Video 5: Working with Local Organizations
BRENNA MUNRO: So, you’ve touched on the importance of working with local organizing or activist groups. Could you say a bit more about how you go about choosing which groups, because obviously each location has its own LGBT political landscape?
GRAEME REID: Yes, nothing is as simple as it seems, right? So, the idea that you partner with local organizations or get your direction from local organizations is never a simple issue, and neither should it be, because of course there are diverse voices, approaches, strategies in country that reflect different interest groups, perhaps different class interests, sometimes, and so one needs to be very mindful of that, in engaging in the research work. Now, one of the advantages of having a Human Rights Watch presence in over 40 countries around the world and working in some 90 countries is that, because even though the LGBT program is a relatively small program with some 6 people working in the program, there’s a staff complement throughout Human Rights Watch of some 400 people, so we would rely on a country expert who also has a better sense of the landscape in which the different LGBT groups operate. So, a first step in doing research would be to get that overarching sense of who the groups are, who they represent, and to avoid getting into a situation of working with one group at the exclusion of another. So, of course that can be a complicated situation, and there’s no formula of how to do that, but what we try to do is to be as consultative as possible to get a clear and overarching sense. Sometimes we partner with a particular organization and that partnership can take different forms. It might just be a loose sort of common purpose kind of, um, affiliation in which a group might assist with research in one way or another, or helping us to find interviewees for the research. In other instances, it might be a joint publication, for instance, and certainly we like to see our research reports used by local advocates in terms of pushing their own work forward. But sometimes people have very different interests, actually, and very different strategic approaches in which one needs to make some kind of choice, as to how you’re going to pitch your research project and how we feel, based on the consultation that has taken place, is where we’re going to have the most impact, and how it will work best. And sometimes a close partnership with an organization like a joint publication is helpful and sometimes a bit of distance is also helpful. I think, for example, in Liberia, where the role of Human Rights Watch was to bring local groups in conversation with government officials, is it was helpful to be an outside entity there. I think also in, say, for example, in Jamaica, where we did a research report last year, it was also helpful there to be able to say things and to criticize certain policies and procedures, for instance, that had been put in place. It was helpful to be an outside entity doing that, because it didn’t have the effect of spoiling the relationships, for instance, that the local groups had built, for instance, with the police, that it puts them in a position where it’s not helpful to be overly critical about a particular policy or a particular program. So, in some instances, the fact that we’re an outside entity is helpful. It can also be helpful in terms of access to sort of international fora or amplifying a voice of a local group onto a more global reach, so there can be advantages and disadvantages. It’s also a complicated relationship to navigate; I think the key to it is just to be open about it, open about what we can and can’t do, and to be sure that the expectations of the groups are clear and that there isn’t a sort of misunderstanding about what we might or might not do, and to be clear about our strategy and our approach and to keep in constant dialogue about what is appropriate or what is not appropriate. We’re going to be releasing a report on Kenya, on mob violence in Kenya, and the police’s response, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes not helpful, and again that is going to be a very low-key release, and that’s because the organization that we are partnering with feel that too much publicity will be counterproductive. So, we are responding to what that particular group feels.
Video 6: Impact of Western Leaders’ Speech
GEMA PÉREZ-SÁNCHEZ: Speaking of Kenya, President Obama was there recently. How do you think his speech or his participation, in terms of intervening as a half-Kenyan person, what impact do you think it’s going to have on LGBT rights there that kind of intervention? Could you tell us a little bit about it?
