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Queer rights activism has come a long way in Georgia, but faced with rising homo­pho­bia, coop­er­a­tion within the movement is crucial now more than ever.

Two important things happened for the LGBT community last year in Georgia. First, we had our first ever openly lesbian candidate running for office — a seat on the Tbilisi City Council. Second, the Repub­li­can Party published a policy document proposing same-sex civil part­ner­ships.

Both of these ini­tia­tives have faced criticism, with accu­sa­tions that the Repub­li­cans are simply pandering to more pro­gres­sive voters, (though def­i­nite­ly not to the country’s con­ser­v­a­tive majority) or that civil part­ner­ships are a dis­trac­tion from more important issues. But whatever their value, it is undoubt­ed­ly clear that queer rights activism in Georgia has born fruit, and may now be entering a new and crucial stage.

But there is still a long way to go. According to a number of polls, the level of homo­pho­bia is increas­ing from year to year, and every third member of the LGBT community faces physical violence because of their sexual ori­en­ta­tion or gender identity. Surveys conducted by several organ­i­sa­tions (CRRC, NDI, ACT) in the last decade or so show that attitudes towards LGBT people are extremely negative, with over 90% of respon­dents saying they do not approve of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

But this homo­pho­bic envi­ron­ment is not the only obstacle facing Georgia’s LGBT movement today — internal issues within the movement are also holding us back.

The NGOisation of human rights

Following the dis­so­lu­tion of the Soviet Union, Western countries invested in devel­op­ing gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures and civil society in Georgia. In order to guarantee account­abil­i­ty, groups that wanted access to financial support had to register as NGOs. This meant that human rights activism in inde­pen­dent Georgia was born in an insti­tu­tion­alised form.

Together with strong allies in other human rights groups, queer NGOs have achieved a lot, including a higher degree of mobil­i­sa­tion in the LGBT community (recently stretch­ing into the regions as well), and improve­ments to leg­is­la­tion, as well as better imple­men­ta­tion of the law. Col­lec­tion and analysis of data about the situation for queer people in the country has also become regular, and the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the movement has increased.

But the movement has also grown frag­ment­ed.

Since NGOs represent the bulk of our movement, they are able to establish contact with gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures. This also means they have a high degree of access to Georgia’s inter­na­tion­al partners, such as the UN, EU, and others.

But this also means they have had to learn to compete for resources amongst each other and with our allies, and are limited in their choice of tools and methods.  There are currently four community based LGBT organ­i­sa­tions in Georgia, and despite using similar tools to improve the situation of LGBT people in the country, we have still not mastered the art of coop­er­a­tion.

This is one reason community empow­er­ment is not applied sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, and this harms the creation of safe spaces for social­i­sa­tion, mental health assis­tance, and dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion on gender and sexuality.

Most inter­na­tion­al donors believe that the state should be the main service provider, which means the movement finds it difficult to fund such services. But neither the gov­ern­ment nor society is ready to commit funding for such purposes.

Without more focus on providing services and empow­er­ing the community, the impor­tance of the work we do in lobbying, advocacy, and lit­i­ga­tion loses much of its relevance, espe­cial­ly to those facing violence and dis­crim­i­na­tion on a daily basis.

In other words, we end up having improved leg­is­la­tion but very few community members ready to apply it. It’s clear that this can be remedied only with more focus on building sol­i­dar­i­ty and sharing resource within the community.

Grassroots activism

NGOs, by their very nature, are limited in their political choices and often have to avoid forms of activism that are perceived as more radical or risky. These can include more aggres­sive­ly calling out politi­cians, crit­i­cis­ing donor policies, and even occupying buildings, mostly when it comes to conflicts with the private sector or states insti­tu­tions.

The situation started changing in 2011, when the Inde­pen­dent Group of Feminists was founded. This was the first vocal feminist group to refuse to register as an NGO, precisely to avoid the lim­i­ta­tions described above.

Nowadays, we see many other groups following a similar strategy, groups like the Young Greens and Women’s Gaze often include LGBT issues on their agenda.

This diversity of movements is good, as it leads to a higher degree of mobil­i­sa­tion and makes the processes more hor­i­zon­tal.

This has seen some positive results, with the 2017 demon­stra­tion on Inter­na­tion­al Day Against Homo­pho­bia, Trans­pho­bia, and Biphobia on 17 May being a great example.

After peaceful demon­stra­tions in 2012 and 2013 were attacked, we have been strug­gling to reclaim the space shame­less­ly taken away from us by the Orthodox Church and con­ser­v­a­tive groups.

Over the following years we have endured many more such insults, and I believe that they hurt enough for NGOs (both community based and general human rights groups), indi­vid­ual activists, and feminist col­lec­tives came together to co-organise the demon­stra­tion in 2017.

The demon­stra­tion itself, with all its security measures and lim­i­ta­tions, is a different topic entirely, but what’s important here is that so many different groups came together in planning the event. This sent a clear message to society at large and to each other within the movement, that such crucial issues cannot be limited to the agenda of one or two human rights groups. This should be a common effort.

What comes next

It’s clear that we all need to under­stand that there is ulti­mate­ly no right form of activism, and different strate­gies and tactics can and should co-exist. But one thing is absolute­ly crucial — we need to com­mu­ni­cate and coor­di­nate with each other. While such con­ver­sa­tions do take place, they need to become a systemic part of our agenda-setting.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills in our country, whether in civil society or in public spaces, are not the strongest, and we need to see how damaging it is to talk to each other in a way that fragments the movement instead of con­sol­i­dat­ing it. With more and more empowered citizens willing to get involved in standing up for their rights, and for the rights of others, we need to put up a united front against hate.

Obviously, we all have different ideas about the best ways to continue the fight, but whatever form this takes, we need to talk to each other. We have worked hard for the space to open up and for some room to breathe — now what we need to do, is to fight on together.

The opinions expressed in this article are author's alone, and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of OC Media’s editorial board. The article was amended on 17 February 2018.

 

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