Contesting Norms and Challenging Order: Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 and the Geopolitics of LGBTIQ+ Human Rights

Abstract Uganda’s adoption of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023 reveals significant contestation among domestic and external actors regarding LGBTIQ+ human rights norms. This article argues that opposition to LGBTIQ+ rights has become central to contemporary challenges to the liberal international order by contesting the authority of liberal human rights norms as universal benchmarks of state legitimacy. Drawing on critical IR theories of norm violation, it analyzes how external actors responded to the Act and how Ugandan state actors defended the legislation. The article concludes that political opposition against LGBTIQ+ human rights in Uganda, akin to anti-LGBTIQ+ politics observed elsewhere in the world, has become central to political critique of “the West” and the existing international order.