Hope and the LGBTI Movement in 2021
In this episode of The Frontline, we are looking back at the year that was 2021, and what it meant for the LGBTI movement in Europe as we look forward to another year.
It was a year of further lockdowns, of new strains of the COVID virus, and the uncertainty they have brought, and most of all, enormous reverberations of the unprecedented events of 2020 on people’s lives.
At ILGA-Europe, when the pandemic first kicked in, our motto was ‘the work goes on’, and that work most certainly continued apace throughout 2021, with the growth of a perceived east-west divide in Europe over LGBTI rights; infringement procedures taken by the European Commission against Hungary and Poland because of their anti-LGBTI laws and programs; a sharp rise in the demonisation and isolation of trans people from the women’s movement; and an overall rise in authoritarian regimes seeking to instrumentalise LGBTI lives to limit the rights of others.
So, it’s perhaps strange that our guest in this episode, ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director, Evelyne Paradis finds great hope for the LGBTI movement amid the storm. Listen now, and find out why.