Abstract

In the last decade several development institutions in the Global North have undergone major organizational, legal and discursive shifts regarding the visibility and acknowledgment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people (LGBTIQ) as ‘target groups’, ‘recipients’ and ‘beneficiaries’ of development policies and development aid. The increased employment of the so-called ‘human rights based approach’ (HRBA) as a new development paradigm has provided ‘the’ entry point for LGBTIQ concerns in development politics. Thus, LGBTIQs have become intelligible ‘objects’ of development and ‘LGBTIQ-inclusive development’ has emerged as a legitimate and genuine, if contested, topic of knowledge production. By drawing on insights from the field of postcolonial and ‘radical’ development studies this chapter examines, and challenges, some of the ‘liberatory’ and ‘transformative’ potentials of LGBTIQ-inclusive development frameworks.