The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by the LGBT+ community that began on June 28, 1969 in the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village. This was a turning point in the gay liberation movement and is often seen as the start of the modern fight for LGBT+ rights and freedoms in the United States.

50 years on, for many around the world this remains a dream.

Filmed in Honduras, Zanzibar, Taiwan and England, the documentary provides unique access to the poignant personal stories of those facing challenges due to their sexuality or gender identity.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Antonio Zappulla will introduce the evening, with Openly Editor Hugo Greenhalgh hosting a discussion including Oscar-winning screenwriter and film-maker Dustin Lance Black, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe Evelyne Paradis, and Director of the Human Dignity Trust Téa Braun, on the key global flashpoints and developments in the continuing struggle for LGBT+ rights.

Chair

Hugo Greenhalgh is editor of Openly, the LGBT+ news website from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Reuters. Prior to joining the foundation, he was at the Financial Times for 11 years in numerous roles, including Wealth Correspondent, editor of the FT Wealth Magazine and an editor on the Comment Desk. Over the course of more than 25 years as a journalist, he has reported live from Red Square, worked as a broadcast journalist in Georgia and written for many of the UK national newspapers, including The Independent and the Sunday Telegraph. He is currently working on a book about male homosexuality in 1960s and ‘70s London.

Speakers

Dustin Lance Black is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, writer, and social activist.  He won the Oscar and two WGA Awards for his screenplay MILK, the biopic of activist Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn, and in 2018 received the Valentine Davies Award from the Writers Guild of America for his body of work.  Black was also a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), which successfully led the federal cases for marriage equality in California and Virginia, putting an end to California’s discriminatory Proposition 8.

Antonio Zappulla is the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the global news and information provider. Antonio is the founder of Openly, the world’s first news platform dedicated to coverage of under-reported LGBT+ stories, and was ranked first in the 2018 OUTstanding list of third sector LGBT executives published by the Financial Times. Prior to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Antonio was Executive Producer at Bloomberg Television in charge of news, factual programming and documentaries for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, developing programming for a global audience. 

Evelyne Paradis is the Executive Director of ILGA-Europe. ILGA-Europe are an independent, international non-governmental umbrella organisation advocating for human rights and equality for LGBTI people at European level, and strengthening the LGBTI movement in Europe and Central Asia. Evelyne joined ILGA-Europe in 2005. Before becoming Executive Director, she held the position of Policy Director, coordinating the organisation’s advocacy work with the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Among other things, she led ILGA-Europe’s campaign and lobbying work on the new proposed EU anti-discrimination directive. Prior to joining ILGA-Europe, Evelyne worked with the UN High Commission for Human Rights, the Council of Europe and human rights NGOs in Canada. She worked as a research assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and Special Representative for human rights defenders, as well as a member of the preparatory team of the World Conference Against Racism.

Téa Braun is the Director of the Human Dignity Trust, a charitable organisation that uses the law to help defend the rights of LGBT people in countries where same-sex intimacy is criminalised. She has overseen legal work in cases that have led to decriminalisation, LGBT rights to freedom of association, judicial recognition of protections against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and banning of forced medical procedures to ‘prove’ homosexuality. Téa has global experience in strategic litigation, training and technical assistance on international human rights law and comparative constitutional law, with a particular focus on matters relating to women’s human rights and LGBT human rights. She previously held inter-governmental appointments as Gender Equality Advisor to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and Human Rights Advisor to the Commonwealth Secretariat, and worked as an associate lawyer in the litigation department of a leading Western Canadian law firm. She has advised multiple governments, civil society organisations and litigants across Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, and has represented inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the UN Human Rights Council and through submissions to a range of UN human rights treaty bodies.

This discussion will ask: what ethical concerns arise when documenting the experiences of survivors of sexual violence, and how can journalists best help bring perpetrators to justice? Should journalists covering the issues of sexual violence and sex trafficking complete specified training?

With a focus on Syria our panel will be mapping out what is being done to help individuals and communities affected by sexual violence, and discuss ethical practices for journalists reporting on the topic and engaging with survivors.

Chaired by Liz Ford , deputy editor of the Guardian’s Global development website. Liz leads on women’s rights and gender equality issues. She was previously editor of the Guardian’s Katine website, and before that worked on the Guardian’s education desk.

Speakers (Full panel announced soon):

Lauren Wolfe is an award-winning journalist who has written for publications from The Atlantic to The New York Times. She is also a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and on the advisory committee of the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict. Previously, she was the senior editor of the Committee to Protect Journalists, where she broke ground on the issue of journalists and sexualised violence. She studied at Wesleyan University and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and is the recipient of the 2012 Frank Ochberg Award for Media and Trauma Study and four Society of Professional Journalists awards. Action on Armed Violence listed her as one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Journalists Covering Armed Violence.”

Marie Forestier is an independent journalist and researcher. She is currently a visiting fellow at LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, researching sexual violence against Syrian women committed by pro-regime forces. Marie has been a correspondent in Istanbul, Turkey, covering Turkey, the Syrian crisis, Iraq and Iran for various television and radio stations, such as ARTE, RTS, France 2. In 2015, Marie directed a documentary about sexual crimes committed in Timbuktu, Mali in 2012-2013 and the victims’ quest for justice. Front 2009 to 2011, Marie was a correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Belinda Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist who has reported and led news teams from more than 20 countries on political, financial and general news. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the world’s leading provider of news and information. In this role, she runs a global team of nearly 30 journalists and a large network of stringers covering the world’s under reported stories, focusing on humanitarian issues, women’s rights, climate change, corruption and good governance. She also plays a key role in the editorial content for the annual Trust Women Conference, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global event dedicated to putting the rule of law behind women’s rights through concrete action.

Hillary Margolis is a researcher in the Women’s Rights Divisions at Human Rights Watch. Her work focuses on violence against women and girls, including sexual violence in conflict, interpersonal and domestic violence, and protection risks for female migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. Most recently, she has conducted research on migrants and refugees arriving in Italy via Libya, and on sexual violence by armed groups in the Central African Republic conflict. Her previous work at Human Rights Watch includes documentation of the impact of the Syrian conflict on women and girls, including exploitation and harassment in refugee settings, abuse of women in detention, and risks facing female activists and household heads.

Desperate for a better life, men, women and children risk perilous journeys for the promise of prosperity in the UK, Europe or America. Those who manage to reach their destination will often find themselves sold into a life of sexual exploitation, forced labour, street crime and domestic servitude.

Trafficking affects every continent and every country, and yet we are often unaware that it is happening all around us.

Ahead of the Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust Women conference, at which this subject will be discussed extensively, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine how we can tackle the problem of human trafficking. They will be discussing the scale of the problem and the action that needs to be taken to make slavery a thing of the past.

Chaired by Prabha Kotiswaran is senior lecturer in Law at King’s College London. She practiced law for four years at the New York law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton. She is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and on the Advisory Board of an ILO-DFID anti-trafficking Project, Work in Freedom.

The panel:

Annie Kelly writes on global development, human rights and social affairs for The Guardian and Observer. She is currently working on The Guardian‘s Modern-day slavery in focus project.

Monique Villa is a journalist, business leader and advocate for women’s rights. She is the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Klara Skrivankova is an expert on human trafficking and forced labour in the UK and internationally. She is Europe programme and advocacy coordinator at Anti-Slavery International.

Sam Whyte is head of policy and advocacy at UNICEF UK. She is leading the development of public policy and cross-organisational advocacy strategy on UK children’s issues, currently focusing on child trafficking, migrant children, and children’s human rights.

Picture: Reuters