Advocating for human rights of LGBTIQ+ persons in multilevel governance systems

Abstract

Human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) persons have been and continue to be highly contested in different contexts all across the world. Their realization is an on-going struggle beyond the national scope. This article’s main interest is to unpack how the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons are negotiated and fought for in different governance arenas. Towards this end, I examine activist strategies concerning rights of LGBTIQ+ persons in southern Africa. The analysis zooms in on the strategies of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the national (Botswana) and regional (Southern African Development Community, SADC) level. The analysis is structured along the concept of contextualization. As an advocacy strategy in a highly contested field, contextualization is employed by national and transnational NGOs on two levels. They contextualize their strategies within a multilevel governance system; and they contextualize their activism practices to foster the human rights of LGBTIQ+ persons on these governance levels. With this approach, we can explain why some entities, such as the African Union, are targeted as agents of change for the human rights of LGBTIQ+ persons, whereas some are not even perceived as relevant platforms to engage, such as the SADC.