We’re all taught from a young age to treat those how you yourself wish to be treated. Everyone deserves to live in a safe environment free from persecution, pain and suffering, but unfortunately, this is not the given case for everyone. Research from our report ‘A Global Outlook on LGBTI social exclusion’ has found that LGBTI individuals in particular are more likely to experience poverty, lack healthcare, attempt suicide and be subjected to physical and sexual violence, even in societies more accepting of LGBTI individuals. Furthermore, there are only five countries in the world – Bolivia, Ecuador, Fiji, Malta and the United Kingdom where constitutions explicitly guarantee equality for all citizens regardless of their sexual orientation or gender recognition.

This isn’t to say there haven’t been successful challenges made to these preconceptions. Since the early 2000s we’ve seen how LGBTI rights movements have supported improvements around the world, including legislative changes to legal protections and marriage recognition. How? Through actively pursuing a liberal strategy and working with existing political structures already in place to advance their interests. International organisations have, and will continue to play a significant role in improving global LGBT rights and tackling homophobia. Recent examples of their involvement include:

• The United Nations Human Rights Council, in 2014, passed its first resolution, establishing LGBT rights as human rights.

• The European Court of Justice, in 2018, voted in favour of insuring that the laws of free movement of European people stretched to those with same sex spouses. This result meant the decision would have to be accepted across all 28 nations, even though same sex marriage is legal in only 23 of 28 European member states.

• The World Health Organisation, in 2018, reclassified gender incongruence. This means that ensuring that those transgender are no longer considered ‘mentally ill’.

The WHO’s significant change is thought to have been introduced to help reduce the social stigma that is unfortunately attached to those who are Transgender and encourage greater social acceptance for them, as well as for those across the LGBTI spectrum. One of the key drivers of social acceptance we acknowledge within the report, is the stigmatization attached to being LGBTI, which is continually redefined in cultural context. No example is better than Russia. Same sexual activity was decriminalised in the country in 1993, but anti-gay propaganda laws were introduced in 2013 which effectively make it an offence to promote LGBTI rights in public – a total contradiction, which suppresses these individuals further from society. This perhaps could be seen as a final ploy to hold onto a thread of the power they once held within the Cold War. Just last month, January 2019, two people were killed and a further forty detained and tortured in the Chechnya region for being LGBTI.

The social acceptance of all LGBTI individuals requires sustained leadership, investment and collaboration from international, national and social institutions for effectively change to really take place. This requires a long term outlook and strategic thinking. Our LGBTI report uses strategic foresight to determine the many ways the future of LGBTI social exclusion could unfold and how the actions taken today can shape its outcome.  Of course, no one can predict the future, and we don’t profess to do so within the report, or any reports that we publish, but the world is changing at warp speed and adaptions to policy must be made accordingly. Foresight itself is a broad term that refers to the approach and tools that can be used to better understand and plan for the future. It’s about understanding the range of probable futures to reduce uncertainty and improve decision making.

Specifically, foresight is used to explore issues, inform decision making, and implement strategy. The resolution of the crisis, where all persons are treated equally and with dignity regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, will take structural changes in many societies, legally, culturally and socially. This will require collaboration. This is not the run of the mill strategy, it will require extensive discussion of what drives the issue of LGBTI social exclusion and why, with the engagement of multiple stakeholders. Together they could look to develop normative scenarios, those of the preferred futures and utilise established frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, to review and monitor progress of implementation.

This is a global issue that is bigger than country politics, but perhaps the German Ambassador to the United States (who recently met with LGBTI activists at his residence) is taking steps in the right direction by planning to lead an embassy plan to decriminalise homosexuality everywhere. Whilst his declaration has not been announced, or confirmed, as a US-led global campaign, voicing his opinion could be what is needed to make alliance building amongst countries and global organisations could a reality for strategic planning to finally take place.