Being Queer at COP: LGBTQ+ People Risk Their Safety for a More Sustainable Future
By Alyssa Scheiner
As I write, I am reflecting on a weekend glittered with queer joy, art, dancing, and activism. I spent the last few days at Pride events in Boston, and while the revelry brought so much cheer to the city streets, it was also a stark reminder of how celebration and sorrow are often intermingled in the queer community.
Amidst the festivities – people singing, rainbow flags waving, drag queens strutting down the streets — there existed the sobering reality that, in many cities around the world (including in the United States), this kind of freedom, this exuberance, is limited or even criminalized.
When you look at the data, three cities in particular – Sharm el-Sheikh, Dubai, and Baku – were among the places that didn’t have rainbow flags waving this June. And what do all of these cities have in common? They have been or will be the sites of the annual Conference of the Parties (COP), the international meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
This raises red flags around who is able to participate in these high-level negotiations, and whose voices are being further marginalized.
COP27, COP28, and COP29
In Egypt, homosexuality is criminalized, and LGBTQ+ people have been targeted based on their online activity. After COP27 concluded, Big Wind Carpenter, who came to Fletcher this past year as a speaker for the 2023 Conference on Gender and International Affairs, told Atmos that they were taking a risk by traveling to Egypt as a two-spirit person, but they thought the risk was worth it.
However, at COP28 in Dubai, not everyone felt as empowered. At a side event, one speaker asked us to hold space for queer people who couldn’t attend COP because they feared for their safety. If you looked around the venue, there weren’t any visibly queer folk or trans people. This was likely because the UAE criminalizes homosexuality as well as gender expression that is “deemed inappropriate for one’s sex.” In addition to the risk of arrest, deportation, and discrimination, LGBTQ+ attendees at COP28 feared surveillance. France24 reported that a message specifically targeting queer attendees asked “all visitors and residents to respect the UAE's cultural and societal values,” the implicit threat being – conform to the country’s discriminatory standards or risk arrest.
This year, at COP29 in Baku, the cycle continues. While homosexuality is not illegal in Azerbaijan, same-sex marriage is unrecognized and discrimination runs rampant. In 2017, UN experts urged Azerbaijan to take action after “receiving credible reports of human rights abuses against gay and transgender people, including arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment, torture, and forced medical examinations in detention.” This means that this fall, we will once again ask queer people to risk their safety to advocate for a more sustainable future for all. This doesn’t seem very fair.
The Implications
1. Personal Safety of Attendees
After three consecutive years of traveling to countries where LGBTQ+ folks are endangering themselves to advocate for the planet, I am left wondering: whose voices are being heard and whose contributions are being lost simply because of the choice of venue? In this decisive decade, there is no time to waste and missing important perspectives for three years jeopardizes the inclusivity and effectiveness of global efforts.
2. Inclusive Policy Making
This also means that the particular risks that LGBTQ+ people face likely aren’t being discussed and therefore, aren’t being mitigated on the global stage. Reports show that queer people are at greater risk than non-queer people of exposure to the negative impacts of climate change, including increasing pre-existing health disparities, while having fewer resources for climate disaster recovery. The failure to address the unique vulnerabilities of LGBTQ+ communities in climate discourse perpetuates these systemic injustices.
3. Hosting COP in Diverse Locations
So what is to be done? Should we advocate for the COP to only convene in countries that reach a certain threshold of human rights protections? Some activists, like Argentina’s Bruno Rodriguez, don’t think so. He underscores the importance of respecting diverse cultural perspectives and avoiding the imposition of Western-centric human rights approaches while still upholding LGBTQ+ rights.
It is a complicated question: whose dignity do we prioritize, especially with the future of our planet on the line? I don’t have an answer to this question, but I look forward to a COP30 where queer people can advocate for inclusive climate policies as their true and full selves. At least, that’s my hope.
Alyssa Scheiner is a recent graduate of The Fletcher School at Tufts University.