GRAEME REID: I think you’ve touched on something very interesting, and, precisely because of who he is and his background and his direct connections to Kenya, is that what he said on the topic was important and resonated. One of my colleagues said, you know, based on the amount of media attention only on “will he” or “won’t he” or “what will he or what won’t he say about gay rights in his visit to Kenya,” you would think he’s going to give a plenary at a conference on homosexuality, because that’s the intense focus that’s on this issue at the expense of many other really pressing human rights issues within Kenya, but somehow this one became like the absolute focus. So that can be, that can have a negative [impact], too, right? because the gay rights issue is one of many issues within Kenya. And having said that, I think that what he had to say on this was important because it’s not as easily dismissed as if it came from somebody else, precisely because of his stature, his standing, and his personal connections to Kenya. So, I think that it was an important statement that he made. We’ve seen other examples in which the statements by leaders have had negative consequences, have had reactions that have been quite strong and quite negative. One of those was the speech – or it wasn’t a speech actually, it was an interview on television by David Cameron just before the commonwealth heads of government meeting in which – I mean really what he was saying was that certain forms of direct, bilateral aid might be redirected in certain ways if there was particularly homophobic laws, so what he was saying in substance, if you look at it in detail, was not that dramatic, but the way it was picked up and reported—and I think his wording was somewhat clumsy—was sort of gay rights or no aid. So, there was a very strong reaction with Sub-Saharan Africa, and also from LGBT groups working in the continent saying, “you know, we’re a vulnerable minority, are we going to be blamed also for a reduction of development aid? Like, that’s not going make us any more popular than we already are. So, just think about what you do and what you say.” Now, to contrast what I’m saying is a somewhat clumsy approach by David Cameron, Hilary Clinton made a speech that couldn’t be more nuanced, actually, at the UM Human Rights Council, in terms of its recognition of the shortcomings in the US, that it’s a difficult issue, that people grapple with it in different ways, but asserting that gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights. That, basically, is the essence of the point that she was making. But that also brought about quite a negative reaction, and an interpretation of it again to mean gay rights or no aid, and in fact aid wasn’t even on the agenda there; it was more about that the US government would support entities who are advancing the rights of LGBT people in different parts of the world. So, I think it easily gets caught up in a kind of rhetorical debate, and I think even with Obama we saw that, right, we saw that reaction of the Kenyan press and international press also, was interesting in its focus on that issue in particular, and in some ways the focus on the LGBT rights issue also lets the Kenyan government off the hook from attention to other human rights issues that are very pressing within Kenya.
Video 7: LGBT Rights: Western Imperialism?
GEMA PÉREZ-SÁNCHEZ: Thank you. Actually, in a way, that leads to another question that we want to bring up because it’s a concern of the special issue we’re discussing, which is, how has Human Rights Watch or you in particular addressed possible accusations that pressing for human rights and specifically LGBT rights is a form of Western imperialism or neo-colonialism in certain parts of the world? How do you address that kind of criticism? And in this specifically, how do you deal with the possible backlash against gender and sexual minorities in countries where this kind of criticism is leveled?
GRAEME REID: That’s a very good question. I mean, on one level I see it by and large as a ruse, because a lot of people who use that argument are using it as a justification for their kind of homophobic policies and those homophobic policies are serving a particular political end. So, I think the one thing we can do is to call them out on that, is to call out a government and to say to Goodluck Jonathan when he passes the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act at a certain point in time, is, Really? This is about corruption scandals, this is about a party divided, about your running for a second term when there was an agreement that you wouldn’t, this is about the insecurity that’s brought about by Boko Haram, so this is a kind of easy win to kind of consolidate around this idea of protecting the nation against this perceived sort of threat, and also to present it as a way of resisting a kind of Western imperialism, which seems like a political strategy there. It’s also similar in Uganda, is the way in which it’s framed, as protecting a kind of national identity, a national sovereignty, the fact that there was a ceremony after the signing of the law that took place in the same venue as the independence celebration, so there’s a kind of way in which the law itself became a marker of national identity. Now, one of the things that we’ve done is in our report that we wrote, which is an unusual report for us in that it wasn’t documenting specific abuses but rather it was looking at the origin of the sodomy laws, so a report called This Alien Legacy, which also looks at the paradox of the fact that many of the laws that continue to exist as reflected in the language, “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” or “the abominable crime of buggery,” all comes from British law, and it’s part of the colonial legacy. So, the process by which what was a colonial imposition becomes a marker of national identity and national sovereignty is an interesting one and it’s not an easy one to answer, but I think part of our role is to point out that contradiction between, well what actually was imposed here? There’s the argument that, well it’s homophobia that’s really been brought, that is the import from the West, not homosexuality; and, of course, it’s a complicated question because it’s a question around identity. And so, you know, it’s self-evident that same-sex practices have existed across time and in different cultures, but the way in which those are understood varies, and it varies also in the West. It’s not as if the West is uniformly accepting of the idea of same-sex relations. But the idea that your identity is based on your sexuality is a relatively recent idea both in the West and elsewhere in the world, and sometimes the reaction is against that, this idea of an identity based on your sexuality around which you organize for certain kinds of rights and certain kinds of civil and legal claims, and that is seen to be something that is recent, a recent development. And, indeed, one could argue that it’s recent in the West, it’s recent elsewhere in the world, that notion of self-linked to identity and sexual identity. But those are developments that are taking place at this time which makes our work interesting and complicated at the same time. And I think again it highlights the importance of working together with local groups, is that one of the accusations of being an outside entity that’s coming in and sort of meddling in the affairs of a country, I think one needs to be cognizant of that and really be careful to really be working in an authentic way with groups who are from that particular country and who are experienced at working on LGBT issues, the language of it, and understanding how we may or may not be helpful in that particular setting. You know, is it useful to have a petition around a particular law at a particular time? Sometimes it may be and other times it might be exactly the wrong thing to do, so one needs to be sensitive to those dynamics, and not work in such a way that it exacerbates an existing problem.
