Rooted in Rights: LGBTIQ Communities and the Future…

This year's IDAHOBIT theme — "At the Heart of Democracy" — arrives at a critical inflection point for democratic governance worldwide. In 2024, more than 1.5 billion people voted across 89 countries in a "super election year." Yet electoral and political spaces proved systematically hostile to LGBTIQ people — not as a marginal trend, but as a deliberate strategy.

Objectives

• Affirm: that LGBTIQ inclusion is inseparable from democratic integrity — that genuine democracy cannot exist where any segment of society is systematically excluded, criminalized, or silenced.
• Illuminate: the role of LGBTIQ communities as democratic actors — not only as people targeted by anti-democratic forces, but as communities that model and practice democratic principles in their own organizing and movements.
• Draw attention to: the early-warning function that LGBTIQ organizations have played in identifying and responding to authoritarian trends, demonstrating how the targeting of LGBTIQ people often presages wider democratic erosion.
• Advance concrete commitments: from member states and UN entities on meaningful LGBTIQ participation in electoral, legislative, and civic processes.