RESURJ members from Egypt, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Zambia attended the ILGA conference which was held from 2-6 May, 2022 in California. The conference gathered hundreds of LGBTIQ+ activists and feminists from around the world. In addition to reconnecting with friends, allies and donors, assessing the space to establish its relevance to advancing our strategic outcomes, RESURJ also saw the conference as an opportunity to further advance our work on going Beyond Criminalization, particularly around LGBTIQ+ young people and adolescents.
To this end, in collaboration with Balance and Vencinas Feministas, we hosted a side event during the conference where we discussed the standards of progressive autonomy and its implication on issues around sexuality, equality and non-discrimination of LGBTIQ+ adolescents and young people, from a feminist and sexual justice perspective. We used cases from our Injusta Justicia campaign to highlight what gets overlooked when enforcing these measures to protect adolescents.
As RESURJ, we saw this session as an opportunity for us to create a space for younger feminists and movements to begin reflecting on this framing and its limitations and we will continue to identify potential platforms to initiate such conversations in different regions and movements. You can access the ILGA conference report here.