you provided insight on how – something that is sometimes kind of forgotten – pathologisation might actually impact trans and gender-diverse communities who live their day-to-day lives and experience their identities on a daily basis.

Like you sort of prompted, you know, it has been now around five years since the World Health Organization recognised that being transgender is no longer a mental illness and International Classification of Diseases 11th edition. Anna, could you explain the significance of this decision and its potential implications for trans and gender-diverse individuals worldwide?

06:35 Anna Coates

Yeah, thank you. I’d be happy to, (name redacted).

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the long history that we’ve just heard, I would like to begin by sharing that removing trans identities from the ICD chapter of mental health was a long process, it was an 18-year-long process. So, it really does mark a momentous step forward with profound implications for trans individuals worldwide. The most important thing is that this change, as we just said, marks a shift away from pathologising gender diversity as a mental disorder.

07:09 Anna Coates

And that’s really important for both practical as well as more social and political reasons of inclusion, of gender equality and of human rights. In terms of inclusion, of course, we hope that by no longer classifying transgender identities as a mental illness, it goes a long way to setting at least the basis for normalisation. It promotes the understanding that being transgender is a natural variation of human diversity.

So hopefully in the long run at least it will help reduce stigma. And we anticipate that that in turn can lead to a reduction in discrimination and violence against trans individuals by fostering greater acceptance and understanding, by reducing prejudice and discrimination and by promoting full inclusion in society on the basis of equality.

And of course, it upholds human rights principles by recognising the dignity and autonomy of all individuals to self-identify their gender, to live in a way that’s congruent with their gender identity and to have access to the care needed to make that a reality in whatever way an individual chooses for themselves. And I think that’s where the practical dimensions of depathologisation come in because it’s a really important move to promote better access to gender-affirming care, but also a more inclusive approach to gender diversity in general health care.

08:35 Anna Coates

On this very practical level, the reclassification reduces barriers to all aspects of gender-affirming care. So, hormone therapy, gender-affirming surgeries, and many others, which we know can be critical for the well-being of trans individuals.

And the removal from the ICD chapter on mental health could also have legal implications that we just heard. It can promote legal gender recognition on official documents like ID cards and passports, which is, of course, really important in many aspects of life, but it’s also instrumental to be able to access all aspects of health care in the way in which each trans person chooses and to address the discrimination barriers that many trans people face when accessing care when their identity documents don’t match their gender identity and the really many other health impacts of this as well.

09:28 Anna Coates

Legal recognition of gender identity can help remove stigma, which of course is associated with many negative mental health outcomes: depression, anxiety and, very sadly, suicide, as we know. So, in all, trans depathologisation is not the only answer, but it does open many doors to progress towards better health outcomes for trans people, as well as hopefully opportunities for a more dignified life overall.

10:00 (host)

Thank you so much Anna for sharing that. It’s quite striking, how you mentioned, how long that decision to remove trans identities from ICD took, I think you mentioned 18 years. And, of course, that decision also happened because of many, many years of advocacy efforts of trans and gender-diverse people to make that change happen. And I think on that note, I’d like to speak to Joleen and Andie a little bit about their experiences in their national contexts. So, Andie and Joleen, in your experiences, how has the de-psycho-pathologisation of trans identities influenced the situation of trans and gender-diverse communities in Iceland and Tonga?

10:48 Joleen Mataele

Well, thank you. I think that, when we started at the Tonga Leitis Association, some of these words – such as pathologisation and depathologising – were never in our language. It was never in our vocabulary when we started in 1992 until later on, as we were going towards the main goals and vision (of the organisation): that’s when we had to experience the actual wording that they were using in the scientific world to label us, the trans community. When we first started, that’s the first thing that came in from the Ministry of Health: they said that being trans or being a leiti was a mental health issue.

11:47 Joleen Mataele

I used to argue with them all the time, and I said, “What are you talking about? I’m speaking clearly to you. I don’t know what mental health you’re talking about because I ain’t walking on the road on my own and talking to myself. I’m actually talking to you. It is an issue that I need to know. You speak my language, so we can understand each other, and at the end of the day, we will know what we’re both talking about.” We started this association when AIDS hit Tonga in 1987, and we became more labelled with all sorts of words and scientifically marginalising words that they used, and we were the target: we were the sinful person, we were the cause of AIDS. Then our names became invisible. We were called AIDS. These were things that we started with thirty-one years ago. I don’t know how we survived today, but we’re still alive. The main thing that we did was trying to educate our own people, our own trans community – because our association was started by trans people. We wanted to educate our own community, especially not just the trans community, but the whole rainbow community, so they can understand and know where we stand. Nobody needs to come and tell you that your mental health is… that you’re crazy, you know.

We didn’t have the expertise in this line of work, and we’ve always joked about this. In the world of health in Tonga, there are doctors for animals, but there’s no doctor for trans issues, and they always joke about it over here. This is just our own community who joke about it, of course: some of the medical doctors didn’t like it, but that’s the reality. Nobody talks about it, nobody wants to talk about us, or our issues, let alone try to have proper counselling for someone who wants to take hormones.

These are some of the issues that we had to go through since we started to make sure that we educate our community. The first people that we actually educated were the church leaders, and I thank God that they didn’t condemn that. But things are a lot better now compared to 30 years ago, and they understand what we are talking about.

14:51 (host)

Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of things that you say really resonate with me and what I also see in other countries and other contexts, especially around educating our own communities and trans communities and dealing with perhaps internalised ideas of self that are hurtful or sometimes damaging to trans communities or gender-diverse people who are dealing with internalised transphobia and things like that and actually learning to grow and understand that. Our identities are something that we can take pride in and that we can celebrate.

15:29 (host)

Andie, did you find that there was perhaps any overlaps or similarity or differences in Iceland from what you heard from Joleen?

15:38 Andie Sophia Fontaine

Well, um, yeah: especially when it comes to educating our own community. The pathologisation and depath process has been very educational in Iceland, I would say, because when we speak of trans and gender-diverse people, when the laws were changed, it was very educational to see who was immediately included and addressed and who was made to wait. When it comes to our own legislation, the Gender Recognition Act passed in 2019, and there were a number of changes that immediately went into effect for who we might call binary trans people. It’s because that is very easy to conceptualise, for a lot of cisgender people, that somebody transitions from one binary gender identity to another, and so the law addressing their concerns and their needs and their desires was implemented very quickly.

