Lucas is a member of the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. He wrote this piece as part of her internship with Arts4Refugees. His motivation was to help her peer group understand the unique experiences of post-conflict communities. This article was edited by Cassia Jefferson, a fellow student journalist from Oxford University. Bernadett from Swinburne University interviewed Lucas for the podcast as well.
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Unequal advancement of LGBTQ+ rights in post-conflict Colombia: how “queering” peace-building in Colombia did not prevent continued violence against the LGBTQ+ community
The 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) militia put an end to a decades-long conflict between the Colombian state and affiliated paramilitaries on one side and armed militias on the other. The peace accord was hailed as pioneering for including the voices, input, and experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and recognising the systematic persecution the minority suffered during the conflict. This recognition has gone hand-in-hand with increased legal protections and advancements. However, the peace accords were rejected in a plebiscite. The LGBTQ+ community still faces discrimination and violence due to their sexual orientation and gender identity which puts into question the effectiveness of this post-conflict reconstruction. This article investigates the reasons for the disparity between the legal protection of the LGBTQ+ community in post-conflict Colombia and the systemic discrimination that it faces regardless.
Including LGBTQ+ voices in post-conflict resolution, or “queering” peacebuilding, has become an important strand of activism in post-conflict resolution in recent years. Advocates note the progressthe Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPS) has made in gendering peacebuilding by expanding “the bounds of who (peace and security processes) and institutions include”. The WPS showed how women are specifically affected by armed conflict, and called for peacebuilding which addresses their experiences and needs (Trithart 2020). United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, passed in 2000, was a landmark resolution that acknowledged the “particular needs of women and girls'' in conflict resolution and highlighted the need to “incorporate a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations” (United Nations Security Council 2000). This mandate was subsequently strengthened by nine other UNSCRs.
The success has pushed LGBTQ+ organisations and NGOs to seek the inclusion of LGBTQ+ voices in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction, as they too face specific and targeted violence and persecution. As Rothschild (2005, 43) explains, states or armed groups may “invoke, and condemn, the spectre of homosexuality (…) to stir fear” or “to solidify support”. However, many post-conflict humanitarian assessments rarely mention the LGBTQ+ community or their needs in post-conflict societies or include them as participants in peace-building (Humanitarian Advisory Group 2018).
Moreover, advocates of queering peace-building and the WPS Agenda have correctly noted that whilst the WPS Agenda has been instrumental in including a gender perspective on conflict, it has important shortcomings. By not acknowledging the specific persecution of LGBTQ+ people, the WPS Agenda ignores the “layers of vulnerability” that lesbian, bisexual, or transgender women may face for their gender on one hand, and their sexual orientation or gender identity on the other (Trihart 2020). By not including LGBTQ+ experiences, the WPS Agenda interprets women and gender in an “outdated, binary, and heteronormative” way, which risks ignoring the specific violence and persecution that LGBTQ+ women may face (Trihart 2020).
For these reasons, the 2016 peace process between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which was later rejected in a popular vote, was hailed as a pioneer after incorporating the LGBTQ+ community in peace negotiations (Sánchez, Chung, and Brito Ruiz 2022). This was the first peace process to fully acknowledge the systematic persecution of the LGBTQ+ community during the armed conflict because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. It determined that prejudice and social complicity were the main reasons for this. As Alejandra Miller (2022) explains, this discrimination was politically and militarily salient because paramilitaries and militias “won over communities with (systematic) violence against the LGBTQ+ community” (Miller 2022). LGBTQ+ people were considered to belong to the fringes of society by not conforming to “traditional gender stereotypes”. Hence, armed groups could win societal support by systematically abusing LGBTQ+ people, making them prime targets of violence by both paramilitaries and guerrillas (Bouvier 2016, 14).
These ingrained prejudices are one of the main causes of why the LGBTQ+ community remains vulnerable in Colombia despite increased legal protections. They were also among the reasons for the failure of the plebiscite on the 2016 peace agreements. These efforts were thwarted by right-wing evangelical groups and conservatives who tried to derail the peace accords by, among others, accusing the peace process of advocating for so-called “gender ideology”. In the minds of many in Colombia, the “gender-based focus” and the participation of the LGBTQ+ community in the peace process were associated with a deterioration of family values and a false encouragement of homosexuality (Latin America Working Group 2019). After its rejection, a second peace accord was drafted where sexual orientation and gender identity provisions were curtailed and protection for the LGBTQ+ community was given less importance. The approval of these watered-down peace accords demonstrates that sexual orientation and gender identity provisions were among the main reasons why the first failed.
Paradoxically, queer inclusion in peacebuilding resulted in intense anti-LGBTQ+ backlash and the subsequent curtailing of LGBTQ+ and gender provisions and protection (Serrano-Amaya 2019). In this sense, the LGBTQ+ community in Colombia face a lose-lose situation, where either their struggle during the conflict is not acknowledged or, if it is, they receive backlash for it.
The rejection of the peace accords did not, however, prevent the LGBTQ+ community from winning legal advancements in their rights. In 2015, trans citizens over 18 were given the right to legally change their gender in their national IDs. A year later, same-sex marriage was legalised and, in 2022, the Colombian Constitutional Court determined that minors have a right to receive gender-affirming healthcare to align their physical sex with their gender identity (Corte Constitucional 2015, 2016, 2022). On top of these landmark rulings, Colombia has also allowed LGBTQ+ people to adopt, donate blood, and serve in the military, and banned housing and workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Hence, from a legal standpoint, post-conflict Colombia is at the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights and protection both in Latin America and globally. Nevertheless, legal advancements have not equated to the eradication of violence.
Regardless of legal protections, LGBTQ+ people still face discrimination and threats of violence (Ritholtz et al. 2023, 14). In 2020, 76 members of the LGBTQ+ community were murdered and there were 388 cases of violence against LGBTQ+ people in the first eight months of the year, an increase from 309 in the whole of 2019 (US State Department 2020). In 2022, the number of murders of LGBTQ+ people rose to 111. Transgender women were often the most targeted. Between 2021 and 2022, there were 226 cases of violence against trans people, of which 206 were trans women. Of these, 55 were killed (Defensoría del Pueblo de Colombia 2022).
As previously explained, violence against the LGBTQ+ community was salient among society during the armed conflict where paramilitaries and guerrillas alike created a culture of “patriarchal authority and violence”. Over half a decade of systematic discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people have created ingrained norms of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment that persist within Colombia’s society in spite of legal advancements. Fear-mongering regarding a so-called “gender ideology” and persistent violence are merely a result.
This puts into question the extent of how peaceful post-conflict Colombia really is for the LGBTQ+ community: their inclusion in peace-building efforts and the advancement of their rights have resulted in increased opposition from right-wing evangelical groups and overall violence. Legally, the progress in their rights is unquestionable, although this progress has not been seen in practice. The situation shows the challenges that intersectional post-conflict reconstruction faces. Those most targeted during the conflict are also those most vulnerable to violence in its aftermath, mainly due to structures created during the conflict. Colombia rightly included LGBTQ+ experiences in peace-building but must also recognise that the LGBTQ community remains threatened.
Bibliography
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———. 2016. Sentencia SU214/16.
———. 2022. Sentencia T-218/22.
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