Rethinking human rights: the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, LGBT protections and the limits of cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Prior to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, activists from several Western countries protested the implementation of draconian laws in Russia that targeted the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community. This paper offers an alternative analysis of these protests, drawing attention to the effects of cosmopolitanism and contemporary human rights discourse within a current version of the ‘responsibility to protect’. The Western LGBT protest strategies are part of a broader historical shift from a classical notion of human rights as political demands with individuals seeking self-emancipation from their ‘Western’ nation states (rights of women, civil rights movement, etc.) to a current form of demands, which operate globally and serve existing neoliberal values related to capital and multicultural diversity. The problems with this type of intervention are multiple. In the case of the Sochi Olympic Games, advocates elevated visibility strategies instead of engaging Russian communities, histories and realities, to understand how local, Russian LBGT lives exist under an increasingly authoritarian regime. Such approaches not only privilege and assume ‘Western’ tactics of engagement embedded in a hegemonic discourse of human rights, but also elide important local Russian contexts and histories related to LGBT struggles.

Keywords:

• Human rights
• Sochi Winter Olympics
• anti-gay legislation
• cosmopolitanism
• queer visibility
• Russian gays and lesbians