Pride Month June 2022
Pride Month 2022 | Statement of Solidarity
Celebrated every year in honor of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, the month of June witnesses millions across the globe come together to celebrate and thereby socially accommodate the manifold gender and sexual identities. Evolving from “the gay community” to LGBT to now LGBTQIA+, the semantics of adding alphabets have stood for the creation of spaces that accommodate the broad spectrum of gender and sexual identities. Hand in hand have been assertions of queerness that refuse capture. To further a meaningful social justice and inclusion for the LGBTQIA+ community requires us all to realise the importance of the participation of gender and sexual minorities in peacebuilding work.
Despite increasing importance given to gender inclusivity, histories of gender and sexual minorities as stakeholders in the field of peace work have been largely forgotten. As gender continues to be understood in the binary terms of men and women, the experiences and perspectives of entire groups are still too often left out of the peacebuilding measures. Peace will be a mirage as long as certain sections of society continue to be marginalized and discriminated against. Furthermore, the inclusion of all perspectives will help us understand how heteronormative constructs are closely related to violent conflicts. This knowledge will in turn, strengthen peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
The pride month celebrations are an opportunity for us to reflect on this as there remains a lot to be done. From our alumni across the world to thousands of others who have met us in this journey of peace and transformation, we pledge that we stand with the core values of IofC that advocate for safe spaces with no place for discrimination.
This Pride Month, we stand in solidarity with the struggles of the LGBTQIA+ community of the world, especially colleagues contributing in the field of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The beauty of living is not found merely in uniformity but in the variety of colors the world has to offer. So, let’s expand our knowledge and understanding of others and embrace every color of the spectrum of life.
In solidarity,