Paper details
| Paper authors | Kate Pincock, Evan Easton-Calabria |
| In panel on | Sexual and gender minorities, humanitarian action and the Triple Nexus |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Over the past twenty years, there has been growing attention to the issue of humanitarian protection for LGBTQI refugees. Yet while the majority of research on LGBTI refugees has historically been undertaken in the global North, over the past decade, the need to offer protection within the global South to people fleeing persecution on the basis of their SOGIE has posed new operational challenges for humanitarian actors. However, despite a body of literature interrogating the principles and practices of humanitarianism in the 21st century, there has been limited critical engagement to date with the concept of protection, nor how this relates to the challenges and in some cases failings of UNHCR and other protection actors to actually keep LGBTQI displaced people safe.
Drawing together key strands of postcolonial critical theory, including post-development, post-humanitarian and post-humanist thinking, this paper argues that refugee protection is premised on problematic assumptions about the scale and temporality of protection activities, as well as what safety means to those who are assigned as objects of protection. It offers alternative visions of humanitarian protection for LGBTQI refugees that draw on the authors' own fieldwork in Kenya and Uganda and notions of feminist care ethics and community organising.