Left behind and made to wait in this where non-binary trans people and intersex people: they had to wait their turn because this was a little bit difficult for some cisgender lawmakers to be able to wrap their heads around why it was important, and what their needs were, what their desires were, and how they can best be addressed – even though we had made this very clear for years. When it comes to intersex issues: Intersex Iceland is a very active group in this country, and they have been lobbying for many, many years to stop performing non-consensual cosmetic surgeries on children – on infants, in most cases. You know: there’s a very clear demand.

But the bill was passed in July 2019, and even though that particular clause was in the original draft of the bill, it was removed by the government at the time because they wanted to form a committee to examine this and investigate this, and all kinds of legal jargon. Fortunately, that change was put into place in December 2020, and so there were also some changes made to the law that were more inclusive of non-binary and other gender-diverse people in terms of legal documentation such as passports and name changes and gender markers on legal documentation. But for myself, it was very interesting to see who was made to wait and who was readily addressed.

18:15 Andie Sophia Fontaine

Iceland prides itself on its stance on human rights and gender equality, and so when it came to this issue – especially in the wake of the changes that were made in the WHO in 2018 – it was very easy for a lot of lawmakers to wrap their head around like a binary trans person, but it was educational to see who was listening to other people and who felt that non-binary people could wait, intersex children could wait…

Fortunately, those changes have come to pass: it was just frustrating initially to see that some folks had to wait and who was prioritised and who was not. Another thing that was interesting, though, was that Iceland’s process was the process I went through myself: going through six successive interviews with psychiatrists and psychologists to basically give the same answers to the same questions before somebody who got educated about us – but very seldom talked to us – deemed you worthy of receiving hormone treatment or surgery, if you wanted it. When this law came to pass, and that process was largely done away with, there was still a slow response within the medical system: this bottleneck formed whereas the law said “yes” and went into effect, the medical system was not properly put up to speed, I could say. So, now there is a very long waiting list for types of gender-affirming surgeries and even just to begin hormones. The endocrinology department is swamped at the moment.

20:00 Andie Sophia Fontaine

And so there was a bit of incongruence between what was happening in parliament and what was happening in the healthcare system. That’s something that is still being addressed to the point where, when it comes to gender-affirming surgeries, Iceland just decided we’re going to just you know make a deal with a hospital in Sweden because they can’t handle it: we know we’re only talking about like two dozen people – I think something like 24 or 30 people. I don’t know the inner workings of the national health care system, but this is what we have been told anyway: that they cannot handle this tremendous capacity of two dozen people, and so they had to make a deal with a hospital in Sweden.

So, that’s where that’s where things are at right now in Iceland: it’s definitely better than it was for sure. It has just been very eye-opening and very educational to see what types of gender diversity gatekeepers within parliament and the medical system are capable of conceptualising, and therefore who is prioritised, and how the medical system was just basically left holding the bag – like, we pass this law, now you deal with it.

21:06 Joleen Mataele

I just wanted to add on to that, (name redacted): it’s exactly the same thing that we’re going through, even though we don’t have the proper doctors for hormone treatments and counselling and all that.

Within the legal side, with so many meetings and negotiating with the government, we were even able to change the “rape law”, the definition of rape, and at the beginning of this year in January it was passed in parliament. The law refers to anyone, and it’s more diverse, and the penalty goes to anybody to whom the issue will apply, and it has been passed. We were approached by the speaker in order for us to be able to educate our parliamentarians, our people, were for us to actually translate the SOGI guideline: you can just imagine the amount of words that we have for one English word. It was a most pathetic month of translation I don’t know where the heck we got all those translations from, because we don’t really have ah a proper scientific word in Tongan for sexual orientation gender identity & expression and sex characteristics. But we had to do it, in order for our people to understand who we are, the different genders and all that. So, after it was translated, we took it back to parliament, and the Lord speaker asked us to work with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Women’s Affairs to actually insert the translated SOGI guideline into the Family Protection Act. Then, from there, we can start talking about all the law reform issues that we want to put in, so by then everybody knows what we’re talking about, that we’re speaking the same language. Even though it’s slow over here, we’re moving forward – starting from the legal side and with the government.

23:41 (host)

Thank you for sharing that. Especially what you mentioned about having to translate SOGI guidelines into a local, national context, and a cultural context that might not have the same sort of framework around understanding gender diversity or sexuality, I think this invites a broader conversation about how we can make these practices more inclusive internationally.

24:23 (host)

Anna, I want to ask you another question, thinking of this bigger picture. Um, could you tell us about how de-psycho-pathologisation can impact global health policies and perhaps countries’ commitments to the health of trans and gender-diverse individuals?

24:43 Anna Coates

I think perhaps the first thing to note here, as I think we’ve already heard as well, is that removing trans identities from the mental health chapter of ICD is a significant step forward, but we do also need the right policies as well as advocacy and education to really ensure that the shift is fully recognised, fully implemented at all levels to affect equitable and respectful treatment in all aspects of trans people’s lives – including with respect to their health. So. health policies at both global and national levels are really crucial, and at a global level, I think what pathologisation allows us to do is to shift our focus from treating trans and gender-diverse identities as mental disorders to prioritising the health and well-being needs of trans people in the same way that we do all other people.

Global health policies already emphasise inclusion and equity for all people irrespective of their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or sex characteristics. And they specifically address equal access to quality healthcare without discrimination. In fact, several UN agencies have reiterated the application of these standards specifically to transgender people in recent years with a joint statement in 2015, calling on States to end discrimination and end stigma against LGBTQIA+ persons in all contexts including in healthcare. In 2017 that was reinforced with a joint UN commitment specifically to end discrimination in healthcare settings and that acknowledged that discrimination has a significant impact on both users of services and health workers. So: ending discrimination is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including universal health coverage. And we are, I would say, increasingly focused on accountability for those commitments in global policies. We don’t just want them to be nice words that are spoken, but really are something that actually motivates action and results. We have a long way to go, and I would say that the global picture is still quite mixed, to be frank.

Disaggregated data – meaning: data that shows how different groups of people experience health and access to care – are key to accountability: they can help identify healthcare disparities between different groups. They can inform more targeted interventions and track progress towards equity. For many years WHO has been calling for countries to collect, report, and analyse health data disaggregated by sex – and, honestly, even that is a challenge, but we are seeing some progress. The next step will also be to collect data on self-determined gender identity, not just sex assigned at birth. The availability of health data disaggregated by gender identity in most countries across the world is currently woefully inadequate. As we continue towards destigmatising transgender identity and transgender healthcare, hopefully, we can progressively move towards much better availability of that data.

