Why do unthreatening social groups become targets of state repression? Repression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is especially puzzling since sexual minorities, unlike many ethnic minorities, pose no credible violent challenge to the state. This article contends that revolutionary governments are disproportionately oppressive toward sexual minorities for strategic and ideological reasons. Since revolutions create domestic instability, revolutionaries face unique strategic incentives to target ‘unreliable’ groups and to demonstrate an ability to selectively punish potential dissidents by identifying and punishing ‘invisible’ groups. Moreover, revolutionary governments are frequently helmed by elites with exclusionary ideologies – such as communism, fascism and Islamism – which represent collectivities rather than individuals. Elites adhering to these views are thus likely to perceive sexual minorities as liberal, individualistic threats to their collectivist projects. Statistical analysis using original data on homophobic repression demonstrates that revolutionary governments are more likely to target LGBT individuals, and that this effect is driven by exclusionary ideologues. Case study evidence from Cuba further indicates that the posited strategic and ideological mechanisms mediate the relationship between revolutionary government and homophobic repression.

/pdf/revolutionary-homophobia-explaining-state-repression-against-3jfdlg0cna.pdf

Revolutionary Homophobia: Explaining State Repression against Sexual Minorities

This study revisits the effect of aid on the quality of institutions and examines the effects of a major source of instability, namely terms-of-trade instability, on the quality of democracy. We take advantage of previous empirical findings which explain

Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy

Although authoritarian regimes often repress the rights of women, many autocrats have committed to international treaties protecting women’s human rights. Scholars have typically overlooked this engagement, focusing instead on autocrats’ commitment (and violation) of treaties protecting civil, political, and physical integrity rights. Yet existing explanations for autocrats’ ratification of these treaties—such as appeasing domestic opposition groups—do not necessarily apply to women’s rights (von Stein 2013). As authoritarian international law is increasingly viewed as an important area of study (Ginsburg 2020), scholars should explore how authoritarian regimes navigate participation regarding women’s rights issues, including their engagement with the main women’s rights treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). After taking a closer look at how autocracies shape, commit, and challenge women’s rights internationally, we suggest several research directions to build this area of study.

Looking beyond Ratification: Autocrats’ International Engagement with Women’s Rights

The essay problematizes the incorporation of LGBTI rights promotion into the US and EU foreign policies. First, the paper examines the two actors’ key documents, speeches, and policies devoted to the promotion of LGBTI rights abroad, the similarities and differences between the two actors’ approaches, attending to the tendencies of their evolution and the ongoing development. Second, the article discusses the internal conditions in target countries that are conducive to the success and failure of international support of LGBTI rights. Finally, the study makes a critical overview of the measures that are argued to be necessary to increase the efficiency of LGBTI rights promotion in countries with most negative current trends in and/or poorest records on LGBTI rights.

https://repositorio.ual.pt/bitstream/11144/3232/5/pt_vol8_n2_art06.pdf

Promotion of LGBTI rights overseas: an overview of EU and US experiences

Why do some human rights treaties receive rapid and near universal commitment from states while others take decades for the majority of states to ratify? We analyze new data that code every provision of ten global human rights treaties for the strength and precision of the obligations they contain. We classify obligations that are strong, precise, and that require domestic action as “demanding.” We hypothesize that treaties containing more of these demanding obligations would be seen as more costly to ratify because they imply potentially greater policy adaptation or compliance costs. Event history analyses are consistent with that hypothesis. The addition of 15 demanding treaty obligations decreases the likelihood of ratification by over 20 percent, similar to the effect of moving from democracy to autocracy. This effect is consistent when controlling for various treaty, state, and global level factors that may also influence a state’s decision to ratify.

Do Human Rights Treaty Obligations Matter for Ratification

Abstract International relations scholars have noted the importance of negotiations and socialization in shaping state human rights. So far, we know surprisingly little about how negotiation participation shapes human rights practices. I argue that human rights treaty negotiations socialize states in important ways through repeated interactions in a formal institutional structure. Focusing on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, I test whether negotiating states improved, worsened, or made no changes in their rights practices. Using data on UN negotiation participation, I found states negotiating the treaties contributed to positive human rights practices. This finding was the strongest around 10 years after treaty creation, although it was significant decades after treaty creation. The finding held against robustness checks. This research contributes to the study of human rights law, compliance, and socialization within international organizations.

