11-15, 14:30–16:00 (Asia/Beirut), Station
In this session, ARTICLE 19 and Human Rights Watch will present their research on digital repressions against queer communities in MENA. The audience will get insight into evidence-based analysis of the current issues facing the community from a cross-country lens with a focus on Iran, Iraq, and Sudan.
Many countries in the MENA either criminalize queer identities directly, or using “morality laws.” Beyond threats posed by the state (such as arrests and prosecutions), there also continues to be ever-increasing hate speech, online harassment, outing, and doxxing campaigns that spew into real life, real fast. There has been little to no accountability for the violence that LGBTQ people have been exposed to.
For the last 6 years, ARTICLE 19 has been working on different angles of this research and will be presenting parts of their current and on-going research in 8 MENA countries in this session. Similarly, Human Rights Watch will be launching their report at Bread&Net and providing a look at their important findings. They have been following these crimes intimately throughout the years. Combined, these works continue to push for accountability from states and change from corporate actors to reduce the risks of living while queer.
In this session, led by Afsaneh Rigot from ARTICLE 19 and Rasha Younes from Human Rights Watch will be in conversation with 3 country experts doing this important work. They will shed light on their work and research gathered through in-country focus groups, in-depth one-on-one interviews, and thousands of survey responses:
We are joined by country experts:
Sayeh from Iran: Sayeh is a queer journalist, rights defender, and advocate focusing on freedom of speech, queer rights, and methods of state repression
Sanar Hassan from Iraq: Sanar Hasan is an Iraqi journalist based in Baghdad. She focuses on gender issues, women's rights and minorities in societies experiencing war and sectarian conflict.
Mohammed Gamil from Sudan: Sudanese Social Media Specialist, digital security expert, Human Rights Defender, Content Creator & Influencer. He holds a religious freedom fellowship from Internews.
This will be a hybrid event as some participants were not able to travel to Lebanon.
الكثير من البلدان في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا تجرّم المثليّة الجنسية، فيما تستخدم دول أخرى القوانين المرتبطة بالأخلاق لتجريمها.
في حين لا يزال خطاب الكراهية، والتحرّش عبر الإنترنت، وعمليات الفضح، وحملات توثيق المعلومات الرقمية التي تنتقل إلى الحياة الواقعية تزداد بسرعة فائقة، إلا أن المساءلة عن العنف الذي يواجهه أفراد مجتمع الميم لا تحدث إلا في حالات قليلة جداً.
على مدار السنوات الست الماضية، ساعدت منظمة "المادة 19" المنظمات غير الحكومية الرائدة في مجال مجتمع الميم والباحثين والناشطين والشركات ذات الصلة لتوثيق تجارب المجتمع في المنطقة، من أجل فهم ما يحدث على أرض الواقع مع فئة كبيرة من الناس، وما الذي يريد الناس رؤيته يتغيّر مع التقنيات التي يتم استخدامها كسلاح في وجههم.
سوف نقدّم لمحة عامة حول بعض الأبحاث التي تم استخلاصها من مجموعات التركيز، والمقابلات الشخصية المعمّقة الفردية، وآلاف الاستبيانات.
Afsaneh Rigot works at the intersections of law, technology, LGBTQ, refugee, and broader human rights issues.
She is a senior researcher at ARTICLE 19 focusing on the Middle East and North African (MENA) human rights issues and international corporate responsibility.
She is also an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Centre (BKC) at Harvard and an advisor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard. She was also a 2021-2022 fellow with the Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where she created the concept report on her Design From the Margins framework: looking at creating safer, and more privacy enhancing technologies with the decentered.