Handling prejudice with grace

By Thomas Jurgens

Last Tuesday, on June 17^th, our class had the privilege of conversing with the founder and a project manager at the Center for Social Group Development (CGSD) – Arbër Nuhiu and Rajmonda Sylbije. The responsibility of preparing the interview fell to Ema and myself. Since Ema’s blogpost already did an apt job at summarising the main goals of the organisation and the main through lines of the interview itself, I shall focus more on the side of Queer rights within Kosovo, in connection with the thing that touched me the most: the continued underestimation of the importance of Queerness in contemporary society.

            CGSD, in short, is a non-profit organisation working in Kosovo to provide Queer people with free health and psychological support, alongside advocacy for legislative reforms to further the rights of Queer individuals under Kosovo law. It is one of two, historically three, Queer rights organisations in Kosovo. In our presentation, Ema and I presented them as a kind of trifecta: CGSD, Qesh, and CEL. The thing that really sets CGSD apart is its focus on free sexual healthcare, psychological aid and legal consultation, which I highly respect as an endeavour. Although Qesh no longer seems to be active, the three organisations have managed to carve out a place for themselves within Kosovo’s legal practices and culture, through a variety of Pride parades and formal routes of consultation with government institutions. At one point in the interview, Rajmonda even mentioned a recent project to set up an organisation comprised entirely of Queer women, which especially inspired me. Oftentimes, even the best morals fall under the weight of profit, and yet these people were helping an entirely separate organisation find their footing – with no egotistical motivation to speak of – simply to create a place of communion. Besides the economic aspect, we also spoke in class about the functional difficulties of having multiple organisations with a similar mandate. Based on examples of UNMIK and EULEX, these difficulties were exemplified by confusion surrounding their communications and specific purviews. It seems that when organisations are based on a want for community, these struggles take a back seat, and the common objective crystallises into a shared vision of the future.

The LGBT Advisory & Coordination Group, of which CSGD is an integral member, advising the government on policy changes in 2012 – an example of their status gained through relentless advocacy.

We discussed multiple versions of Kosovo and its history, one of them being Kosovo as a new and young state, full of optimism. It is idealistic, it strives for the future, it is exemplary in its progressive legislature as a foundation of its revolutionary declaration of independence, etc. One more quote that struck me came from Arbër, the founder of CSGD all the way back in 2003; ‘The Kosovo parliament voting against the legalisation of gay marriage was the first time the government voted against Human Rights.’ The conversation had been warmly positive up to this point, discussing CSGD’s many successes and its motivation for the future. This note struck me deeper than I would have imagined, although I suppose that attests to my own lack of relational imagination – Kosovo never felt quite as real as when it related to my own identity as a Queer man. Arbër continued by touching on the internationally worsening situation for Queer individuals and reflecting on this section of the interview, the people around me, the classroom where this interview took place, and even myself – I started to wonder why. Is it possible that in my own work as a peacebuilder, I should detach from my personal struggles and fully entrench myself in any given situation? Is peacebuilding like anthropological fieldwork in a sense? Or is peacebuilding stronger when it’s motivated by a wish to build peace within yourself?

Overall, the interview with CSGD was incredibly moving. This organisation has more than two decades of selfless peacebuilding history and regardless of international prejudice and the silence in our classroom, they keep going. Immediately after, I looked around the classroom with a renewed awareness of homophobic sentiment running like an undercurrent through the room, my education founded in a society yet to develop the language to handle this prejudice with grace, tact, and impact. It is people like Rajmonda and Arbër who are developing this language by stimulating societal conversation around Queer rights with all the Queer grace and tact necessary to make an impact. They make me believe society may one day come around to accept Queerness in all its unique pleasure. They make me believe that I could be part of this change.