Tamara Adrián. Some rights reserved.
Francesc Badia: First of all, thank you for having us. My first question is: how do you view the international projection of ideas and initiatives coming from the Global South? What is their influence in shaping the global civil society agenda?
Tamara Adrián H.: I think this is a very relevant and important question in many ways, because there is a general feeling – which sometimes is quite right - that the agenda of the Global North dominates that of the Global South a far as the organizational demands of civil society are concerned. Sometimes it is right because capacity building, on the one hand, and the agenda itself on the other hand, are aligned with what the organizations from the Global North consider worthy to be financed, and what is not. But what has been happening in the last ten years is that, more often than you may think, very enlightening, original ideas have come up from the Global South. Let us take, as an example - because I work in that field -, what is going on with LGBT rights. Legal recognition of transgender people without the requirement of any previous surgery, or treatment as pathology, or any other medical requirement, was an idea that came from the Global South – from countries like Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay. This is now becoming an international standard. Inter-sex organization has had a very low profile in the Global North. It is becoming increasingly important in the Global South, as transgender people are demanding recognition for their struggle and are fighting to prevent states from carrying out mutilations on inter-sex children. These have been ideas that came from the Global South, not from the North.
