CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Nabiyev, Cavid |
|---|---|
| Title | Claiming rights of LGBT+ populations: What does the universality of the concept of human rights promise in the post-pandemic world? |
| Summary | Although the SARS-CoV2 pandemic is not over yet, and studying its devastating implications would require more time to pass, at this particular point in time, I take the ongoing pandemic as the possibility to look at the pre-pandemic discourse of how and where issues pertinent to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) or rights of LGBT+s are framed and navigated, and seek to question the reliance on the universality of the concept of human rights as the main vehicle and interrogate the continuation of such reliance from the post-pandemic perspective. From the activist, practitioner, or researcher’s perspective, I am primarily interested in two matters: the origins of the concept itself, on the one hand, and its limitations when it is put to use in the real world, on the other hand. While drawing attention to the foundational premises and important historical factors, I argue that before invoking and insisting on the universality of the concept of human rights, we should be attentive when the concept per se is built in an oppressive context, through the exclusionary process. Deducing from the general interrogation into the foundational premises of the concept, I move from the historical consciousness to the practical consciousness, by which I am looking into the usage of the concept in practice and reflecting on its shortcomings when invoked in real life. I question the feasibility of reliance on it as a primary way of navigating political claims on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) issues on the global level. By conducting discourse analysis of two interactive dialogues on establishing and later renewing the mandate of the United Nations Independent Expert on SOGI, I demonstrate that any attempt of bringing SOGI issues into international fora is accompanied by inevitable backlash. Groups of countries who oppose SOGI issues frequently frame their opposition in the context of East and West, western imperialism, respect to each State’s sovereignty, and regard to cultural and religious particularities. There is also a strong narrative emerging at the United Nations Human Rights Council that the SOGI is a ‘Western agenda’. In order to see to what extent that narrative replicated by the opponents corresponds with reality, I contest the ‘regime of truth’ of it. I demonstrate that irrespective of the resistance of the opposition and the narrative that they replicate, the urge for having a dialogue on SOGI issues on the global level is indeed coming from the global South and East. Nevertheless, whether we like it or not, there is one reality out there, and in that reality, SOGI issues are not welcomed in the Human Rights Council. On the account of the past-pandemic reflection into the use of the universality of the concept of human rights as the main vehicle for claiming rights of LGBT+s, towards countries that are happy with upholding their sodomy laws for instance, I argue that such reliance in the post-pandemic perspective will be inefficient as it promises the same political and ideological backlashes, and thus fewer chances of making substantive steps towards meaningful intercultural dialogue on human rights. |
| Supervisor | Eszter Polgári |
| Department | Legal Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/nabiyev_cavid.pdf |
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