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ABSTRACT
In 1976, two people’s tribunals took place which considered issues relating to non-normative sexuality. ‘People’s tribunals’ are civil society initiatives that assert a popular jurisdiction which operates outside of both the state and international institutions. In Brussels, there was the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, which treated ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ as a crime. On the other side of the world, in Sydney, there was the Tribunal on Homosexuals and Discrimination. These people’s tribunals are sometimes treated as forerunners to later developments relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights in international law. In this paper, by contrast, I engage in a queer reading of the Brussels and Sydney Tribunals, whereby I consider how the legal framings and procedures adopted by the two tribunals diverged from the LGBTI rights framework that would later develop. In doing so, my aim is to shine a light on alternative, queerer legal possibilities, as well as to open up a conversation about using people’s tribunals as a mode of queer activism into the future.
Acknowledgments
“I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this special issue, Bérénice Kafui Schramm, Lena Holzer, Juliana Santos De Carvalho and Manon Beury, for their insightful and detailed suggestions. My thanks also to Dianne Otto, Tim Lindgren, Danish Sheikh, Odette Mazel, Siddarth Narrain, Jake Goldenfein, Caitlin Biddolph and Anna Hood for our discussions and feedback on this paper at its different stages. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Law Dis/Oriented Conference hosted by the Graduate Institute of Geneva in 2021, the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH)/ McKenzie Scholars' Workshop hosted by Melbourne Law School in 2022, and the Feminist, Queer, and Decolonial Approaches to Security, Law, and Human Rights workshop hosted by the University of Sydney in 2022. I thank the organisers and participants for their helpful questions and comments. I am also grateful to Peter de Waal AM, Dr Michèle Alexander and The New School Archives and Special Collections for their permission to use the images in this article.”
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Ratna Kapur, ‘The (Im)Possibility of Queering International Human Rights Law’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018) 132.
2 Ibid 138–141; Matthew Waites, ‘Critique of “Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity” in Human Rights Discourse: Global Queer Politics Beyond the Yogyakarta Principles’ (2009) 51 Contemporary Politics 137.
3 Rahul Rao, ‘Global Homocapitalism’ (2015) 194 Radical Philosophy 38.
4 Kapur (n 1) 133–7.
5 Ryan Richard Thoreson, ‘The Queer Paradox of LGBTI Human Rights’ (2011) 6 InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 1, 27.
6 Teemu Ruskola, ‘Gay Rights versus Queer Theory: What Is Left of Sodomy after Lawrence v. Texas?’ (2005) 23 Social Text 236, 242.
7 Aeyal Gross, ‘Homoglobalism: The Emergence of Global Gay Governance’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2017).
8 Dianne Otto, ‘Resisting the Heteronormative Imaginary of the Nation-State: Rethinking Kinship and Border Protection’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2017) 242.
9 Dianne Otto, ‘Impunity in a Different Register: People’s Tribunals and Questions of Judgment, Law, and Responsibility’ in Karen Engle, Zinaida Miller and DM Davis (eds), Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press 2016) 316.
10 In using people’s tribunals to seek out alternative international imaginaries, I am influenced by the doctoral work of Tim Lindgren, as summarised in Tim Lindgren, ‘Congealing the “Air” of International Investment Law: Jurisdiction, Race and Capital’, Heidelberg Journal of International Law (forthcoming, 2023).
11 App. No. 7525/76 (ECtHR, 22 October 1981).
12 Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Harvard University Press 2003) 88.
13 Robert Gildea and James Mark, ‘Introduction’ in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring (eds), Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt (Oxford University Press 2013) 1.
14 Suri (n 12) 164.
15 Robert Gildea, James Mark and Niek Pas, ‘European Radicals and the “Third World”: Imagined Solidarities and Radical Networks, 1958–73’ (2016) 8 Cultural and Social History 449.
16 Marianne Maeckelbergh, ‘The Road to Democracy: The Political Legacy of “1968”’ (2011) 56 International Review of Social History 301, 304–308.
