Sexuality and gender identity in transitional societies: Peacebuilding and counterhegemonic politics

Abstract

This article contributes to a developing field of scholarship that has been concerned with exploring the impacts of conflict and its transformation on sexual and gender minorities. Drawing on extant analysis, the article explores the marginalization of issues pertaining to sexuality and gender in international law and peace agreements. It then moves on to an assessment of the effects of the integration of sexual orientation and gender identity equality provisions into a limited number of peace agreements. The article contends that attempts to implement and extend sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) equality provisions in peace agreements in meaningful ways typically become cast as justifiable, residual or reprehensible by agonistic groups at local levels during transition. It claims that this fracturing of standpoints on SOGI equality can strengthen counterhegemonic articulations of sexual and gender minorities' identities that provoke radical versions of peacebuilding.