The most controversial activist organisation of the 21st century, WikiLeaks has attracted strong, divergent opinions from across the political spectrum. Lauded by its supporters for its indispensable role in holding governments, corporations, and human rights abusers to account, its advocates and journalists have been excoriated by opponents as traitors, threats to legitimate governments, and misogynists. Yet so much media attention is focused upon founder Julian Assange, and his ongoing confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, that the broader dimensions of WikiLeaks are rarely aired. Especially critical in these omissions is the role of women, both in the organisation and the more general struggle for information freedom.

The protagonists of the new book:Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks will be in conversation to discuss the themes of their new book and show the various ways they’ve been at the forefront of such activity: acclaimed journalist and human rights advocate Sarah Harrison, Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author Angela Richter, and Renata Avila, a celebrated Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. Ranging widely, from the dishonesty of the mainstream media and its contrasting treatment of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to the terrifying monopolisation of personal data under tech behemoths such as Facebook and Google, join us for an ongoing debate around digital activism.

Link to book can be found here.

Chair

Pamela Anderson has a portfolio of work that encompasses entertainment and activism. She is a supporter of the Courage Foundation, that supports whistleblowers including Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. She is a board member of both PETA and The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Pamela Anderson Foundation  supports organisations and individuals that stand on the front lines, in the protection of human, animal, and environmental rights

Speakers

Renata Avila is a Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. She has played a central role in the international team of lawyers representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his staff. An access to knowledge activist, she is on the Board of Creative Commons and is a trustee of the Courage Foundation.

Sarah Harrison is a renowned British journalist and human rights defender. A former researcher with the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Harrison left to work at WikiLeaks during the height of its groundbreaking publication of US military and State Department documents in 2010. She is also a co-founder of the Courage Foundation.

Angela Richter is an acclaimed Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author. She founded the Fleet Street Theatre in Hamburg in 2001, and was house director at the Cologne National Theatre Schauspiel Köln from 2013 to 2016. Her interest in WikiLeaks led to the 2012 theatre piece “Assassinate Assange.” In 2015, Richter staged the large scale transmedia-project “Supernerds” in co-production with German national TV WDR, dealing with mass surveillance. The text was based on conversations with digital dissidents and whistleblowers, such as Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange. “Supernerds” received the Eyes & Ears Media Award, was nominated for the SXSW Innovation Award in Texas, and is nominated for the BANFF Award in Canada.

Daughters of Bangladesh Garment Factory Workers is a short documentary which follows the personal stories of 5 girls aged between 7 and 15. The film gives an intimate insight into their world, their relationships with their mothers and how factory work shapes their lives. Daughters of Bangladesh is Lensational’s first video journalism project featuring and created by the daughters themselves. This film advocates for corporations to commit to supply chain transparency as well as advancing the welfare of the most vulnerable workers and their families.

Lensational is an award-winning, non-profit social enterprise, with the mission of empowering women through photography and videography. For Daughters of Bangladesh Garment Factory Workers, they have partnered with Rainbow Collective, a documentary producer focused on human, children and social rights, to create a film as a part of an ongoing media training scheme at Nagorik Uddyog, offering children of garment workers a route into further education.

The Q&A discussion following the film will focus on the unheard voices of overlooked women in journalism and how to get these narratives into the public eye. The girls in the film are able to share their personal stories with the world on how garment factory work affects their lives indirectly, reflecting a variety of emotions and capturing moments of intimate visual stories. Our speakers, with a range of journalistic experiences will focus on how best to continue to empower women such as the girls in the film.

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldp2-a1DG2c&app=desktop

Moderator

Lucile Stengel: Head of Social Media and editor Lensational

Lucile currently works for the BBC World Service, where she dedicates her time to understanding and better servicing the BBC’s audience in developing countries, as well as developing a new impact framework for the organisation. Lucile has a particular interest in the interplay of gender, culture, and the media, an area she has been researching since university. She holds a BSc in Political Science, a MA in Global Communications and Strategy, and a MSc in Local Economic Development from Sciences Po and the LSE. She has developed a repertoire of research and strategy skills in her previous experiences across the media and third sector, and regularly contributes to gender and social justice publications.

Speakers

Richard York is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Rainbow Collective

Alongside their own award-winning broadcast and cinematic documentaries (Al Jazeera, Britdoc, SABC), Rainbow Collective have designed and facilitated projects in countries including Bangladesh, Jamaica, South Africa, Cambodia and Turkey, empowering marginalised children and adults to produce powerful and effective documentaries and animation. The films their students produce have proved equally at home screening at international film festivals as they are at the centre of campaigns for real social change. Since 2008 Rainbow Collective have worked closely with garment working communities and trade unions to improve working and living conditions through films and training projects, including playing a key role in the successful campaign to secure full compensation for the families affected and bereaved by the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh.