17 Otto (n 9) 292.
18 Tor Krever, ‘Remembering the Russell Tribunal’ (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 483.
19 Ibid 486–7.
20 Ibid 489.
21 Umberto Tulli, ‘Wielding the Human Rights Weapon against the American Empire: The Second Russell Tribunal and Human Rights in Transatlantic Relations’ (2021) 19 Journal of Transatlantic Studies 215.
22 On how the counterculture paved the way for the gay and women’s liberation movements, see Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (Angus and Robertson 1972) 149.
23 Diana Russell and Nicole Van de Ven, Crimes against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal (Les Femmes 1976) 7.
24 Quoted in ibid 5.
25 Ibid 5.
26 Ibid 6.
27 Ibid 67, 76.
28 Ibid 161.
29 Peter de Waal, A Review of the 1976 Tribunal on Homosexuals and Discrimination (The Tribunal Working Group 1994) 2.
30 Ibid 3.
31 Ibid 5.
32 Angela Serrano, ‘Archer Asks: Allan Clarke and the First Nations History of Mardi Gras’ Archer Magazine (Online, 1 March 2018) <https://archermagazine.com.au/2018/03/archer-asks-allan-clarke-first-nations-history-mardi-gras/> accessed 5 Feb 2023.
129 de Waal (n 29) 1. I am grateful to Peter de Waal AM for permission to use this image.
33 Kirby in de Waal (n 29) v.
34 Communication No. 488/1992 (4 April 1994).
35 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge 1990); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Duke University Press 1993); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press 2008).
36 See, in particular, Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol 1: An Introduction (Robert Hurley tr, Pantheon 1980).
37 JK Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (University of Minnesota Press 2006) xxxi–xxxii.
38 Caitlin Biddolph, ‘Queering Temporalities of International Criminal Justice: Srebrenica Remembrance and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)’ (2020) 29 Griffith Law Review 401, 408.
39 Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Duke University Press 2010) xiii. See also Anthony Langlois, ‘Queer Temporalities and Human Rights’ in Kathryn McNeilly and Ben Warwick (eds), The Times and Temporalities of International Human Rights Law (Hart Publishing 2022).
40 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 35–47.
41 Ibid 35.
42 Ibid 141.
43 Ibid 37.
44 Ibid 46.
45 Ibid 44.
46 Ibid 139–40.
47 Eg, Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Duke University Press 2006).
48 Dudgeon (n 11) [32].
49 Sutherland v the United Kingdom, App. No. 25186/94 (ECnHR, 1 July 1997) [17] (emphasis added).
50 Paul Johnson, Homosexuality and the European Court of Human Rights (Routledge 2013) 49–52.
51 Opened for signature 4 November 1950, ETS 5 (entered into force 3 September 1953).
52 Johnson (n 51) 49.
53 Dudgeon (n 11) [60].
54 Ibid [41] (emphasis added).
55 Ibid [49].
56 Johnson (n 51) 52.
57 Ibid 49.
58 Advisory Opinion OC-24/17, 24 November 2017, [32].
59 Ibid.
60 Bayev and Others v. Russia, App Nos. 67667/09 et. al. (ECtHR, 20 June 2017) [78].
61 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 35.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid 44.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid 39.
66 Ibid 37.
67 Butler (n 36) 30.
68 Sedgwick, Tendencies (n 36) 9.
69 de Waal (n 29) 203.
70 Ibid 39.
71 Ibid 202.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Claerwen O’Hara, ‘Queering the International Human Rights Framework Pertaining to Sexuality: Toward the Right to Relate’ in Paula Gerber (ed), Worldwide Perspectives on Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals, vol 2 (Praeger 2021).
75 Dudgeon (n 11) [63].
76 Opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976).
77 Toonen (n 35) [9].
78 Eg, Fedotova v. Russia, Communication No. 1932/2010 (19 November 2012).
79 Eg, Alekseyev v. Russia, App Nos. 4916/07, 25924/08 and 14599/09 (ECtHR, 21 October 2010).
80 Ruskola (n 6) 242.
81 For the full text, see <http://www.actupny.org/documents/QueersReadThis.pdf> accessed 5 Feb 2023.
82 Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (Zone Books 2005) 24.