Negotiated rights: UN treaty negotiation, socialization, and human rights

The LGBT community is explicitly targeted in many areas of the world through discriminatory state policies and practices including lengthy imprisonment and death. Research examining the relationship between foreign aid and human rights conditions has yet to fully situate gay rights within the aid allocation relationship. In 2011, President Obama issued a memo directing U.S. foreign aid policy to explicitly take gay rights levels into consideration in aid allocation. This article begins to explore the effect, if any, of the policy change. This article traces gay rights practices and U.S. foreign aid amounts from 2009-2014 in Uganda and Nigeria. The descriptive analysis sheds light on the relationship between gay rights and foreign aid during a time of foreign aid policy change. Through these two cases, I find that U.S. foreign aid increased slightly over time while violence and policies against the LGBT population worsened in Nigeria and Uganda. In conclusion, I call for future research to further explore the relationship between foreign aid, development, and gay rights. INTRODUCTION “The very first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that, ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ All human beings – not some, not most, but all. No one gets to decide who is entitled to human rights and who is not.” (United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki –Moon, December 11 2012) The international community increasingly recognizes gay rights as an intrinsic part of human rights. The above quote highlights the United Nations expansion of the definition of human rights to include all groups and all peoples. Some states actively oppose the inclusion of gay rights issues into the definition of human rights. Islamic majority states in particular maintain that human rights as a concept does not extend to sexual orientation and gender identity. Despite opposition of some states, the trend in global attitudes, policies, and rhetoric is towards the advancement of gay rights. The landmark 1994 Toonen v. Australia decision ruled the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies to issues of sexual orientation discrimination and prompted Australia to expand its domestic laws towards the recognition of gay rights. The United Nations launched the Free & Equal Campaign focusing specifically on the promotion of gay rights globally. The U.S. made moves to expand its recognition of gay rights internationally as well. The U.S. shifted from being silent through abstention during a 2008 United Nations General Assembly statement decriminalizing homosexuality to vocally supporting and promoting gay rights in 2011. In 2011, the U.S. sent a clear message in support of gay rights at the international stage. Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for recognition of gay rights as human rights. In doing so, they called for the United States to use its position as global hegemon to promote gay rights around the world. To that end, President Obama directed that U.S. foreign aid be used to advance gay rights. One way for a state to reward other states with good human rights records is to increase foreign aid. Academic research has analyzed whether human rights practices do, in fact, determine what The Journal of International Relations, Peace and Development Studies A publication by Arcadia University and the American Graduate School in Paris 101, boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris – France Tel: +33(0)1 47 20 00 94 – Fax: +33 (0)1 47 20 81 89 Website: www.ags.edu (Please cite this paper as the following: Audrey Comstock (2016). Gay Rights and U.S. Foreign Aid: A Look at Nigeria and Uganda. The Journal of International Relations, Peace and Development Studies. Volume 2. Available from: http://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/agsjournal/vol2/iss1/2) Page 2 states receive U.S. foreign aid. Findings have been weak in support of any such connection. Given the growing recognition of gay rights as human rights and the 2011 U.S. policy shift linking U.S. foreign aid to gay rights practices, the relationship between aid allocation and gay rights practices merits a closer look. In doing so, this article builds upon earlier research in international relations that focuses on foreign aid allocation by adding the new dimension of gay rights practices to the broader concept of human rights. This article centers on two related questions 1) Has foreign aid policy change resulted in changed foreign aid allocation? 2) Does the relationship between U.S. foreign aid and gay rights practices mirror that between foreign aid and human rights more broadly, or is there a new relationship that is unique to gay rights? The article begins by briefly reviewing the existing literature on foreign aid and human rights. Next, I discuss U.S. positions on foreign aid and human rights over time highlighting the changes between the Ford, Carter, and Obama administrations, which culminated in the 2011 policy change linking gay rights with foreign aid. This is not an exhaustive discussion but provides a framework through which to compare changes in policy overtime. Next, I examine gay rights conditions before and after the 2011 policy change by looking specifically at the cases of Nigeria and Uganda. The result of these case studies reveals that gay rights conditions did not noticeably affect U.S. foreign aid amounts. In fact, foreign aid remained stable or actually increased in Nigeria and Uganda while conditions worsened for gay individuals. I conclude by situating the findings of this study in foreign aid and human rights scholarship more broadly and discussing future directions for research in the area of gay rights and foreign aid. THE LITERATURE: DO HUMAN RIGHTS CONDITIONS DETERMINE AID AMOUNTS? Within scholarly research, a debate exists about how effective foreign aid can be and what the relationship is between human rights and foreign aid is. While scholars find some support for a correlation between foreign aid and human rights, the direction, size, significance, and factors affecting said relationships varies greatly among studies and even within the same study. Some of the reasons that research continues to offer an unclear image of the relationship between rights and aid allocated has to do with time period, states examined, methods used, what specific types of rights are included (civil and political vs. physical integrity rights), and what kind of foreign aid is measured (military vs. economic vs. other types). This section highlights the varying arguments and findings for both of positions on the relationship between aid and human rights – that positive human rights conditions result in more foreign aid or that worse human rights conditions result in more foreign aid. For a more exhaustive discussion of literature on human rights and foreign aid see Apodaca and Stohl 1999. A Positive Relationship: Good Human Rights can lead to More Foreign Aid Prompted by the Carter Administration policy linking aid to human rights practices, there was a notable increase in scholarly research on U.S. foreign aid allocation in the 1980s. Early research was supportive of the role of human rights in determining aid allocation. These studies frequently argued, and found support for the argument that a state’s human rights practices were a significant indicator for how much foreign aid the state would receive. Even studies that offer some support for this argument depict a complex story of how aid allocation works. 1 e.g. Lebovic and Voeten 2009 and see Poe 1990 for a comprehensive review of earlier studies on human rights and US foreign aid. The Journal of International Relations, Peace and Development Studies A publication by Arcadia University and the American Graduate School in Paris 101, boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris – France Tel: +33(0)1 47 20 00 94 – Fax: +33 (0)1 47 20 81 89 Website: www.ags.edu (Please cite this paper as the following: Audrey Comstock (2016). Gay Rights and U.S. Foreign Aid: A Look at Nigeria and Uganda. The Journal of International Relations, Peace and Development Studies. Volume 2. Available from: http://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/agsjournal/vol2/iss1/2) Page 3 The gate-keeping model suggested that human rights conditions did not determine whether or not states received aid, but human rights conditions did influence the amount of aid received. The model only focused on the determinants of U.S. foreign aid allocated in fiscal year 1982 to Latin American states. Although critiqued, notably by McCormick and Mitchell, the Cingranelli and Pasquarello finding has been supported to some extent by later works. iii Subsequent research expanded the analysis beyond the time of the 1980s and location of Latin America. For example, Trumbull and Wall found a positive relationship between human rights levels and aid allocation. iv Neumayer found that states with better and improving human rights practices received more bilateral foreign aid. v There appears to be some consensus on the difference that comes in analyzing economic aid versus military aid. In examining allocation of economic aid during the Carter and Reagan administrations, Poe found that human rights conditions were important in U.S. aid allocation. vi Apodaca and Stohl also concluded that human rights conditions mattered in determining the allocation of economic, but not military, aid, but that human rights are not the only or most important variable in explaining aid allocation. vii Together, these studies suggest that human rights can, at times, determine some types of U.S. foreign aid allocation. A Questionable Relationship: Worse Human Rights lead to More Foreign Aid Despite the research discussed in the prior section, numerous studies support the argument that positive human rights do not result in increased foreign aid. These studies point to the finding that the U.S. sends more aid to states with worse human rights practices. Meerni

