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UN Trans Advocacy Week 2020

Over the past 3 years, every June, Trans Advocacy Week (TAW) has been a key event at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic makes it impossible for us to convene a regular TAW 2020. We don’t know when international institutions will come back to their usual work, international travel will be allowed, or meeting in person will be safe for all. But we do know that trans people and our human rights cannot wait for this crisis to pass. That is why we have come together to support trans people in these challenging times.

This year, Trans Advocacy Week will take place virtually. APTN, GATE, ILGA World, RFSL, and TGEU is hosting a series of trainings, panels, and participatory sessions, ensuring accessibility, diversity, and visibility.

2 July 2020

Where did the money go? How the COVID-19 crisis drains trans funding worldwide

Moderator: Julia Ehrt (Director of Programmes, ILGA World)

Languages: English and Spanish (simultaneous interpretation)

The current public health crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19, is a global emergency with far-reaching social, economic, and ecological implications for us all. There is clear and growing evidence that State responses in the delivery of healthcare, the implementation of lockdown measures and policies designed to mitigate economic consequences have disproportionate and discriminatory impacts on marginalised groups.

The pandemic is exposing and deepening existing discrimination, violence and other human rights violations on the basis of SOGIESC and deepens existing imparities within the LGBTI movements. The massive impact of the pandemic on global, national and local economies as well as the shift of some donors to the field of humanitarian aid has far reaching and potentially long lasting implications on the funding of trans movements and trans-led organisations across the globe. Trans organisations have been underfunded for decades, few have had the ability to build reserves and will be hit by changes in the funding landscape drastically and quickly.

The lack of economic opportunities for trans people, the barriers trans persons face in accessing employment and the fact that a large number of trans people are forced to work in informal economies further aggravate the dire situation of trans organising under COVID-19.

This webinar, set in the context of Trans Advocacy Week 2020, seeks to unpack some of those implications and discuss what global and regional donors can do to mitigate some of those issues.

All speakers are trans identified and work in the field of grant making.

Speakers:

  • Mukasa (Programme Officer of the International Trans Fund, ITF);
  • Cleo Kambugu (Director of Programmes at UHAI);
  • Rebecca Fox (Senior Programme Officer, Wellspring Philantropic Fund);
  • Justus Eisfeld (Advocacy & Program Development Manager Sexual Rights and Diversity at HIVOS);
  • TBC: Gabriel Foster (Executive Director at the Transjustice Funding Project);
  • TBC: Wiktor Dynarski (Programme Officer at Open Society Foundations).

Date & Time:

Thursday, 2 July 2020, 16:00 CEST

25 June 2020

On the road: advancing trans and gender diverse depathologization

Facilitator: Mauro Cabral Grinspan (GATE)

One year ago, the World Health Assembly approved the eleventh version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). After more than 10 years of political mobilization, all categories related to trans and gender diverse people were removed from the chapter on mental disorders.

Although this is a historic achievement, there are still key issues to address on the road to full depathologization, including the new category of “gender incongruence” in the ICD-11, the challenges posed by legal pathologization at the country level, and the anti-gender movements who promote re-pathologization in their battle against what they call “gender ideology.”

Moreover, current challenges faced by trans and gender diverse people around the world in relation to COVID-19 show that the persistence of pathologization is not only grounded in pervasive institutional cissexism; it is also deeply linked to racial and socioeconomic injustice. Global and collective initiatives to resist, confront, and dismantle pathologization are more needed today than ever.

To address these issues, and in the context of Trans Advocacy Week 2020, we invite you to join this webinar to be held on:

  • Thursday, 25 June at 2 pm CEST / 8 am EDT (English)
  • Thursday, 25 June at 7 pm CEST / 1 pm EDT (Spanish)