Former US ambassador to Bosnia criticizes White House’s foreign policy

LIMA, Peru — Former U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Eric Nelson says the Trump-Vance administration has tarnished the U.S.’s standing around the world.

“We’ve really lost our way in terms of understanding what our strengths are, what our values are,” he told the Washington Blade on Sept. 26 during an interview in the Peruvian capital.

Nelson was the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2019-2022. He is one of five openly gay men who were ambassadors during the Trump-Pence administration. (Richard Grenell was ambassador to Germany, Randy Berry was ambassador to Nepal, Jeff Daigle was ambassador to Cabo Verde, and Bob Gilchrist was ambassador to Lithuania.)

Nelson, a career Foreign Service officer who is now retired, in 1992 co-founded GLIFAA, an association of LGBTQ Foreign Service agencies employees. Nelson is also a member of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s board of directors.

He spoke with the Blade after the LGBTIQ+ Political Leaders from the Americas and the Caribbean Conference that the Victory Institute co-organized alongside LGBTQ advocacy groups from Peru, Colombia, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico ended. Former USAID Mexico Mission Director Jene Thomas, Peruvian Congresswoman Susel Paredes, Spanish Sen. Carla Antonelli, Massachusetts state Sen. Jack Patrick Lewis, and Uruguayan Human Rights Secretary Collette Spinetti are among the upwards of 200 people who attended the three-day event.

Alba Rueda, Argentina’s former special envoy for LGBTQ rights, also participated.

The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March announced 83 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development contacts had been cancelled, and the State Department would administer the remaining USAID programs.

USAID officially shut down on July 1.

Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the funding freeze. The Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding. Recent reports indicate the White House plans to not fully fund the program in the upcoming fiscal year.

GLIFAA board members in February resigned in response to President Donald Trump’s sweeping “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order that he signed shortly after his inauguration.

“Of course we faced great adversity, and people were being fired then or threatened with firing for being gay. And we got together and said, you know, this is crazy. You can’t do this to us,” said Nelson, referring to GLIFAA. “We fought back and started to get fair treatment, but at that time, we always had freedom of speech, and we always had freedom of association.”

The State Department in August faced sharp criticism over the removal of LGBTQ and intersex-specific references from its annual human rights reports. Nelson said he is “amazed at how quickly we’ve burned our soft power in the world.”

“We’ve really lost our way on understanding what our strengths are,” he reiterated.

The Lima conference took place with 10 percent of the original budget.

Paredes secured a space for the conference, while donations from foundations and private donors allowed it to take place. Nelson noted participants paid for their own travel, accommodations, and meals.

“This week has been a big win because we would not allow ourselves to be cancelled,” he said.

LGBTQ elected officials ‘on the front lines of defending democracy’

Sarajevo’s first Pride march took place in 2019, the first year of Nelson’s ambassadorship.

Nelson pointed out the embassy “had been supporting for years civil society and encouraging the community to follow through on their desire to have a Pride march.” The U.S. and other countries with embassies in Sarajevo also encouraged local authorities to “do the right thing and protect them (Pride march participants) like they would any citizen, and give them the right of assembly.”

Upwards of 4,000 people participated in the march that took place against the backdrop of hundreds of police officers who were deployed along the route. Violence has marred Pride events in Belgrade, Serbia, and other cities in the region, but the Sarajevo march took place without incident.

Nelson in response to the Blade’s question about the Trump-Vance administration’s foreign policy and its decision to target diversity, equity, and inclusion programs noted the embassy under his ambassadorship created a council that sought to respond to employees’ concerns around discrimination and exclusion.

“In Bosnia and Herzegovina, identity is very much understood and felt, so we had a very broad participation of people joining this effort,” he said. “They’ve seen how identity can lead to bitterness and war, so they were like, we get it, whether you are gay, or Croat, or Catholic, or Muslim, these should not be issues in terms of how we act and perform professionally.”

“For me, it was very hard to see the complete backlash,” added Nelson.

Nelson also said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian President Viktor Orbán continue to promote an agenda that “seeks to demonize our community, to use us to bring division into our democracies, to pit us against each other.” Nelson told the Blade that LGBTQ elected officials and candidates are key to protecting democracy around the world.

“What these leaders who assembled here this week in Lima are doing is they’re on the front lines of defending democracy,” he said.