83 de Waal (n 29) 201.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid 203.
86 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (n 36) 67–90.
87 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 7.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid 152.
90 Ibid 7.
91 Ibid.
92 Dianne Otto, ‘Beyond Legal Justice: Some Personal Reflections on People’s Tribunals, Listening and Responsibility’ (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 225, 226.
93 Ibid 228.
94 Nicola Smith and Donna Lee, ‘What’s Queer About Political Science?’ (2015) 17 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 49, 59.
130 Roswitha Gans, ‘Audience at International Tribunal on Crimes against Women’ (1976) in the Michèle Alexander collection on the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, New School Archives and Special Collections, the New School, New York City. I am grateful to Dr Michèle Alexander for permission to use this image.
95 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 181.
96 Ibid 12.
97 Ibid.
98 Dianne Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018) 1.
99 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 169.
100 Ibid 164–8.
101 Ibid 171–2.
102 Ibid 11.
103 Ibid 44.
104 Ibid 172.
105 Kathryn McNeilly, Human Rights and Radical Social Transformation: Futurity, Alterity, Power (Routledge 2018) 77–8.
106 Thomas Buergenthal, ‘The U.N Human Rights Committee’ in Jochen A Frowein and Rüdiger Wolfrum (eds), Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, vol 5 (Kluwer Law International 2001) 343.
107 For an overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ use of ‘European consensus’ as a technique of treaty interpretation, see Jens Theilen, European Consensus Between Strategy and Principle: The Uses of Vertically Comparative Legal Reasoning in Regional Human Rights Adjudication (Nomos 2021).
108 Quoted in Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 182.
109 Claerwen O’Hara, ‘Consensus, Difference and Sexuality: Que(e)rying the European Court of Human Rights’ Concept of “European Consensus”’ (2021) 32 Law and Critique 91, 111.
110 Judith/Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press 2011) 110.
111 Russell and Van de Ven (n 23) 178.
112 Ibid 173.
113 Ibid 190.
114 Ibid.
115 de Waal (n 29) 3.
116 Ibid 7.
117 Ibid 3.
131 de Waal (n 29) 5. I am grateful to Peter de Waal AM for permission to use this image.
132 Ibid 6. I am grateful to Peter de Waal AM for permission to use this image.
118 Ibid 4.
119 Ibid.
133 Ibid 11. I am grateful to Peter de Waal AM for permission to use this image.
120 Otto (n 9) 294–5.
121 de Waal (n 29) 135–6.
122 George Winterton, ‘1975: The Dismissal of the Whitlam Government’ in HP Lee and George Winterton (eds), Australian Constitutional Landmarks (Cambridge University Press 2003).
123 Nevenka Tromp, ‘The Right to Tell: The Sarajevo Women Court in Search for a Feminist Approach to Justice’ in Regina Menachery Paulose (ed), People’s Tribunals, Human Rights and the Law: Searching for Justice (Routledge 2019); Otto (n 9); Otto (n 100).
124 Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan, ‘Panem et Circences?: People’s Tribunals from a TWAIL Perspective’ in Regina Menachery Paulose (ed), People’s Tribunal, Human Rights and the Law (Routledge 2019).
125 Hilary Charlesworth, ‘Prefiguring Feminist Judgment in International Law’ in Loveday Hodson and Troy Lavers (eds), Feminist Judgments in International Law (Hart Publishing 2019) 479.
126 Otto (n 100) 6–7.
127 Davina Cooper, ‘Towards an Adventurous Institutional Politics: The Prefigurative “as If” and the Reposing of What’s Real’ (2020) 68 The Sociological Review 893, 909.
128 Ibid.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Claerwen O’Hara
Claerwen O'Hara is a Lecturer at La Trobe Law School, Co-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) Gender, Sexuality and International Law Interest Group, and a Managing Editor of the Australian Feminist Law Journal. Their research spans the fields of international human rights law and international economic law, with a particular focus on queer and feminist approaches to international law, alternative internationalisms, and law and political economy
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