Another reason depathologisation is important for global health policy is that it opens up the door to providing evidence-based, global-level guidance to countries to provide both gender-affirming and gender-inclusive care that’s aligned with principles of gender equality and human rights. So for example, I’m very happy to share that WHO is currently working on systematic reviews of evidence to inform the development of the very first WHO guideline on the health of trans and gender-diverse people, and I would say that in itself the development of that guidelines sends a really important message, because it’s the work of WHO which is the global standard-setting public health agency: any guidelines that WHO produced should hopefully influence national health guidelines. The priorities that we identified for this first guideline have been developed and established in close collaboration with the trans and gender-diverse community is going to cover the provision of gender-referring care services in healthcare settings, with a focus particularly on hormonal therapy – and we’ve heard already from Joleen and Andie how really important that is – but it’s also looking at some of the wider aspects of access to gender-inclusive care to meet all health needs for trans and gender diverse people, and that’s also fundamental.

We know that you know some trans and gender-diverse people are reluctant to even access emergency care for an accident because of the discrimination they face. So it’s going to be focusing on the significance of healthcare provider training to be able to provide knowledgeable and culturally competent care for trans and gender-diverse individuals including for survivors of violence – again, as we’ve heard, that’s really important – as well as how gender health policies and human rights align provisions of gender identity recognition law can enable the provision of both gender-affirming and gender-inclusive care and across all of the priority areas that we’re covering we do recognise the mental health challenges faced by trans individuals due to discrimination, to stigma, to violence, and as well as the impacts on a wide range of health outcomes.

Of course, at the global level, some countries like Vietnam and others like Iceland we’ve just heard about are already ahead of the curve in a sense in implementing changes motivated by depathologisation in the legal frameworks to recognise and protect gender identity and transgender individuals – including in healthcare settings. And that includes allowing legal gender marker changes on identification documents and eliminating unnecessary medical or psychological evaluations for access to gender-affirming care.

So I’d say depathologisation is slowly leading to more inclusive, equitable and affirming global national health policies, which perhaps give us some room for cautious optimism, but it is also really important to stress that it is a very unequal picture across countries. We do desperately need ongoing advocacy and policy development to harness the full potential of depathologisation and to address healthcare disparities and challenges faced by trans and gender-diverse communities across all countries and, as you know, unfortunately, we are definitely not quite there yet.

31:17 (host)

Thank you so much, Anna, for your very valuable insights. You have just spoken about the need for more advocacy efforts; so, on that note, I’d like to ask my final question and speak to Anil and Joleen and Andie. And I’d like to hear from you about whether there are any specific lessons or strategies from your country’s experiences with depathologisation that you think would be valuable for trans and gender-diverse activists in other countries to learn from or adopt.

31:51 Anil Padavatan

I think that Joleen and Andie have already spoken about some of the strategies that are kind of tried and tested and that activists have been involved in around the world. Building those linkages with the key stakeholders, ministries of health, officials, and regulatory bodies, and doing sensitisation and education, building public awareness, developing guidelines, doing language development… All of these are important activities, and we’ve also seen a lot of countries where trans and gender-diverse-led organisations have now been increasingly involved in conducting research, developing the data that we need to go and talk to our various governments and give them the evidence of what we’re talking about and why this is important.

But I think something new is emerging around the world and is of great concern is the fact that these are all business-as-usual strategies for advocacy, but we’re not in a business-as-usual environment around the world. We are seeing a very coordinated, well-funded anti-human rights movement, and it’s impacting us as the trans and gender-diverse community with the anti-gender disinformation and campaigning that happens in a lot of countries and is having a huge impact.

So, rather than seeing a kind of progressive realisation and increasing access to our human rights, we are actually seeing in some contexts a rollback where you were having additional laws criminalising people being introduced, criminalising trans and gender-diverse identities, criminalising same-sex relationships, and then also criminalising the gender-affirming healthcare itself: we’ve had some states in the US and some countries in various parts of the world introducing laws that are criminalising the provision of gender-affirming healthcare: this is very, very worrying, and I think that we really as a movement need to start building better linkages with the other movements, human rights movements that are experiencing similar issues because this is an anti-human rights backlash and they are targeting other communities as well.

They’re targeting the broader LGBTQI community, they are targeting sexual and reproductive rights, they are targeting women’s rights, they are opposed to gender equality, and they are opposed to the right to bodily autonomy. And if we are going to make the impact that is needed to counter this, we really need to have linkages with the organisations around the world and the movements around, if we’re going to really have the impact that we need to counter this anti-human rights movement. We need to build linkages with the other movements that are being impacted: the women’s rights movement, the broader LGBTQI movement, people who are fighting for access to sexual and reproductive health care services… and we need to have a coordinated response to addressing the anti-human rights backlash that we’re seeing at the moment.

34:58 Anna Coates

I just wanted to reiterate what Anil was just saying, because I think these kinds of opposition and fragmentation are playing out at national levels, but also at global levels. So, when we were just talking about what global health policy can do and what we can do with commitments across countries, we are seeing this polarisation.

And I would call it a polarisation because you have certain countries and groups which are increasingly progressive, but then you have the backlash and the opposition that Anil was just describing. In fact, the very existence of the two sides, or the two extremes, is in itself kind of creating some real problems for being able to progress on the global frameworks that I was talking about before. What we always do as UN agencies is trying to find a consensus between countries so that we can get these commitments signed off, and we’re finding it increasingly difficult at the moment because of these different groups that are involved in the organised nature – as Anil was saying – of the opposition.

But it’s also fragmentation, and I would say that, as the Gender lead for WHO, I think that we need to try and get over this fragmentation of what is women’s rights and what is transgender or gender-diverse rights. It’s part of the same strategy of gender equality in human rights, and we need to reiterate that message as much as we can, because we are only doing harm to ourselves if there’s a women’s rights movement which is focused increasingly on sex rather than gender – in some quarters at least – and then there’s a movement which is looking at a broader vision of gender equality. That’s not helpful to any of those, and I think we need to try to be as inclusive as possible and emphasise the commonality of discrimination, the commonality of inequalities of power that is really preventing us from progressing.

So I just wanted to reiterate what Anil was saying now and the importance of us developing different strategies, inclusive but different strategies. There’s a whole world out there: in a world of misinformation, in a world of digitalisation, we are still having the same advocacy strategies that we’ve often had, and that’s not necessarily quite working for us right now.

