Sexuality and gender diversity rights in Southeast Asia are deeply controversial and vigorously contested. Debate and protest have been accompanied by both legislative reform and discriminatory violence. These contradictory dynamics are occurring at a time when the international human rights regime has explicitly incorporated a focus on the prevention of violence and discrimination in relation to sexuality and gender diversity. This Element focusses on the need for such rights. This Element explores the burgeoning of civil society organisations engaged in an emancipatory politics inclusive of sexuality and gender diversity, utilising rights politics as a platform for visibility, contestation and mobilisation. This Element focusses on the articulation of political struggle through a shared set of rights claims, which in turn relates to shared experiences of violence and discrimination, and a visceral demand and hope for change.

1. Introduction; 2. Historical trajectories in sexuality and gender pluralism; 3. National case studies; 4. Civil society and rights advocacy; 5. SOGIESC, rights, and political participation; Bibliography.