ABSTRACT
The EU is collectively the world’s largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA). But disputes with individual recipient countries such as the Gambia or Uganda or joint European Union (EU)–Africa summit disputes over Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) rights confirm Europe’s volatile and particularistic strategy. Differences over the validity of such rights and the EU’s conditional promotion of those create a dichotomous narrative between Western progressive states and premodern homophobe ones that is difficult to resolve, particularly when the EU’s human and LGBTI rights agenda is being viewed as neocolonial and hypocritical in face of its protectionist trade, security, and refugee policies. In this process, the EU and its member states as well as its development partners create an opposing normative narrative that entrenches their own ‘superior’ position and makes dialog, negotiation, and compromise more difficult. This chapter compares European development and rights promotion strategies based on conditionality and external interventions such as political pressure or civil society support toward Uganda, Jamaica, and Indonesia as examples. It argues that if the EU wants to improve its record, it should rethink the conditional linking of LGBTI rights to trade and aid agreements and carefully calibrate its external support for LGBTI activists in recipient countries rather than apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