37:37 Joleen Mataele

I absolutely agree with both Anne and Anil, because our work here back in Tonga – and it’s the same that goes to all the other Pacific islands, but I will just concentrate in Tonga – in order for us to get things done, we have to work with everybody. We have to work with the women’s crisis centre. We have to work with the women and family crisis centre. We have to work with all our allies and the people that we know will back us up in the work that we do.

38:12 Andie Sophia Fontaine

Yeah. I think it’s a lot of fantastic points were addressed here, like the need for solidarity across intersections. Iceland is a particularly interesting case study, because we are in the midst of the beginning of a pretty intense backlash against queer rights at the moment, in particular with regards to trans people – of course, bigots are very fond of using trans people as the edge of the wedge that splits people apart: that’s as true in Iceland as it is in other countries in the world.

Because the backlash is just starting here, we have been fortunate, in a sense, to be able to learn from other countries and learn from the mistakes of other countries; one of the strongest weapons that bigots have is misinformation and the fact that it is very, very, very, very easy to spread misinformation very quickly and very broadly, but it takes about 10 times more energy to refute that and to correct it.

One of the strongest weapons that’s being used right now is just refuting misinformation. It’s really annoying to have to constantly repeat the same truths over and over and over again: it is incredibly exhausting. But that’s what the bigots are counting on: the bigots are counting on those of us who are on the front lines getting tired and giving up, and fortunately – as it seems right now – there is no sign of us giving up.

Repeating these truths has managed to cross a lot of affinity groups. Fortunately, mainstream feminism in Iceland is very trans-inclusive. At the moment, one of the more prominent voices against trans rights has spent the past ten-fifteen years also being an anti-feminist. So, the moment this person stepped forward to talk against trans rights, it was incredible to see some of the more prominent feminist voices in the country and women’s rights voices in the country just immediately take the side of trans people, because of this person. So: kudos to them for encouraging solidarity. But solidarity is definitely going to be key in this fight, and so is the fact that you cannot just refute misinformation one time; you can’t just do it twice, or three times; you are going to have to say it over and over and over again. It’s going to be annoying. It’s going to be exhausting, but it’s the only way forward, towards preserving our freedom.

40:47 (host)

Thank you very much for sharing that, Andie. I would like to leave us with a positive question, and that question is: what is one thing that you’re hopeful about?

40:57 Anna Coates

The thing that I am hopeful about is something that Andie was just mentioning: there can be solidarity as we move forward, and I think the fact that is actually we’re having this discussion, that there is an ability in different contexts. Whilst there are really difficult environments, we are able to have this conversation, and the fact that we’re able to have this conversation I think gives us real hope that we can move forward in a positive way and combat discrimination and just have a world where everybody can be whatever they want to be, and discrimination is not there. But we have to be able to have these conversations to be able to allow that.

41:42 Joleen Mataele

I believe that platforms like these and all other platforms open a lot of discussions about the importance of going from the old era to the new today, from the process of colonisation into depathologisation in Tonga and everywhere else in the Pacific.

In some regions, almost all of the colonised populations were forcibly turned away from their traditional belief system, and they were all forcibly turned away by the Christian faith, which colonisers used as a justification for the extermination of adherents of other faiths and enslavement of natives and their exploitation of lands and seas, especially in the majority of our Pacific islands. And these are things that we need to make sure that we don’t separate ourselves from: we don’t separate ourselves from our culture. We don’t separate ourselves from our own families and communities. We need to work, we need to be heard. We need to actually live and be proud of what we are.

43:10 Anil Padavatan

What I’m hopeful about is hearing what Joleen has just said and knowing we have always been here. There have always been trans and gender-diverse people. We are part of humanity, and we will overcome. We have overcome so much, and we have strong activists who are resilient and tenacious around the world and who will continue to say these truths over and over again. I am very hopeful that, in the end, we will have a recognition across the world of our rights to equality and to human dignity.

43:52 Andie Sophia Fontaine

What gives me hope for the future are lessons from the past: we have been through much, much worse than this and we have survived, and we’re going to survive this too because the only other option is despair and I’ve lived too long to despair now.

44:08 (host)

Andie, Anna, Joleen, and Anil: thank you so much for what I would call a fruitful conversation about trans depathologisation, and its impacts on trans and gender-diverse communities worldwide. It was such a pleasure to talk to you today and thank you so much for joining us.

44:26 Andie Sophia Fontaine

Thank you for having me.

44:27 Anna Coates

Thank you. Thank you so much.

44:28 Joleen Mataele

Thank you very much, (name redacted).

44:31 Anil Padavatan

Thanks.

44:44 (theme music plays in the background) host

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by (name redacted), and edited by María Alejandra Gonzales Silva. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms, or on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

Transcription of the episode: “I hope for a community centre of our own”: a conversation with Enkhmaa Enkhbold

00:00 (intro)

I was asking delegates to please use this specific language.

Please make sure you say “Lesbian”, “Gay”, “Bisexual”, “Transgender”, “Intersex”.

Please make sure you use sexual orientation and gender identity specifically. Otherwise, we are gonna be overlooked again.

00:26 Daniele Paletta (host)

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

00:45 (host)

My name is Daniele Paletta and I’m here today with Enkhmaa Enkhbold from LGBT Centre Mongolia. Welcome, Enkhmaa!

00:53 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

Hi Daniele, thank you for having me.

00:55 (host)

Let’s start by asking you some questions. I wanted to know more about your story as an activist.
How did you start engaging with LGBTI activism in the first place?

01:08 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

So, I used to live in the United States. Particularly in the Bay Area, California. And I lived there for many years.

Basically, I left Mongolia when I was 16. It was 2002, that’s when I left the country. And in 2015, I outreached to National Violence Against Women in Mongolia. I wanted to volunteer for three months, so I was coming to Mongolia.

So as a queer person, I wanted to know where in Mongolia the LGBTQI people were. So, when the National Centre Against Violence accepted me, I outreached to the LGBT Centre of Mongolia. That’s when I learned of the LGBT Centre. And the LGBT Centre told me to “come over”, you know, “whenever you’re in town”. So, in the summer of 2015 I came to the LGBT Centre, met with the activists, and I was blown away. I was very impressed by how advanced the movement was, because when I was in the Bay Area I actually had this very narrow mind of how things might be in Mongolia. And I was very wrong, and I was silently embarrassed.

So I began to volunteer for LGBT Centre during my time in Mongolia, and I navigated through LGBT, queer spaces in Ulaanbaatar City. And then I met more activists, more queer people, and I fell in love with the Mongolian LGBTQI movement and actors and all of the activists and the community.
And there and then I, silently, in my heart, I thought, “I think this is my place”.

