Fighting invisibility at the intersection of sexuality, gender and race: A queer postcolonial analysis of international human rights law

The international human rights of sexually and gender diverse people are subject to considerable political and academic controversy, despite these groups being subjected to violence and discrimination all over the world. Central to these controversies are the rights of non-western sexually and gender diverse peoples, with both conservative and radical voices converging, for different reasons, on the inapplicability of human rights to these groups. However, these debates have not sufficiently considered the only human rights mechanism specialised in the protection of sexual and gender diversity, that is the UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (IE) and have largely been conducted without the benefit of the application of queer postcolonial critique. This thesis examines the protection of non-western sexually and gender diverse people using queer postcolonial approaches to critically analyse the IE on sexual orientation and gender identity. To do so, I explore literature using both queer and postcolonial theory to identify specific analytical insights into the way that non-western people are excluded and marginalised. These insights will then be applied to the IE in two ways. Firstly, I examine the challenges and opportunities the IE faces to address the specific situation of non-western sexually and gender diverse people. Secondly, I apply these queer postcolonial insights using a deconstructive methodology to analyse the treatment of non-western sexually and gender diverse people by the IE when examining and interpreting human rights in the annual reports. From this analysis, I conclude that despite the IE having the opportunity to address the situation of non-western peoples, western approaches to sexuality and gender are privileged in the human rights interpretations contained in the reports effectively excluding non-western sexually and gender diverse peoples from consideration.