To Geneva and back: Externalising anti-LGBT hate crime as a policy issue

Official responses to violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation (“anti-LGBT hate crime”) are increasingly the object of academic interest, with scholars seeking to understand why states legislate against this type of discriminatory violence and what role various actors play in enacting change. Currently, research in this area focuses on the diffusion of state hate crime statutes in the USA, with limited insights from other jurisdictions or the international level. A particular dearth may be observed in Europe where over half of the countries put sexual orientation hate crime laws on the books while others – like Italy and Poland – considered enacting such legislation but decided otherwise, despite sustained campaigning by LGBT human rights groups and increased involvement of international bodies. The connection between grass roots anti-hate advocates and international human rights organisations will be the focus of this paper. Drawing upon primary, mixed-methods research, with Poland as our case study, this paper seeks to understand how new transnational advocacy opportunities change the way local LGBT activists push for improved legal protection from bias-motivated violence. Using Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) ‘boomerang’ model as our interpretative frame, we show how Polish advocates systematically work with transnational partners and international human rights institutions to apply pressure on the government to enact hate crime laws. We argue that such externalisation of hate crime as a policy issue was made necessary by the closing of political opportunity structures at home and made possible thanks to the professionalisation of the movement; the engagement with transnational advocacy networks; and the opening up of the UN bodies to the issue of anti-LGBT hate crime. While the state hesitates and has not yet complied with international recommendations – effects of shadow reporting by advocates – there are signs that the calls for a hate crime law reform are increasingly being heard by the bureaucrats, who, nonetheless, need political leadership to amend the law.