So, I volunteered from a distance, you know, I still lived in San Francisco, so I would volunteer for the Centre doing some translations, or support fundraisings, things like that. And in 2017, the LGBT Centre invited me on their board. And I was, of course, exhilarated. I was very happy to be part of this very amazing organisation. So I did. And then, I learned more of the organisation. In the meantime, I was still living in San Francisco, you know.

In 2019 there was an opening for the LGBT Centre for (the role of) House Programme Coordinator. So, my background is in Women and Gender Studies. So, it kind of aligns with the programme, and I’m also an activist and human rights defender. So, I applied, and they accepted me with open arms.

So, in 2019, April, in two weeks, I packed my 17 years of life in San Francisco in a few boxes and moved to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and I’ve been here since.

At the end of 2019, I was appointed as Executive Director of the organisation, and even though I was so scared, I accepted it.

04:58 (host)

Thank you so much for sharing all of that.

How would you describe the situation for LGBTI communities in Mongolia?

And how do you think it has evolved over time?

05:11 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

So: the human rights situation on the legislative or at the policy level… Mongolia is quite progressive compared to many countries in the region of Asia and the Pacific. For example, in the past ten years, we had sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected ground in many important laws, such as the Criminal Code of 2015, the Labor Law of 2022, Privacy Act of 2022 and many ethical codes of professionals have sexual orientation and gender identity. So, these are great progress, you know. This is the hard work of the LGBT Centre’s international and national advocacy. However, unfortunately, although these are very good progress, the implementation, the practice of these policies and legislations, are not quite in place yet.

For example, the Criminal Code has an anti-discrimination clause, the law is from 2015, it became effective in 2017. So, from 2017 to today, 2023, not a single case was resolved at a judicial level under this prohibition, under the discrimination prohibition. So, it says a lot, you know: a country of three point nearly five, million people… the LGBT Centre documents human rights violations, our data says different (things), we have our lived experiences. It’s just simply not working.

So other laws are quite new, you know, they are very recent, we are monitoring and we’re trying to engage with the government to enhance the capacity of government agencies and stuff. In terms of LGBTQI people in a social/cultural sphere of society, there exist prejudices, stigma, all of that really prevails, you know, especially towards our trans and non-binary communities. The current situation of LGBTQI people has not yet improved. I would say it’s very slow.

You know, in certain areas of the country… only like Ulaanbaatar… Ulaanbaatar is a very big city, it’s the capital city, it’s the biggest city. But only one or two districts, and even their sub-districts, are queer-friendly. But in the rest of this city, homophobia and transphobia prevail, prevail, prevail. So like, the intersection of class, gender and sexual orientation, it really matters, and then your socio-economic background, where you live.

So overall, I would say: not good for LGBTQI people here in Mongolia.

08:53 (host)

I know you’ve also brought up the situation of our communities in the country after the International Level at the United Nations, and there have been a few examples of your engagement in United Nations bodies.

So, could you tell me more about that?

09:12 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

First, I must really embrace the work of my predecessors, who have already set the agenda for international advocacy within the organisation. So the LGBT Centre has been engaging in the U.N system mechanism since 2008. We submitted our first CEDAW shadow report in 2008. So all in all, we have submitted over a dozen, or around a dozen, shadow reports and that’s how much we have engaged in this organisation. And then we currently have, I believe, about sixty LGBTQI-specific recommendations obtained throughout this past ten years or so. So, in terms of my engagement, it was the third UPR Cycle in 2020, CESCR in 2022, and CEDAW in 2022.

The UN mechanism, you know, at first it was very intimidating. Especially in 2020, when I engaged in the UPR, I was terrified. First of all, I didn’t have any experience, and second of all I was terrified of losing opportunities, you know. But thankfully with the support of ILGA it went smoothly. Because on 2020 there was the pandemic and I couldn’t go to Geneva, I was able to have a dialogue with delegates from ten, eleven member states on Zoom, and deliver our statement. I think that was very, very helpful, because from the third UPR cycle we obtained fifteen LGBTQI-specific recommendations.

So, one of the tactics I used during my advocacy, you know, meeting with delegates, was giving them a context of how Mongolian governments understand minority or margin, like those keywords. Like when they hear “minority” they only think of disability. So, I was asking delegates “when you make a recommendation to my country, please use this specific language. Please make sure you say “Lesbian”, “Gay”, “Bisexual”, “Transgender”, “Intersex”. Please make sure you use sexual orientation and gender identity specifically. Otherwise, we are going to be overlooked again, under the terms “minority”, “marginalised”.

So; thankfully, they did, many of them did. And I really believe that really helped shape the recommendations for the delegates, for the government, and fifteen LGBTI-specific recommendations: that’s really huge for us, and our government supported twelve of them and noted three of them, meaning they didn’t support three of them.

So the third UPR Cycle, that all happened from a distance, and they were also able to engage, meet with delegates in the country through embassies. That’s what happened with UPR, and in June of 2022 I participated in the eighty-second CEDAW session. That was our third time submitting and engaging.

You know… UPR and CEDAW are two different mechanisms. Similar but different. One is Special Procedures and the other one is Treaty Bodies. So CEDAW for me was also, again, quite new, but because of the UPR I had some confidence in me, and another organisation that really helped for CEDAW was IWRAW. IWRAW really provided technical support while I was in Geneva, and it really helped me to understand the committee, and how to engage with them and set up meetings, and things like that.

So, through CEDAW, we’ve obtained six LBTI recommendations. Also, I used the same tactic, “please use specific language to speak to our government”. It was a very emotional time during CEDAW: I cried and delivered the oral statement. It was very overwhelming, but I’ve learned so, so much. So, by the time, in September, CESCR, I was pretty confident.

14:51 (host)

And ready! I’m sure.

You mentioned CESCR, the Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, again you engaged on behalf of LGBTI communities in Mongolia, and there was also a result of historical significance, because among the recommendations on trans persons that your country received, for the very first time the Committee mentioned ICD-11 – the latest International Classification of Diseases – which in essence, among many other things of course, declassified trans identities as a mental disorder. It was a pretty great result, not only just for your country but internationally as a whole! How did the engagement with that specific committee go?

15:45 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

Absolutely! Oh, my goodness.

So: CESCR was interesting because there was not enough civil society engagement in this seventy-second CESCR session. In fact, LGBT Centre was the only civil society organisation to engage in the CESCR, in this session. So, I was the only civil society representative coming from Mongolia to Geneva. Whereas other governments were over a dozen people, you know? So, in that sense it was quite overwhelming.

