Four things humanitarians need to know about LGBTQI+ exclusion and its consequences

As a trans woman working in the humanitarian and development sectors, it’s increasingly galling to hear the exhortation ‘leave no one behind’ thrown around with gay abandon. The reality is that gay people are routinely abandoned, along with lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other people of diverse genders and sexualities.

Back in 2008, Chaman Pincha detailed the exclusion of the third-gender Aravani community from relief following the Indian Ocean Tsunami, one of the first detailed accounts of LGBTIQ+ exclusion.  Aravani persons are neither women nor men: their gender is a non-binary. Official discrimination led to Aravanis not receiving ration cards (which offered only two gender options) and hampered access to shelter and other relief.