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Gay Rights and U.S. Foreign Aid: A Look at Nigeria and Uganda

ABSTRACT In 2017, to address the increasingly visible and prevalent occurrence of peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of civilians under their protection, the UN Secretary-General created a Voluntary Compact on state behaviour. As of 2020, 103 states signed the agreement. Building on the robust literatures of human rights law, sexual abuse, and conflict, I examine whether signing the Voluntary Compact has any relationship with the levels of reported abuse, punishing accused SEA perpetrators, and funding victim relief efforts. Through quantitative analysis of annual reports of reports of SEA and punishment actions from the UN Conduct in Field Missions unit 2007–2019, I find that Troop Contributing Countries that signed were more likely to issue national-level punishments in cases of severe abuse and to contribute to victim funding. However, there is not a clear finding of any reduction of reported abuse following signature. I conclude by discussing the Voluntary Compact as a mixed-success story for soft international law so far. Given its lack of teeth, this finding is important as the UN and other international organisations continue to prevent and punish peacekeeper SEA and use nonbinding international law.

The UN voluntary compact and peacekeeping abuse: assessing a soft law solution for sexual exploitation and abuse

Can commitment to international human rights law promote human rights when the commitment is not yet legally binding? I argue that treaty signature can be used by non-governmental organizations and other rights actors to mobilize around rights standards and hold states accountable in the lead up to binding treaty ratification. Using the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) as a case, I argue that CEDAW signature can have a positive impact on women’s rights. I find overall support for the argument that, following signature, states are significantly and positively associated with higher women’s rights. The findings hold across numerous robustness checks. Using an illustrative case of CEDAW signature and mobilization in the United States, I demonstrate that activists drew on the treaty following signature in the absence of ratification. The argument and results contribute to the study of international law and women’s rights mobilization, highlighting the importance of signature commitment as a tool for advancing women’s rights in advance of treaty ratification.

/pdf/signing-cedaw-and-womens-rights-human-rights-treaty-vw2ojrp8.pdf

Signing CEDAW and Women’s Rights: Human Rights Treaty Signature and Legal Mobilization

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