Latin American Feminists, Gender, and the Binary System of Human Rights Protection

On March 26, 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Honduras responsible for the killing of Vicky Hernández, a trans woman and human rights defender.1 The Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras judgment is the first in which an international court has protected a trans woman by applying a human rights treaty that protects women. It thus provides an opportunity to analyze the impact of feminist ideas on the system of human rights protection at the regional level, with implications for international law more generally. In this essay, I defend the Inter-American Court's majority decision against the dissenting opinions, by arguing that the political subject of human rights is dynamic and emergent and, therefore, positive law is often one step behind in the struggles for recognition. For this reason, we need interpretations of rights that are inclusive, that evolve, and that push for the destabilization of law as binary, allowing the emergence of a more egalitarian legal system that recognizes intersectionality.