From left to right: Agnes Odhiambo, Gauri van Gulik, Liz Ford, Liesl Gerntholtz, Rothna Begum and Samer Muscati.

The Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch joined The Guardian’s Liz Ford on Tuesday 13 May to discuss the highs and lows of the challenges faced in improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

The event took place as the world’s attention focuses on Nigeria’s kidnapped schoolgirls and subsequent failure to free the more than 200 victims from militant group Boko Haram.

Shining a spotlight on this specific issue is important, but everyday, harrowing realities are being lived by 39,000 girls subjected to forced marriages globally, said Agnes Odhiambo, researcher for women’s rights in Africa.

“You see it happening so much every day that actually you don’t stop to ask yourself what kind of suffering, what kind of abuses do these girls go through? In South Sudan, some girls actually think that death is better than a forced marriage. There are many cases of girls committing suicide.”

In the African context, she added, children being born into the family are of course celebrated but behind the scenes there may be a far more disturbing story, particularly around the issues of sexual violence and maternal health.

The panel was also keen however to point out successes in the fight for women’s rights, highlighting international treaties and conventions moving forward in earnest as well as grass roots initiatives that aim to tackle abuses against women and girls.

Director of HRW’s Women’s Rights Division Liesl Gerntholtz explained that the work her team is doing by collecting accurate information and evidence across some 90 countries is about “the long game” in making positive change.

“We believe, perhaps naively, that if you can just get the information in front of the right people that of course they will want to stop what is going on on the ground, and sometimes they do and sometimes not so much,” she said. “Particularly in human rights, those of us who work have to be willing to play the long game because change is always incremental.”

The fantastic @hrw women's rights division talk at @frontlineclub "It's all about the long game." pic.twitter.com/Xazvauj17c

— Alex Glynn (@alexglynn1) May 13, 2014

In some instances, the significant advances made grow out of local anger at terrible abuses, which HRW is able to take to the policy makers. In Yemen, marriages were happening at extremely young ages and both local and international outrage were ignited when an eight-year-old girl, Rawan, died of internal bleeding after being married to a man five-times her age.

The incident came in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings and after a transitional government took hold. HRW recognised an opportunity to bring gender issues to the negotiating table in the midst of a national constitutional dialogue.

Yemen now has a Child Rights Act, which includes setting a minimum age of marriage at 18 and criminalising those who take part in child marriage. Additionally, FGM [female genital mutilation] has been criminalised. The Act is going to cabinet, and HRW is pressuring them to pass it and send to Parliament along with other constitutional guarantees, said Rothna Begum, researcher for women’s rights in Middle East and North Africa region.

Still, hard and long fought for rights can be very fragile and quickly rolled back, particularly in post-conflict environments, said researcher for women’s rights in emergencies Samer Muscati, pointing to Iraq as an example where the space for women has shrunk considerably despite constitutional guarantees of parliamentary representation set at 25 per cent.

In Somalia’s Mogadishu, Muscati describes a conflict in which sexual violence is an every day fact of life for women and girls with a backdrop of stigma and lack of services to help them.

“They are on their own. One of the positives is that the international community has worked with Somalia to develop joint commitments. The challenge is trying to ensure that those commitments are met,” he said.

Pressure from developed countries could go far in changing the lives of millions of girls and women around the world, however, the UK is cited as playing a negative role – specifically in the recent initiative to tackle issues of forced labour that includes such categories as domestic workers as well as trafficked sex workers, said Gauri van Gulik, global advocate in the Women’s Rights Division at HRW.

“We hear a lot on one hand from Theresa May and others about how they want to end modern-day slavery. But in these negotiations and at this important moment the United Kingdom is saying we don’t want binding standards we just want a recommendation, or guidelines, which is extremely negative,” she said. “There is actually a lot of work to do in the United Kingdom when it comes to foreign policy.”

The audience was invited to ask questions and issues were raised around gaps in services for elderly women, women living with disabilities, or even highly privileged women bound by strictly patriarchal societies. Also, the audience heard how HRW tries to manage compatibility between the complicated relationships inherent to traditional laws where they may be in conflict with human rights laws.

Ultimately, people questioned how they could get involved apart from sending money to a charity and being directly involved to make a difference.

Gerntholtz replied: “Change is local. The most important thing anyone can do is work in their own communities . . . it creates a community of activists that you are a part of.”

Watch and listen to the full event here: