This new episode zooms in on the invisibilization of certain voices in transitional justice discourse and practice, namely LGBTQIA+ and children’s perspectives, whose lives and experiences have been excluded from most formal and informal transitional justice initiatives.
Our guests, Pascha Bueno-Hansen and Caitlin Biddolph, both conduct research on transitional justice issues from LGBTQIA+, intersectional and decolonial perspectives. Pascha, associate professor at the University of Delaware, works on LGBTQIA+ mobilization and resistance in defense of human rights in Latin America. Caitlin, a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, spoke about one strand of her research that focuses on queering childhood in global transitional justice governance.
Both scholars touch upon how LGBTQIA +, intersectional, and decolonial approaches help problematize and unsettle some of the current assumptions and challenges in transitional justice.
Pascha foregrounds that both the gender and sex binary, as well as the temporally bounded nature of transitional justice, limit our understanding of structural and historical violence against certain populations. This is clear for example, in the erasure of the lived experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community from transitional justice initiatives. Caitlin focuses on the paternalistic and protectionist nature of global transitional justice governance that tends to depict (queer) children as passive victims stripping their agency away and thus reproducing power hierarchies.
They both see opportunities in local intergenerational spaces to dismantle these discourses and practices. Through examples from Latin America, Pascha reflects how artivism paved the way to include LGBTQIA+ issues in transitional justice mechanisms. She also stresses how “younger generations have done such an incredible job of making inroads into inclusive language and preferred gender pronouns. And that is something that the older generations struggle with comprehending”.
Intergenerational dialogues can make global transitional justice more inclusive; Caitlin emphasizes too. She sees this as an opportunity to “stitching together stories across temporalities… of trying to put together the fabric of a country so that we have a more rich and ongoing narrative about injustice and violence and atrocity”. In her view, this has the potential of destabilizing power hierarchies present in global transitional justice institutions and turn them into dialogical and relational processes.
Researchers who are interested in this issue, might want to look into the call to contribute to a special issue by the International Journal of Transitional Justice on “Dissident Genders, Sexualities and Transitional Justice”.
Pascha Bueno-Hansen is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, USA. As an activist-scholar, Bueno-Hansen has been involved in several collaborative projects in solidarity with indigenous women’s and LGBTI resistance struggles in defense of human rights in the Américas over the last two decades. In the Delaware Bay region, she is committed to repairing relations with local Lenape and Nanticoke communities. Her current book project Dissident Genders and Sexualities in the Andes: Interventions in Transitional Justice examines the resistance practices of people of non-normative genders and sexualities to armed conflict, political repression, and authoritarian regimes in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
Caitlin Biddolph is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Caitlin’s primary research focuses on queering global governance, international law, and transitional justice. Her doctoral research explored discourses and logics of gender, sexuality, civilisation, and violence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Caitlin is currently researching the global governance of transitional justice through queer decolonial perspectives. Caitlin’s most recent work has been published in International Journal of Transitional Justice, International Studies Quarterly, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and European Journal of Politics and Gender. Her monograph, Queering Governance and International Law, is out in March 2025 with Oxford University Press.