Gender and sexual minorities in development

Issues related to gender and sexual minorities have been historically seen in human rights frameworks instead of international development. Although attitudes towards these minorities have become more accepting in recent times across different cultures (we should remember that many societies tried to cure non-confirming sexual and gender behaviours through the use of medical, behavioural, legal and religious interventions), data on their numbers and other demographic characteristics remains largely absent. Empirical evidence in the form of small scale studies points to the fact that sexual and gender minorities face disparities in many dimensions of development which are the current focus of global development policy and interventions, such as mental health, food security, violence, civic participation. If global development programmes are to be effective they must address these disparities, in addition to meeting development targets for gender and sexual majorities.

But how do we do that? We know that sexual and gender minorities are largely invisible in the data and that the development interventions are data-driven/evidence-based --- increasingly so under the cost-effectiveness logic of the neoliberal world we live in!

A ray of hope is perhaps the lesson from HIV and AIDS related interventions in last two decades.

HIV was prolific in producing not only disease and death but also new communities around the ideas of ‘risk’ and ‘care’. Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa is good example, which, according to some observers, became of the moral voice of the nation in the time of crisis. Like South African and other places in the world faced by an AIDS epidemic, in India and Pakistan too, sexual and gender minorities were brought to policy spotlight for the fear that they were not only at a greater risk of contracting the infection but also transmitting it to the ‘general population’ because of their sexual networks – perceived or actual. Therefore, something needed to be done about these ‘risk groups’ – there were other high-risk groups as well such as ‘people who use injecting drugs’, sex worker, long-distance truck drivers, migrants, and students (!) etc.

But if something must be done to prevent infection among these groups, they must first be made visible in the form of data, by counting and categorising them, by locating and mapping them, and by understanding their sexual behaviours and identities. Once they were made visible, they needed to be organised into communities so that the HIV-prevention related interventions could reach them and work with (e.g. CBOs, NGOs, Networks, and Coalitions). However, once they were organised this way, they didn’t just stop at passively receiving sexual behaviour change such as condom use or implementing these preventions messages in their lives, but they actively organised for their rights.

Now that they were organised into formal networks, they had greater opportunities to come together in workshops and seminars, and shared platforms of collective action. They demanded recognition of their sexual and gender identities by the state and the law.

A high point in their activism was to challenge a colonial law (section 377) that criminalised same sex sexual relations. It was a long drawn battle but they succeed in the end in getting this law repealed by the Indian Supreme Court. Will something like that happen in Pakistan too? When?

What lessons do we learn from this episode in international development and health?

Sexual and gender minorities activists do not need to wait for the development agencies to include them in their agenda, policies, plans or goals. Sometimes small opening can be worked upon to turn into big transformations!
Positive activities in the health and development registers can spill over to positive outcomes in the juridico-legal frameworks of the states that have historically repressed gender and sexual minorities.



(Recognition of the third gender in Pakistan is another example of how hijar identity was brought to the centre of public debate – and thus taken up by the Supreme Court – partially because of their recognition as CBOs and NGOs, their visibility in state-sponsored event on HIV/AIDS).