In the CESCR I had taken several tactics, like quick thinking maybe. When we were developing our shadow report, we learned that we might be the only ones that were going to submit a report, and we learnt it from our network, and that was very sad for us, you know? There are so many issues that are happening in Mongolia, we’re aware of, but that those issues were not going to be discussed in the session, was very sad for us.

So, when you’re developing a shadow report, it’s very strict with like numbers and how many words should be included, so you have to be very tactful. We decided to include at least the part on human rights defenders: that is a hot topic and there are a lot of issues with the new law. Mongolia is the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to pass a human rights defenders law. The government is very proud of it, but you know… we see a lot of flaws.

We included it, we invested a whole page on it, and I delivered the oral statement. I was supposed to present it to the Committee members, but it was just me and the Committee members: in a way, I had an advantage because I spent nearly thirty to forty minutes with the Committee members. Just me discussing, you know?

So I highlighted the comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, how Mongolia should adopt it, and then also highlighted trans healthcare, and especially the ICD-11. So, for my preparation, I developed very, very specific recommendations. ICD-11, darararara’. And thankfully, they took it and then they provided it, and it was just… it was glorious to see.

And then actually, on this: I wanna also add. I think Treaty Bodies also – like UPR, and other member States – they don’t really give trans-specific recommendations. That doesn’t happen often.

I’m jumping back to UPR: on the third UPR session, we also obtained a trans-specific recommendation from Israel. So that also took quick thinking and strategy, because I was supposed to meet a delegate from Israel, and I was looking into what kind of recommendations Israel provides in terms of LGBTIQ persons, and while searching through UPRInfo.org I learned that Israel provides trans-specific recommendations. So, we quickly changed the tactic because in Mongolia we have a gender marker provision in our civil registration law, so that a trans or intersex person can have the gender marker changed. Unfortunately, that law – again – doesn’t work. because it requires medical intervention, which the healthcare sector does not have. So, I pitched that to the Israeli delegate and then we obtained the recommendation, particularly on that law, asking the government to remove the medical intervention (requirement) from that law. And then our government supported it, so we had two trans-specific recommendations. Very, very specific recommendations, and we’re just very thrilled.

I just want to shout out to Kseniya, at ILGA World, who met me both of my times in Geneva, but particularly during CESCR when I was alone. We had a coffee before I met the Committee members, and I was telling her my strategies and the recommendations and what kind of recommendations we were aiming for, and she asked me excellent questions. She was like “Is your recommendation measurable?”, “How are you going to measure it?” and then she pointed me to a direction to really shape my recommendations: very, very specific.

And then, after the coffee, I went to my hotel and did not sleep. I was up all night re-drafting all the recommendations: that’s how ICD-11 really popped up, because I was making more about details and measurables. So: thank you, Kseniya, for your very valuable advice to me.

22:18 (host)

Thank you so much for also sharing these many insights about the work of human rights defenders when they advocate in UN spaces, because it’s very difficult for everyone to understand what happens before you meet the governments and the various Committees. But also, it’s difficult for people to understand how quickly they have to adapt their tactics to developments, or how they do research on what they have to say. So, thank you for sharing all of that.

Now that you have engaged with many UN bodies and different mechanisms, what happens next for Mongolia? And how do you think these recommendations will be picked up – if they will be picked up by your government – and how are you working around that?

23:15 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

The number one thing is to look at the national implementation plans for these recommendations. We are waiting, we are writing to the ministries who are in charge, because Treaty Bodies (follow-up) are governed by different ministries. So, we are reaching out to them, asking for them to make implementations, asking to be included in the working group on planning. Also, aside from that national programme, there are existing national programmes. In Mongolia, we have Vision 2050, an SDG Programme that covers many areas of society. We pay close attention to the national programmes and then we align our plans with the national programmes, because we can’t really go against them, you know: we think it’s a smart way to plan, and then develop long-term project proposals that also align with the recommendations, and then of course educate our community and do our regular community building, movement building: all of that is happening at the same time.

24:44 (host)

I would like to end the interview with a question I didn’t anticipate, so I hope it’s okay. I was wondering whether you had a dream or hope for our communities in Mongolia.

24:57 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

There are many, many hopes and wishes. But our primary hope is to have a community centre of our own, a safe space for the community. That has been my dream for the last three years as an executive director, and that’s definitely a priority on my agenda as an executive director for the community, for the Centre.

Of course, we want to walk the streets without retaliation, without fear and stigma: that’s, I think, a given for all of us, right? That’s what we wish for, and that’s why we’re fighting for this.

25:58 (host)

Thanks to you for doing all of that. Thanks for doing this interview with us, and we wish you all the best on all the follow-up procedures that you’re doing in-country after so many great results at the United Nations.

26:11 Enkhmaa Enkhbold

Thank you so much for having me.

26:13 (host)

Thank you so much for being with us today.

26:16 (outro) (host)

You can find every episode on all streaming platforms, and transcriptions are available on ilga.org. Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Daniele Paletta and edited by Kevin Mwachiro. Thanks for listening.

Transcription of the episode: “It gets better, and we should accept nothing less”: a conversation with Brian Wenke

00.05 (intro)

Making rainbow waves, a podcast by ILGA World.
Welcome everybody to Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast telling the stories and raising the voices of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide.

My name is Daniele Paletta, and in this episode we are going to talk about our World Conference, and the wonderful people who are going to host us.

We have a special guest today: Brian Wenke. He’s the Executive Director of the It Gets Better Project, an organisation with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect LGBTQ youth around the globe. We came together to talk about his personal story, how the meaning of such a powerful statement as “It Gets Better” has changed over the years, what does the organisation have in store for the upcoming ILGA World Conference, and so much more. Here’s what he told us.

01:12 Daniele Paletta (host)

Okay, so we’re here with Brian Wenke today, the executive director of the It Gets Better Project. They’re hosting us at ILGA World for our World Conference in LA Long Beach in May 2022, so we thought it’s a good time to have a chat, learn a little bit more about your organisation, and what do you have in store for us in a few months’ time. So: welcome, Brian!

01:38 Brian Wenke

Thank you, thank you. So happy to be here!

01:42 (host)

I’d like to start with getting to know you a little bit better. So, could you tell us more about your story as an activist – if ‘activist’ is a term that you would use for yourself? How did you begin getting involved in the LGBTIQ human rights movement, and was there a moment that prompted you to engage in it?

