The "Being LGBT in Asia" Project: Understanding and Navigating the LGBT Rights Backlash in Southeast Asia

From 2012 to 2017, USAID, UNDP, and the Embassy of Sweden collaborated on a groundbreaking initiative to support the LGBT populations across Asia. Working through local NGOs, and engaging national and regional institutions, the project entitled “Being LGBT in Asia” advocated for LGBT protective laws and policies and attempted to generate lasting networks and partnerships amongst the LGBT community in the region. Many successes for the LGBT community have emerged in tandem, or perhaps because of, this project. The creation of regional LGBT NGOs, recognition of gay partnerships and gender changes in the law, and new challenges to anti-sodomy laws, all took place in Asia at the same time or since the project. But a backlash emerged as well. Some have argued that by the end of the project, negative attitudes by governmental and conservative organizations towards LGBT people have become more solidified and intense, couched in the language of “Western hegemony [and] moral corruption” (Yulius, 2016; see also, Altmon and Symons, 2015). Public leaders in nearly all the countries the project was active in have now espoused anti-LGBT rhetoric, with such leaders even going so far as claiming that LGBT rights are part of a larger “proxy war” being fought in the region (ibid.). Now that it has been five years since the completion of the “Being LGBT in Asia” project, this paper will review the project’s successes and failures through interviews with its organizers, non-governmental partners, and regional government officials, focusing on the impact in the Southeast Asian countries of ASEAN. The paper will also explore the project's legacy over the past few years considering the growing backlash against LGBT rights. Ultimately, this paper hopes to explore the role of the “Being LGBT in Asia” project in the global push LGBT rights, the backlash it has become enmeshed in, and lessons for future international organizations and partnerships aiming to advance gender equality and a strengthening of human rights laws throughout the world. References: Yulius, Hendri (2016) “The War on Homosexuality,” New Mandala. September 30. Altman, Dennis & Jonathan Symons (2015) The Queer Wars. UK: Polity