I am Kate Ferguson, co-executive director of Protection Approaches (PA), which is a London-based NGO. We work to transform how identity-based violence is understood in order to transform how it is prevented. I am not a lawyer. We have no lawyers on our team and we only have one lawyer on our panel. We are hoping for some knowledge exchange here, please, rather than just going one way.
Thank you so much for making us your choice for your afternoon panel. We know we are up against some stiff competition with Ukraine and climate change, but we have a fabulous panel here today, and we really are trying to have this as a conversation rather than a traditional kind of panel and presentation style.
We are going to be talking about queering atrocity prevention. Please let me introduce this stellar lineup, and then we can get underway. We have Neela Ghoshal, who is going to be starting us off. Neela is the senior director of law policy and research at OutRight Action International, relatively new to the role. Prior to that, Neela worked at Human Rights Watch for about fourteen years on global initiatives regarding LGBTQI rights, conducting research and engaging in advocacy on human rights violations relating to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Next we have Detmer Kremer, my fabulous colleague, who is our policy and communications officer at Protection Approaches. Detmer is one of the co-authors of the paper that you have in front of you. Before joining PA, he was working at the intersection of human rights and climate change at the Quaker United Nations Office.
This panel is framed by two publications. One, you have in front of you, and then the other is one that OutRight and Human Rights Watch recently published regarding Afghanistan and the kind of risks and threats that LGBTQ people are facing there right now.
We are going to start off with presentations or quick remarks from Neela and Detmer about those papers. Then we are going to have some responses, first, from Jean Freedburg, who is the director of global partnerships at the Human Rights Campaign, where she has worked for the past five years to support and strengthen global movements for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people. But before that, she was with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, with the Center for the Prevention of Genocide.
And then last but by no means least and certainly not the token lawyer—far more—we have Christine Ryan, who is the legal director at the Global Justice Center, also new to this post, and Christine comes with some quite exciting experience with abortion rights, gendered approaches to mass atrocities, feminist multi-naturalism, and a host of other expertise.
We have a fabulous panel. That is really all that you need from me, Neela, the floor is yours.