02:02 Brian Wenke

Oh, that’s a big question to jump right into – but hey, let’s do it with both feet. “Activist”: you know, I’ve never considered myself an activist: there’s like an energy that comes with that, that I’ve never felt that I’ve brought to the table. I’m more a pragmatic kind of realist/businessman, but I have been in non-profit my entire career: I’ve been doing this for the last twenty plus years, and I guess what has sort of defined my career is that I’ve been able to connect with causes that sing to me personally. That has given me an incredibly varied career – in animal welfare, to healthcare, to the arts, and now serving LGBTQ+ youth.

You know, I think there was probably a reason why it took me so long to move into the queer space, because it’s probably of the most personal elements of who I am and what makes me tick. So much of that experience – just starting when you’re young – can be internalised, and then you have to spend your entire adulthood working through it, and I finally got to a point in my life where I felt that I was confident enough that I could actually do something to support the community.

I got started in supporting the queer community in general when I was working at the American Cancer Society and I was based in California and I was sort of overseeing all of the LGBTQ+ activations up and down the state – which is essentially Pride activations, marches, that sort of thing, lots of volunteer organising. At the time the organisation had a very large community-based research effort that I worked to engage the queer community to participate in, so that was sort of the “scratching the surface” stage of my work in the community.

I had I just finished my graduate studies, and I was really looking for something different, something new, something where I could f take this new knowledge and apply it in a new way, still staying in the non-profit space. And then I was connected with one of the founders of the It Gets Better Project. It was really just a casual meet & greet because at that point I was like “I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life”, but I really connected with him. It was Seth Levy, one of the voices behind the camera ,and I liked his energy, I liked his vibe and it felt easy, it felt like a natural alignment of where my interests were gravitating to, and how I could actually be an effective leader. So then I just landed here, and I haven’t looked back, and I’ve been here 6 years in March, and it’s just been the most incredible experience of my career. Not the easiest, but the most incredible and fulfilling.

05:34 (host)

I was actually curious to know if there is a moment in all these years, a memory of all your work at It Gets Better, that you particularly cherish.

05:46 Brian Wenke

There have been so many, but I will have to say in in 2019: it was World Pride in New York City. We had representatives from all of our affiliates from around the world, and we were all together: everyone had flags that were representing their country, and we were just sort of marching down through Christopher street, and it was just a very incredible experience. And you know, I don’t know if you’ve been to New York Pride before, but there’s just so many people, and the buildings are crawling with people and there’s just a lot of beauty, a lot of colours, a lot of emotion, and it was just really nice to kind of reflect on how far the organisation has come by seeing these awesome activists from around the world all joining together and march together. So, that was a beautiful moment: World Pride 2019, New York City.

06:42 (host)

Going back to the story of It Gets Better: it kind of started with a single video of a coming out story, and it then evolved into a whole global movement that uses storytelling to empower LGBTIQ youth. Over the years, the organisation has evolved into a global campaign and then into something that really offers a wide range of resources to empower queer youth. So, quoting the famous meme: can you tell us more about how it started, how it’s going, and also where it’s heading to?

07:10 Brian Wenke

When we started, social media was in a very different place than where it is today, and I don’t know if I’m either dating myself or just speaking regionally in terms of what was happening, but at the time Facebook was the dominant platform, and at the time there were like 400,000,000 users – which is like a lot, right? but at the same time Myspace was peaking, and Instagram wasn’t part of the Meta-universe, and Snapchat and TikTok didn’t exist. So, you know, social media was in a very different space.

What we often refer to as “lightning in a bottle” when it comes to our origin story – a viral social media campaign that overnight became a global movement to support queer youth – was really driven by a lot of passionate people behind the scenes that were tapping their networks and finding ways to get this message out there in volumes that ultimately led to this viral movement. It wasn’t without a ton of work being done on the backend to kind of catalyse it!

We came about at a time where there were a high number of LGBTQ+ youth who were dying from suicide: these were highly publicized occurrences, and so obviously we were motivated to get in front of queer youth before they would descend into those at-risk behaviours, to instil in them some hope that their lives can get better by sharing the wisdom of older generations who have been through that and got through it successfully to go on to live fully self-actualised and successful lives.

How that’s evolved over the years is very much dictated by how the audience that we’re trying to engage has evolved: the way that we connect through stories hasn’t changed, but the format of those stories has evolved. There are different platforms. There are shorter attention spans. There are different demands as young people just want to navigate the world in a very different way, and so the It Gets Better Project has been in tune with that, and has been following these younger generations as they’re emerging to make sure that our storytelling campaign is always going to be relevant, and is going to be feeding young people the information that they want and need now to inform their sexual orientation and their gender identity journey. We are always looking for ways to connect with queer youth and so that’s given rise to an education program where we take our stories into classrooms, and it’s also informed our global community building efforts.

We now have a global affiliate network that spans four continents and eight languages; we have 19 countries that are represented in our affiliate network – we just brought on Hungary and Panama. These are all independently organised groups that are championing our mission to uplift empower and connect LGBTQ+ youth around the globe in their specific communities, in culturally relevant ways that we just can’t do here from the States. We rely on our affiliates to engage with their local queer youth communities in ways that make sense for them, so we’re all in this together and it’s been great.

Where we’re heading? Our vision is a world where all LGBTQ+ youth are free to live equally and know their worthiness and power as individuals, and we have got some way to go with that right? I am a firm believer that as a media-driven organisation we can be the resounding voice that connects with queer youth before they even know they are on a journey, and so I do feel that we can get there – but we just need more of it. We need more affiliates, we need more energy, more consistency with how that message gets out there – so we can capture the attention of queer youth before the world at large gets to them and chips away at their confidence, so they can pick up the tab where older generations left off.

11:24 (host)

Thanks for sharing all that and I think what you just said is really important: the fact of reaching out to people while the world still hasn’t reached them and made them feel they’re wrong… It’s incredibly important, and I think it’s something that we all share all around the world, no matter what our journey is.

Speaking about the global reach: just as much as ILGA World, It Gets Better is a global organisation, so I was wondering how does the network of all your affiliates remain connected. Is there anything in particular that you’re learning from each other?

11:58 Brian Wenke

At least here in in the US where we’re based, our work abroad is probably one of the lesser-known things that we do – I think it’s just the nature of our culture here in the US where we’re not very globally focused, but our organisation absolutely is! One of the ways that we connect is through summits: the It Gets Better Project host summits every year. For example, World Pride was the last time we were able to convene in person and we’ve been doing it virtually since, but bringing representatives from our affiliate network together to share best practices to talk about the state of LGBTQ+ youth in the fight for civil rights in their local communities… it’s been inspiring just to kind of engage with these folks that are all sharing the same mindset.

