Free Bodies, Free Territories Reflections on the Right to Land, Water and Territories for Gender and Sexually Diverse People in Rural Contexts

The panel of agrarian social movement representatives and public officials from Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Paraguay and Colombia all agreed on a key point: no genuine agrarian reform will take place if diversities are not recognized. Gender and sexually diverse peoples must be seen as political subjects with equal rights in public policies for land and agrarian reform.

This is currently not the case. All speakers shared stories of persons who were forced to leave their home and countries due to their identity and fear of stigma, persecution and bodily harm. This pattern of forced migration and exodus is but one expression of the discrimination faced by the queer community in rural areas.

Anuka de Silva from La Via Campesina described that in Sri Lanka, for example, same-sex relationships are still criminalised under a British colonial era law. The anguish of living with an ‘illegal’ identity is compounded by social and cultural norms that prioritise family duty all else, with multiple generations living in the family home. While middle and upper class and caste may have the possibility to escape to cities or abroad, this is not an option for poorer, rural queer folk.

This situation is similarly extremely difficult in the Arab world. While religion is often pointed to as the reason for the discrimination and violence faced by the LGBTQIA+ community, Souad Mahmoud, from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in the Middle East and North Africa region and a traditional olive grower in Tunisia, drew out a more complex analysis rooted in economic inequality, patriarchy, imperialism, and the superstructure of capitalism and neoliberalism.

These dynamics work together to police bodies and intimacy, imposing a narrow vision of the family based on the male/female binary. Any deviation from this binary system is repressed through violence, justified under colonial laws and backed by authoritarian regimes.

Within agencies working on rural development and agrarian policy, the particular struggles faced by queer folk are simply not recognized. Land titling and inheritance laws in countries simply don’t recognize land transfers and rights for gender and sexually diverse people. Bureaucracy is, in this sense, heteronormative, amounting to a form of erasure. What is not named, does, after all, not exist.

Cony Oviedo from La Via Campesina in Paraguay argued that a first step towards a popular and integral agrarian reform that is inclusive of all peoples is to carry out targeted research and to capture the status of this population group in the agrarian and population census. Only then can public policies be developed to support this community.

Zohanny Arboleda, a critical gender studies researcher who also works for the National Land Agency in Colombia agreed that there is an absurd lack of data and knowledge on gender and sexually diverse rural people. While she agreed with the need to develop a diagnostic tool to support this community, this needs to be done carefully as mapping can also be a way of revictimization by the state, especially if public policies do not create safe spaces and expose people to further harm.

There are some bright spots. In the National Land Agency, Zohanny has been part of the team to develop a compass with a set of differentiated indicators to analyse, monitor and evaluate the impact of agrarian policy on the LGBTQIA+ community.

In the face of all these challenges, life for gender and sexually diverse rural people goes on. Feminist resistance allows these communities to exist. Across the MENA region, in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon, informal networks of mutual aid and solidarity collectives have sprung up. In Sri Lanka, a youth uprising against the then government saw younger people, including from rural areas, demand a different, more progressive politics alongside a Pride march, with similar youth uprisings emerging in recent times in Nepal and Bangladesh.

La Via Campesina, the worldwide movement of peasants and agricultural workers, has been a pioneer in building consciousness within its members around the rights of gender and sexual diverse people in the food sovereignty movement and beyond, carrying out trainings and seminars with its members. At its 8th International Conference in Bogotá in 2023, La Via Campesina recognised ‘Diversities’ as an official caucus and space of articulation amongst its members.

The 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum, which brought together over 800 food sovereignty activists from around the world in Kandy, Sri Lanka marked another landmark moment with the organisation of a ‘Gender and Sexual Diversities and Allies’ assembly, explicitly centering LGBTQIA+ rights, intersectionality, and feminist leadership as an integral part of processes towards systemic transformation.

There is still a long way to go before the rights of all peoples to land, water, seeds, forests, and territories are recognized and protected. As Paula Gioia from La Via Campesina concluded the session, “All forms of living and loving are of value. Without free bodies, there are no free territories.”