Reporting on the new SOGI Independent Expert

This summer the UN Human Rights Council voted to appoint a person to look into homophobic and transphobic violence. An important moment! But as you can imagine, there was much maneuvering to even get the appointment and it comes with certain restrictions, not the least of which is a limit to a three year term. In my piece for The Establishment 'The U.N. Just Created A New Position For LGBTQ Rights — Is It Enough?' I interview a number of people about the expectations and possibilities riding on the new position from activists and academics alike.

This piece gets at the challenging policy and practice nexus. While there is now policy prioritizing looking at LGBTQ issues, how this translates to practice depends on a number of questions: Who will decide which issues to address with a literal world full off problems to examine? How will local, national and international organizations communicate about these issues? And perhaps the question top of mind right now: who will be appointed as the new independent expert?

The new independent expert will report back to the UN at the end of each year of their term. With that in mind, in a year's time this role may prove an important test in terms of what type of leverage the global human rights community is able to exert for vulnerable LGBTQ individuals around the world.