Overview

This event launches the analytical framework primarily developed during a workshop hosted at Queen's University Belfast in September and informed by additional consultation. Please join us to learn about the five key areas we view as important for understanding and bringing forward this framework:

1. Queer/ feminist approaches have a shared understanding of conflict drivers
2. Queer/ feminist approaches highlight gender and SOGIESC impacts of violence
3. Queer/ feminist approaches recognise more complex realities beyond men as perpetrators and women and queer people as victims
4. Queer/ feminist approaches reject the instrumentalisation and cooptation of rights by actors who then deprioritise them when inconvenient
5. Queer/ feminist approaches expand definitions of peace and security

You will also have an opportunity to hear from some of those who helped develop the framework. Following the overview of the brief and speaker presentations there will be time for a Q & A, with an emphasis on using this framework in practice.

About the analytical framework

Feminist and LGBTQIA rights activists have spent decades analysing conflict, addressing the gender- and SOGIESC-differential impacts of violence, and influencing policy and practice at local, national, regional, and global levels There has been some success with certain movements becoming more intersectional, a number of humanitarian and peacebuilding organisations taking steps towards inclusivity, and increasing talk of ‘queering WPS’ in policy spaces.

However, there is confusion around how women’s and LGBTQIA rights intersect in conflict, if gender, peace and security efforts should engage with LGBTQIA rights, and how to do so. Actors take an array of approaches, including contradictory ones, those that conflate gender with a male/female binary, and those that exclude LBTQ women. There is disquiet over cooptation, instrumentalisation, dilution of both movements, and concentration on cis gay men’s realities (‘easier’ to investigate and present in policy spaces) contributing to further exclusion.

This analytical framework combines the insights of feminist and queer activism and theory with regards to conflict, peace and security. We stress the need for nuance and context specificity and hope it will be a useful resource that can be localised by activists and used to inform policy and programming.

Speakers

Basira Paigham is an Afghan LGBTIQ human rights defender. She advocates for the recognition, protection, and legalization of the Afghan LGBTIQ community, and fights for their human rights, equality, and freedom. She is the co-founder of the organization: Afghan LGBT.

Meena Sharma is a dedicated peace practitioner from Kathmandu, Nepal. Her conviction lies in ensuring that every individual in the community is entitled to a life filled with peace, justice, freedom, and dignity.Currently, she is leading an organization "The Institute of Human Rights Communication Nepal" (IHRICON), and a network called Children As Zone of Peace, (CZOP). She had been able to combine over a decade and a half of expertise in Gender Equity Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI), peacebuilding, media, and human rights. Her work focuses on building new knowledge from practice, especially in the areas of women's rights, empowerment, and transformative feminist leadership. She has worked with more than 200 civil society organizations in Nepal.