(iPoster) How the HIV/AIDS Crisis Led to Legal Mobilization for LGBT+ Rights in Africa

• In Event: Poster Session: Racial, Ethnic, Gender, LGBTQ+ Politics & Sexuality and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Sexuality & Politics

Abstract

Why do LGBT rights organizations in some common-law African countries engage in legal mobilization while others do not? Given that the courts have been the primary drivers of LGBT rights progression in common law countries, both globally and in Africa, it raises a question as to why groups in only some countries legally mobilize. This paper argues that domestic LGBT organizations legally mobilize based on the HIV/AIDS movement in a country; HIV/AIDS movements can provide opportunities for LGBT communities to form and access international resources, in addition to shaping their understanding of LGBT discrimination through a human rights perspective that is often used by the HIV/AIDS movement too. I will demonstrate this theory using process tracing through a most similar case study of Botswana and Namibia. In Botswana, LGBT rights groups have pursued strategic litigation, while in Namibia, they have not. I chart the sequence of the LGBT movements in these cases, beginning with the emergence of the LGBT community to the strategic advocacy strategies pursued by the LGBT movement. I show that in Botswana, where the LGBT movement formed within the HIV/AIDS movement, LGBT activists learned from the HIV/AIDS movement’s use of the rights approach and litigation on behalf of aggrieved individuals, which influenced their own litigious activism. On the contrary, in Namibia, the HIV/AIDS movement was not as litigious or connected to the LGBT movement. As a result, the LGBT movement itself is not litigious either. This research aims to bring together literature on HIV and LGBT social movements with literature on legal mobilization, which connects the HIV epidemic to positive policy change for LGBT individuals. This research also has important implications for studying LGBT politics, social movements, and legal mobilization in the Global South.

Author

• Sean Givnish, George Washington University