Queer Consequences: LGBTIQ+ Mainstreaming at the United Nations

• In Event: Global Politics of Queerness

Abstract

Since the passing of the first-ever Human Rights Council resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity in 2011, the realization of international LGBTIQ+ rights across the United Nations system remains controversial at best. Using the analytical framework of the Three UNs, this interpretative project argues that transnational advocacy networks recognize international LGBTIQ+ rights as simultaneously established, emerging, and contested norms. Drawing on archival research, content analysis, and semi-structured interviews, it further argues that the decentralized ad hoc nature of LGBTIQ+ mainstreaming enables network actors to advance LGBTIQ+ rights through a horizontal diffusion process informed by universal human rights claims and a growing campaign that recognizes sexual diversity, gender-expansiveness, and sex characteristic variance beyond conventional representation. Understanding the regulative and constitutive nature of LGBTIQ+ rights formation in intergovernmental spaces lends itself to generating better insights into the continuous mis- and disinformation used by member states contesting the inclusion of LGBTIQ+ issues at the UN.

Author

• Ariel Gabriella Mekler, Graduate Center, City University of New York