Video 8: “How to Be a Real Gay” and HRW’s Responsibility
BRENNA MUNRO: Okay, so I wanted to press you a little bit, Graeme, on the sort of power that HRW wields as a kind of globally known organization to shape what’s happening on the ground with all of these local organizations, and, you’re not a funder, but you obviously have a lot of clout with governments and so on, to a certain degree, right? And I thought maybe we could relate that question a little bit to your book, How to Be a Real Gay, where you talk about the sort of ideological battle on a very, very local level about self-naming, and whether or not to use these kinds of Western identity terms. So how does that kind of conflict translate into the work that large international human rights groups do?
GRAEME REID: That’s a very, very good question, and I’m going to start with my book and my research, in order to answer the question in that way. So, you’re absolutely right in that what is happening in the examples I use in rural South Africa is, I’m looking at the intersection between quite local ideas between gender and sexuality and a national discussion within South Africa in which LGBT rights have become part of a human rights discussion, and included in the constitution, so there’s a different framing of LGBT rights than in the past, and then also in conversation with what I call a kind of global discussion around LGBT rights, and how that local, national, and international intersects in a particular setting in South Africa. And I focus on a series of workshops in which an activist who is more connected with metropolitan settings, who sees himself as more politically aware and informed than some of his peers, runs a series of workshops on how to be a real gay, and he says to me as a rationale for the workshops is the gays of the small town are accepted but they’re as accepted as women and not as gay, and so this is how to be gay, and so the workshops take place. And one of the striking features of the workshop is a discussion around terminology. And sometimes there’s a moment of recognition when people say, “Ah, so that’s what I am, I’m a butch or I’m a this or I’m a that.” But what I look at is that it’s not a straightforward adopting of other ideas, that the people participating in those workshops are active agents who are using, in a very strategic way, what is seen to be useful and rejecting what is not seen to be appropriate or useful. So, the terms themselves change meaning. What it means to be gay in that workshop, even though the word is the same, is different from what it might mean elsewhere because people have taken it, they’ve adapted it, and they’ve used it for their own purposes. And I also look at the way in which, you know, when the activist says, people are accepted as women and not as gays, there’s a particular form of self-styling, which is a kind of hyper-feminine self-styling, often people who work in a highly competitive informal hair-styling industry, and that puts them at a certain economic edge, they get a sort of social acceptance and economic advantage from a particular form of self-representation. So, I kind of see that as a politics of style, and what that’s in dialogue with is a new politics that’s opened up by the possibilities of the constitution and the rights within that constitution. Now a separate theme that’s in that research is, does the constitution matter to people who are living away from formal organizational structures, for people who are perhaps in their lives never going to access the courts in any formal way, to whom the constitution remains a somewhat abstract entity? And I think the answer is emphatically yes, it does matter, it matters very much, that there are new life possibilities that are made possible by the South African constitution and by the law that were absolutely not possible beforehand, and some of that is just a sense of who you are in the world, and what you can put up with and what you don’t need to put up with. So, a kind of sense of self-assertion because I’m recognized somewhere in that constitution. So that says to me two important things. The one is, it says the law is important, it makes a difference, and that it is helpful to intervene in order to push policy, to push law, to push countries, to adhere to what they’ve already undertaken in terms of the international treaties that they have entered into. So, an organization like Human Rights Watch is able to work on that level in pressing countries, through the UN, and through other regional mechanisms, to adhere to what they’ve already agreed to in terms of their human rights commitments, so that’s one thing. The other thing is, it’s an uneven playing field, but people are not passive recipients of outside ideas, is that they are invariably active agents who are also very aware and strategically engaged on how Human Rights Watch may or may not be useful to them. Now the trick is to be open and receptive and listen to that and to understand where it’s appropriate to be the big international loudmouth organization and where it’s appropriate to be quiet, to be working behind the scenes, to be supportive, to be providing advice and guidance and stepping back and being out of the picture. And I think if you understand, if you both recognize that it’s uneven, is that Human Rights Watch does wield a particular, has an international status and wields a particular form of power, but that that can be useful for a range of different entities provided you are responsive and working in partnership with different groups.
