Ethics and human rights: where do you draw the line when traveling?
Ethics and human rights: where do you draw the line when traveling?
There are a number of countries in the world where many queer people can travel safely, but queer locals experience interpersonal discrimination or government oppression.
As someone who enjoys international travel, how do you evaluate potential destinations? Which factors are important to you and which can be dealt with? Is there any chance that we, as tourists, can change attitudes in the long run and if so, is that part of your decision-making calculus?
Let's assume as a precondition that you've deemed that your personal security as a tourist won't be seriously at risk, so that we can confine our discussion to ethics: how our actions affect other people, even when we ourselves are unaffected.
Let's further humbly admit that many of us are living in a country that could easily be on someone's list of no-go countries. My goal here is not to judge other cultures or endorse certain destinations over others, but to learn from others' decision-making process -- potentially for domestic travel as well.
My personal rubric, developed with much insight from my husband:
- If queer peoples' behavior is criminalized, the place is a strict no-go.
- If violence against local queer people significantly exceeds levels in my home state the place is a firm no-go.
- If the place is under autocratic/junta rule, it's a firm no-go.
There's a whole tranche of countries I'll probably never set foot in due to rule 1, e.g. virtually all of the middle east and Africa, but more recently, also US states such as Florida.
There are countries like Belize that I greatly enjoyed visiting, but, once I became aware of the rate of violence against queer Belizeans, I decided I couldn't support with my tourist dollar. Perhaps if I took great care only to patronize LGBTQ-friendly establishments -- and how would we even identify those when sexuality is largely a taboo subject, in country? -- I might visit these places again in the future.
Rule 3 is of more recent provenance. It's a hypothetical at this point, as every place I've visited has been under some sort of healthy parliamentary rule. I greatly want to visit Turkey some day, but supporting a profoundly broken system by forking over money to hoteliers and airlines who are more likely than not aligned with AKP, seems like a bad precedent. As under rule 2, I might identify businesses whose values agree with mine, but it would be problematic.