In much of the world, organizations working with gender and sexual minorities (GSM) have never had an open space to work in. For these groups, the idea of “closing space” is not a shift—it’s been their daily reality for decades. Unfortunately, many mainstream human rights organizations miss the fact that GSM-oriented organizations deliver critical services, not just advocacy. Closing civic space for these groups has become intrinsically linked to denial of services, and mainstream rights groups are not working hard enough to protect this access.
When a Kenyan government committee recommended “banning organisations involved in indecency, espionage or terrorism,” for example, very few of the big rights groups in Kenya offered much support to GSM-oriented civil society organizations. To fight on their own, many GSM groups have been using the courts to help win victories. Whether it has been appealing the repressive Ugandan anti-gay law, or ordering the un-freezing of bank accounts in Kenya, or ruling against the denial of registration of LEGABIBO (an LGBT rights group) in Botswana, most of these court victories are based on constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of most open and democratic countries, and held under the International Declaration of Human Rights. But in many countries where space for gender and sexual minorities is highly restricted, governments are increasingly challenging the universality of rights, casting this concept as a Western European and American narrative. If this strategy is successful over time, more and more marginalized people will lose access not only to advocacy and support groups, but also to critical services that they need.
The Kenyan high court, for example, has ruled that the government may not block a prominent GSM organization—the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC)—but the group is still unregistered. In Botswana, a similar organization has only recently won a protracted case in court for registration. The reaction to the judgement was swift, especially by the Catholic Church, which called it “a deliberate attempt by certain individuals and institutions to push dangerous agendas and ideologies that are unnatural, un-African and un-Christian.” Unfortunately besides international organizations such as Human Rights Watch, other mainstream organizations seem to have mostly ignored the situation.
