Description
Over the last year we have worked to demonstrated that while atrocity prevention research has become increasingly intersectional in the last decade, attending to issues of race and gender, there has been no commensurate increase in research on atrocity crimes and hate crimes against queer people. In the interim, we sought to queer atrocity prevention both in terms of focusing on the targeting of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people as part of broader mass atrocity crimes, and in terms of thinking what a ‘queer’ approach to atrocity prevention and justice might look like. There is still a continuing, and increasingly worse, global backlash against LGBTI+ rights within Western countries and in parts of the Global South. In this paper, we explore the relationship between LGBTI+ persecution and atrocity prevention, outlining how states, under pillar one of R2P, have a responsibility to protect their own populations from mass atrocity crimes and their incitement. The aim of this paper is to deepen the conversation about the intersections between R2P and LGBTI+ persecution, with a focus on rising hate crimes and the responsibility of individual states to counter these threats. In order to turn attention of atrocity prevention frameworks to queer persecution and highlight the necessity of state protection of civilians (even queer) under their responsibility to protect, we take two case studies, both underpinned by a homophobic politics informed by Global Right discourse, where there have been marked increases in LGBTI+ oppression, especially of transgender people: The United Kingdom and Italy. Methodologically, to understand what is going on in our empirical sites, we draw on various data sources from traditional policy document analysis to social media, documentaries, and LGBT+ individuals’ personal accounts. The aim of this paper is not only to contribute to academic debates on R2P but also to wider policy discussions on the implementation of atrocity prevention frameworks at ‘home’ at the national level.
