DIVA spoke to a number of trailblazers at the ILGA World Conference about the key challenges the community is facing
BY ELLA GAUCI
Cape Town was rich in diversity as global activists gathered for the ILGA World Conference (11-15 November), held in Century City, South Africa. The conference hosted LGBTQIA organisations from around the world in an act of solidarity. A lesbian pre-conference was hosted on 12 November which consisted of the official launch of the Global Lesbian* Coalition (GL*C).
While this pre-conference was full of excitement about the launch, the future of LBQ rights has not always been as hopeful in recent years. For Ilaria Todde, Advocacy Director at The EuroCentralAsian Lesbian Community (EL*C), the current slide to the right globally is concerning. “For me, there is a real issue surrounding political backlash. We are seeing this rise of the far right everywhere. Many elections around the world are showing this.”
“We’ve seen that when the far right is in power there is a clear political backlash as we saw in Italy last summer. It took them six months to attack lesbian mothers when they took away the birth certificates of the children of lesbian mothers. We are one of the populations that get targeted. Especially if it has to do with women’s bodies. There is a worry that this political backlash will not stop. The question is: how do we create this solidarity link?”
Researchers have witnessed an increase in anti-rights funding in Africa, with mostly US evangelical organisations giving a total of 16 million USD between 2019-2022. Global solidarity between LBQ movements remains vital as more countries in Africa are being hit with anti-homosexuality laws. Gloria, the programs director of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG), sees these cross-continental connections as being vital for sustaining initiatives. “Collaborating with other LBQ movements helps to build that solidarity. ILGA World 2024, and the country it was hosted in, felt like Pride for me. At home, I have to censor myself. It felt so good for me to be able to openly express myself as a lesbian and wear my rainbow bracelet. Seeing lesbian women from around the world reaching out to support us and coming through for the lesbian pre-con is just a very beautiful feeling.”
The GL*C has already shown its commitment to this global solidarity at the first Lesbian Quryltai in Kazakhstan earlier this year. However, this event nearly didn’t take place. Anti-gender activists tried their best to stop the conference, despite the fact that it was merely to discuss ecological matters. However, they did not succeed, and the event continued.
For Zhanar Sekerbayeva, a member of the Central Asian Feminist LBQT Network Anora (Anora Network), this is why the GL*C is so vital right now: “For us, being in the Global Lesbian Coalition is essential because we would like our voices to be heard on the international level. It is essential in advocacy, networking, and finding new ways of stable and long-term fundraising. LBQT women’s organisations are not funded properly. We’re in this Coalition as all equal networks. It’s a historical moment.”
Cristina Gonzalez Hurtado–La Pochi, Co-founder and Coordinator of the LESLAC Network The Network of Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean (LESLAC) pointed out the importance of securing funding: “There is a huge lack of funding for lesbian organisations in our region. We noticed that our movement was dwindling and dwindling. In the 1990s there were a lot of lesbian organisations in Latin America, but by 2010 almost all of them had disappeared. At LESLAC we want to advocate for lesbians in the region, produce knowledge and collect data to support advocacy work, recover the memory and give value to the contributions of lesbian activism in Abya Yala.”
For Cristina, being one of the regional networks that make up the Coalition “is about saving lives through solidarity and sisterhood”. In May of this year, three lesbian women were burned alive in a Buenos Aires hotel, attacked because of their lesbian identity. Cristina hopes that GL*C can continue to denounce lesbicides and acts of LesboBiphobia. “The Coalition is a living and coordinated hope to seek justice. Finally lesbians and our work is being seen, thanks to the articulated work of this Coalition.”
Jean Chong, a member of The Asia Feminist LBQ Network (AFLN), knows this to be true: “We are invisible. We are a ground-up initiative. One of the struggles for LBQ is that we have no money. There are several things that we work on like research and feminist building. We are excited to use this global platform. Asia is excited about the Global Lesbian Coalition. We have been invisible for too long. There is a lot of pent-up demand.”
Around the world, creating open conversations between organisations has never been so crucial. At a time when LGBTQIA rights are being threatened on a global scale, bringing together organisations at events like the ILGA World Conference can show the power in numbers.
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