Video 9: LGBT Rights within a Human Rights Framework
BRENNA MUNRO: Well, I was going to follow that up with a question about your personal shift from being very immersed in a particular kind of national and local context in South Africa to your current position where you’re thinking very globally and comparatively. So, what do you think you’ve kind of brought with you from the South African context and what has shifted for you in thinking in a more international frame?
GRAEME REID: You mentioned at the beginning that I was an archivist, so I’m going to take a historic example to answer the question, and it goes right back to 1990, and the first pride march that took place in Johannesburg, which was the first pride march on the continent, and the leader of that pride march was a man called Simon Nkoli, who is a very significant figure in South African LGBT politics and in anti-apartheid politics. And he made a speech at that march, and it was a small march, there were some hundred people gathered, many of whom were too afraid to reveal their identity, a number of people with paper bags with eyes cut out so they wouldn’t be publicly visible, people were very nervous and apprehensive about how it would be received. And he made a speech that essentially said, I’m oppressed as a gay man and I’m oppressed as a black man, and I can’t separate out those two struggles in terms of my life. And, indeed, he didn’t. He was arrested for treason and was part of a very long-term treason trial that included a number of political leaders within South Africa. And in the trial, the question of his sexual orientation came up because it was his alibi, was that he was at a meeting of a gay group at the time in which the fake accusations that were brought by the state, and there was an intense discussion about it amongst the trialists as to whether to acknowledge and include the fact that Simon was gay; some even wanted him to have a separate trial because they felt that the fact of his sexuality would bring the movement into disrepute. And that was, through rigorous debate and discussion, resolved among the trialists, and, ultimately, they decided to include him within that and to stand by him. And, the march unfolded in Johannesburg, it went through the most densely populated area, Hillbrow, in Johannesburg. There was a part at which there was a kind of typical afternoon thunderstorm in Johannesburg, and the paper bags dissolved, but there was a sense of exhilaration at that point that the march had gone off successfully, that there wasn’t any violence, in fact there was a very warm reception from the people on the street, and there was the sense of the possibilities that were opening up at that point in South Africa precisely because the LGBT issue had been included in a broader human rights framework, it was part of the anti-apartheid struggle. So that has left an indelible impression on me, the fact that LGBT rights are part of a broader human rights framework, and hence the appeal of Human Rights Watch is that the LGBT program is part of a broader program in which others recognize the indivisibility of human rights. So, you know, it’s an approach that’s different from exclusively identity-based approach to rights claims because it comes out of that history and that tradition of recognizing rights as being indivisible and reciprocal, is that it’s no point in LGBT groups only worrying about their own interests. That would be impossible in a situation, for example, in South Africa. And so I would say that is the main thing that I’ve learned from my South African experience in terms of doing the work internationally, but having then moved into working more internationally, of course it’s about understanding the complexity and the particularity of each setting in which we work and to try and be as nuanced as possible in the work that we do in different country settings, recognizing that each place has their own history, their own difficulty, their own politics that we need to understand, and to rely very heavily on the groups who are already working in country.