They want to create a better world for queer people and young people specifically, but how they do it is vastly different, and it is so interesting to see how culture influences the progress of our community.

We all know that progressive, supportive, and protective laws are all great, but they can’t stand on their own, and sometimes that conversation shifts against us: we always need to be pressing, we need to be pushing, we need to be providing services where there are gaps, we need to be finding new and creative ways to engage with the community, and our affiliates are doing great stuff. Not all of them are focused 100 % on storytelling. Many of our affiliates in Latin America are focused on offering safe hours where queer youth can actually engage with a mental health professional: we don’t do that here in the States. There are other service providers that do that, but we are very supportive of what our affiliates feel are essential needs and services to support local queer youth communities.

13:55 (interlude)

Being a global organisation means also to acknowledge that the realities on the ground are not all the same for each of us, although there are some common threads, and that it’s great to find opportunities to listen and to see how we can best support each other: this is also what ILGA World wants to bring to our World Conferences.

14:20 (host)

It’s our thirtieth ILGA World Conference, and you’re going to host us in Long Beach from 2 to 6 May 2022 so we’re getting quite close: what do you have in store for us?

14:34 Brian Wenke

Oh well, a lot! First of all, Long Beach is like… super queer: you know, it’s actually this lovely little pocket in LA County that has like a gay mayor, and a huge gay community. There’s lots of support for the queer community and the actual city is excited to bring ILGA and all of these amazing people from around the world to their home. So, there will be an opportunity for people to self-navigate this lovely town of Long Beach.

And then, what we are doing in terms of our hosting responsibilities is we’re putting together the social program, which is going to be awesome! I would say that there probably isn’t one venue that we have identified that doesn’t have like some real awesome like view either of the ocean or of something other that’s beautiful. For example, we are going to have an event at the Long Beach Art Museum, we will be entertained by a gay Mariachi band, and so there’s lots of fun opportunities to connect with one another in a really awesome setting.

Then, we have also got this really cool thing going at the Aquarium of the Pacific – which is my personal favourite and that’s pulling from my background in animal welfare during the early stages of my career. But I think we are going to have a lot of good times, a lot of great forums for people to connect and socialise with one another, and to share all the great stuff that they are going to get during the day from the conference. So, that’s what we have got in store: it’s going to be a lot of fun.

16:16 (host)

I’m really looking forward to that and I think we all are, because it’s really been a while since our global community has been able to come together in person. I mean: Covid hit – we all know that, and we are navigating that, and there will be safety protocols in place so we are going to make sure that the conference will go on as safely as it gets for everybody – and it has had a huge impact on the whole global community. Lots of things have happened during this couple of years: rights being taken aback, restrictive laws used to target specifically our communities… So I think it’s particularly important at this time that we find a place to come together again, and see that we are still here for each other.

So I really, really hope that the World Conference is going to be that occasion for the whole global community. There is still some time to register, so… a little promotional moment here: world.conference.ilga.org.

17:10 Brian Wenke

Yes, promote it! (laughs)

17:12 (host)

There is still time to register. So please: we’re waiting for you!

17:16 Brian Wenke

Yeah, I mean, look: virtual is great. It gives us a way to connect and to keep those conversations going, but nothing beats being able to connect with your peers in person and to participate in the energy that that brings, so I 100% agree with you; go register now, sign up, be a part of this cohort for the thirtieth conference.

17:40 (host)

What I find particularly relevant is that this is our first World Conference where LGBTIQ youth is front and centre, from the theme of the conference. It Gets Better has always been an organisation which is very much focused on youth, so I was wondering – from your vantage point – how has the presence and contributions of queer youth in the global movement changed over the years?

18:06 Brian Wenke

Social media has played a huge role. You know, young people today… they’re digital natives, they don’t know a world without the Internet, and that has given rise to frankly like some incredibly self-actualized and highly visible young people that… you know, speaking candidly: kind of scare me, but like in a good way, right? You know they are equipped. When I was a teenager, I was more focused on getting my driver’s license because it meant freedom: I wasn’t thinking about the needs of the world, right? They weren’t weighing on my shoulders the way that they do with young people today. These are teenagers that are studying abroad, that are serving on their local school boards, that are so confident in who they are! I can’t help but be proud and see that as a sign that we’re heading in the right direction. I have a lot of faith in the youth of today being able to carry the torch forward, because they are absolutely less patient than the older generations, and I cannot wait to see what they do. I’m very encouraged by young people today. Especially queer people.

19:21 (host)

I hope the conference will be a huge platform for LGBTIQ youth to raise their voices and getting even more involved in the in the global movement. I do have one final question for you, which is again about your organization: I’ve always found that “it gets better” is such an incredibly powerful statement. It is really something that gives hope to people! So my question is: do you believe that the meaning of the sentence has changed over the years for our global community?

19:53 Brian Wenke

Yeah, I do! I mean, it’s definitely changed for us, and you know: this phrase has been analysed over and over again by academics and the general community, but what started out as this kind of balm on a wounded soul has really evolved into a rallying cry, almost like “It gets better, damn it!, and we should accept nothing less than that outcome”. You know: it has become a mantra: even if you’re in a dark space you just repeat it over and over. I’m not saying that it doesn’t need to be contextualised – because “it gets better” means something different for everybody – but I definitely see it evolve from something that is more of a calming-like, soothing “It’s okay” kind of thing, “life will get better”, into “Yes, it gets better, and it gets freaking awesome, and you have a role to play here, and you have value,” right? “And if and if the world isn’t rolling out the red carpet for you, like it doesn’t do for anybody, you do have the power to take control and make your life better.” That’s how I’ve seen it evolve, and I’m going to stick to that.

21:06 (host)

Yeah, I think that’s quite a powerful view, and I would like to finish it here because it’s a great closing! Well, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. We cannot wait to finally meet in person, be at the conference together, share the same space, share the energy that we’ve been sharing during the organisation of this conference.

21:30 Brian Wenke

Yeah, it’s gonna be fantastic.

21:32 (host)

I just wanted to thank you once more for joining us in this podcast and in this conversation today, and… we will see each other in Long Beach!

21:41 Brian Wenke

Um, right sounds good. Thank you and have a great day!

21.50 (outro)

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted and edited by Daniele Paletta. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms, and transcriptions are available on ilga.org. If you’re interested in our World Conference, you can find more information on worldconference.ilga.org. Thanks for listening.