For All Women and Girls: Anne Lim on cultivating respect for differences and promoting cross-sectoral collaboration in the Philippines

#ForAllWomenAndGirls is a rallying call for action on the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA). Anne Lim is Co-Founder and President of Galang Philippines – a lesbian-led civil society organization that promotes respect for human rights and diversity. For the past 17 years, Galang has focused on evidence-based advocacy, research and capacity-building, helping create or elevate many community-based lesbian, bisexual, queer and transgender (LBQT) organizations, ranging from five their first year, to 18 organizations federated in Quezon City in 2024.

Cultivating respect and attention for those in need

Lim says her activism emerged out of a sense of guilt around her relative economic stability.

“I’m a middle-class lesbian, born in a family that’s relatively well off, or at least not in need of economic support. And so, because of that, I’ve always felt that there’s a need for me to do more for our community.”

Over the years, Lim has worked for several NGOs in different sectors, focusing on women, farming and labour issues. In the process, she realized that there weren’t enough organizations or people working specifically with people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC), or with lesbians more specifically.

When Lim co-founded Galang Philippines, becoming its first Executive Director in 2008, she chose the term “Galang” – the Filipino word for respect – to underscore the importance of respecting every person’s sexual orientation.

She also chose to focus on a range of socioeconomic challenges. “It’s not just an issue of marriage equality… [that] is, of course, very important, but right now, the more basic issues are poverty, hunger and employment,” says Lim. “When you speak of LBQT women in Asia, the Philippines is usually seen as the most open or accepting but we have to realize that … those who are at the fringes, like the poor or urban poor LBQTs, don’t experience as much freedom.”

Organizing and earning a seat at the table

Lim says the LBQT community’s ability to organize a mass movement has been its core strength. When Galang began 17 years ago, she says it was difficult to organize people around specific issues. But a lot has changed since then. “[Last year], we were able to march in the first-ever National Lesbian Day last 8 December, with 1,000 [people] in Quezon City. So we’re proud of that.”

She says another strength has been the ability to work with local government units and interact well. “As you know, more organized groups are entertained or regarded by the Government. And so by being an organized community, we have a seat at the table, so to speak, and we’re listened to by our policymakers.”

However, she says funding is a perpetual challenge, particularly among recent rollbacks in the United States, which are affecting several gender and women-focused NGOs or programmes.

Joining forces across intersections to break down silos

As the world reflects on three decades of progress since the adoption of the BPfA, Lim says a continuing challenge is that many development organizations in many marginalized sectors are working in silos. “I think there has to be more of an intersectional approach in discussing or addressing issues across these marginalized sectors,” emphasizes Lim.

She calls for greater collaboration and deeper consideration of the specific and magnified needs of disadvantaged communities within development programming.

“For the longest time, we’ve been saying that when you speak of SOGIESC or sexuality, we’re not speaking about them in silos or sexuality as separate from all other issues. These are development issues. … Employment and poverty may be an issue in the Philippines. However, people with diverse SOGIESC experience it more, maybe to a heightened degree. So, it’s important to see SOGIESC as a development issue and people with diverse SOGIESC as having another layer of disadvantage compared to other marginalized sectors.”