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The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted populations globally in every aspect of life. While harmful to all, COVID-19 has been especially taxing on marginalized populations. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) populations continue to experience stigma, discrimination, and violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC), and face high barriers in accessing development, experiences which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
The disproportionate impact of COVID on LGBTI populations was evidenced in several civil society reports highlighting numerous pandemic responses that have replicated forms of discrimination, increased social and political inequalities, and reinforced barriers in accessing education, employment, healthcare, food, and shelter, aggravating already existing vulnerabilities and violence faced by LGBTI populations.
Among other measures contributing to increased vulnerability, the following were pervasive: the enactment of selective restrictions against LGBTI persons to peacefully assemble on the basis of COVID spread prevention; limitations and disruptions of HIV prevention and antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs, as well as of access to hormone treatments or gender affirming services; the exclusion of LGBTI populations from humanitarian aid programs, especially for trans and non-binary persons who have been unable to access relief efforts due to not having identification documents reflecting their own identity; higher rates of domestic, family, and intimate partner violence, coupled with decreased support services due to pandemic control measures; and the exclusion of LGBTI populations from social protection measures in an environment of elevated job loss, experiences of greater financial and food insecurity, poverty, and homelessness.
The current health and economic crisis highlight the fundamental need for universal healthcare, social floor, social protection and access to justice measures. Urgent responses are required from States and other stakeholders to end criminalization and pathologization of LGBTI populations, sex work decrease barriers to accessing human development, and to create and implement public policies, laws, and programs that include and address the needs of LGBTI populations and guarantee they are not furthest left behind.
Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic requires an inclusive and intersectional approach to development. These approaches should be free from assumptions of heterocisnormativity, respond to misconceptions and stereotypes that are often used to exclude LGBTI populations from development activities, and must be designed, implemented and evaluated with regard to all, regardless of SOGIESC.
In light of the 2021 theme of HLPF, “Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development", the LGBTI Stakeholder Group calls on all stakeholders to ensure pandemic responses and recovery policies are inclusive of all - including LGBTI populations - and to guarantee that all are free from violence and discrimination in order to promote a sustainable and resilient recovery. Measures adopted by States must comply with principles of equality and non-discrimination, participation, empowerment and accountability, always following a human-rights framework and the inclusion of those most marginalized in all stages of “building back better” to achieve the 2030 Agenda.
