Kiki points:
Life in the Philippines is already precarious due to its vulnerability to disasters, but living as a queer Filipino during these calamities is much more difficult as they are exposed to discrimination.
Policies and laws that exclude queer Filipinos and existing prejudices make it harder for them to access much-needed and life-saving aid.
LGBTQ+ activists across Asia and the Pacific say greater participation of people with diverse SOGIESC in humanitarian work and better data-gathering during disasters can help remedy these issues.
The Philippines’ peculiar geographic and political position leaves it all too vulnerable to all kinds of disasters, including climate-related calamities and armed conflict.
This makes life in the country rather precarious by default, and even more difficult for its citizens of diverse SOGIESC.
“Living in one of the most vulnerable country, and being poor, making me more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – I’m triple dead,” said Joshua, a queer Bacolod-based environmental activist, in a 2019 interview with Greenpeace.
A review of various reports and studies reveal a common thread: Discrimination against queer Filipinos occurs far too often in disaster scenarios, largely due to non-inclusive laws and policies.
Lessons from Yolanda
Typhoon Yolanda, one the strongest storms to ever hit the Philippines, exposed this reality.
In different reports years after Yolanda, LGBTQ+ people repeatedly recounted the difficulty of obtaining much-needed and life-saving aid from the government and other relief organizations.
Queer people affected by Yolanda said in a report by New Naratif that the Philippines’ Family Code and other policies that only recognized a “family” to be one headed by a married heterosexual couple effectively excluded them from receiving government housing.
A Rappler piece said a trans woman even had to shed her lived name and use the name assigned to her at birth to be considered a house owner and head of the family.
Beyond climate-related disasters
Queer Filipinos have also experienced similar incidents during earthquakes in Mindanao in 2019 and the Marawi siege in 2017.
Four respondents in a report by humanitarian and development organization Edge Effect said they “were harassed for their sexual orientation and gender expression” when they took shelter in evacuation centers following the quakes.
There were also sentiments among the study participants that anti-LGBTQ+ prejudices could receive less aid to reestablish their lives.
One participant in the same research recalled that they heard “that lesbian and gays must be killed without consideration if they were Maranao or not.”
And when they evacuated, discrimination “never ceased,” as religious leaders reinforced the view that LGBTQ+ people were among to be blamed for the siege, lumping them with other “sins of Marawi.”
Even when they volunteered to help at evacuation centers, they still faced discrimination, recalling that other volunteers were “hot-headed” with them.
Moving forward
In 2018, LGBTQ+ activists from Asia and the Pacific gathered in Bangkok to assess the humanitarian system towards people of diverse SOGIESC.
There, they discovered that within the problems also lie the solutions.
They identified four key barriers to a more diverse SOGIESC-inclusive disaster response:
Oppressive legal environments
Diverse SOGIESC-blind humanitarian plans and policies
Relative inability of diverse SOGIESC communities in existing assessments, data and evidence in crises
A lack of capacity and dedicated partnerships
From these, they recommended that humanitarian actors meaningfully engage and include people of diverse SOGIESC as leaders, participants, staff, and volunteers.
They said diverse SOGIESC civil society and humanitarian actors must also strengthen their engagement with each other for mutual capacity development opportunities and sharing of good practices.
The activists also said that more evidence must be collected from people of diverse SOGIESC during disasters, crises and emergencies to inform policy, practice and advocacy.
And finally, they recommended to the development or revision of humanitarian policies, plans, and guidance for diverse SOGIESC inclusive responses.
“All of these are just as important today,” writes Ryan Silverio of the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus. “Such is our immediate task, but we should go beyond it. There is still a long way to go before humanitarian actors, especially in the Philippines, take on a SOGIESC-inclusive disaster response.”
“Demanding accountability is our first step.”
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