Notes on contributors1
Guillit Amakobe is a transgender activist and poet. They2 participated in Envisioning’s research and featured in a video portrait in the Telling Our Stories series, developed through the participatory documentary work carried out in Kenya. In 2011, Guillit was selected as a fellow, through Fahamu Networks for Social Justice, on the inaugural Pan-African Fellowship Programme, which provided support for the creation of a trans peer support group. This eventually grew into Jinsiangu, a Nairobi-based organisation working to create safe spaces for and increase awareness of intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming Kenyans. Having grown up in Nairobi’s notoriously violent Dandora Estate, Guillit is particularly concerned with the intersections between gender identity, economic oppression and violence. Guillit is currently living in Toronto and studying massage therapy with the goal of working with people who would normally feel uncomfortable about massage due to gender dysphoria or other points of struggle with their bodies.
Austin Bryan is a student of Africana studies at North Carolina State University. He was a research assistant at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a role which formed part of the ethnographic fieldwork he completed in Kampala (2015−16), studying (as a Roy Park Scholar and Caldwell Fellow) the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBTI) communities. His work has been presented at the University of Cambridge and is published in two edited anthologies. Austin’s research interests lie at the intersection of queer theory and African studies.
Kat Dearham, a queer feminist researcher, writer and counsellor in training, is a former member of Envisioning’s Africa research team, working for several years with various lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) organisations in Kenya, including the ‘None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa’ project. Kat is currently a social work master’s candidate at York University, Toronto, where she is aiming to establish a practice which combines individual approaches to healing with community building. Her main focus is on experiences of trauma and healing in racialised queer and trans communities. She was a co-founding member of Jinsiangu, a group working to create safe spaces for and increase the wellbeing of intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming people in Kenya, and is the co-author of Jinsiangu’s Resilience, a resource guide for intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming Kenyans. She has also written for the Queer African Reader and MIXD zine #2.
Pere DeRoy was a graduate student in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, where she completed her MA in Development Studies in 2017. She is starting a PhD in Women, Gender and Sexuality studies at the University of Kansas in 2018. Originally from Guyana, she was an assistant on the Envisioning Caribbean research team, analysing interviews conducted in Guyana and Jamaica on the lives LGBT persons are managing to live, in an environment of homo-bi-transphobia. Pere contributed to a presentation entitled: ‘Discourse of Sexuality and Resistance in and from the Global South: a Caribbean Case’ on behalf of Envisioning at the 2015 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ottawa, Canada. Pere’s research interests encompass human trafficking, labour and the global economy, sexual and reproductive health, violence, LGBT and women’s advocacy.
Kathleen Gamble is a PhD student in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, and assisted Envisioning’s Canada research team. Kathleen contributed to the team’s investigations on LGBT asylum in Canada, conducting data analysis and helping to liaise and work with Canadian community partners. Kathleen co-authored (with Mulé, Nicol, Waugh, Jordan and OCASI) the Envisioning research report: ‘Envisioning LGBT refugee rights in Canada: is Canada a safe haven?’ (2015).
Namela Baynes Henry was a member of Envisioning’s Caribbean research team and also a community researcher for the project in Guyana. Namela is a grassroots human rights activist who has worked to advance LGBT rights for more than 20 years at the local, regional, and international levels. She conducted Envisioning’s primary interviews in Guyana and contributed to the 2013 participatory documentaries Sade’s Story and Homophobia in Guyana.
Adrian Jjuuko is a lawyer and executive director and founder of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF), the first and only specialised legal aid service provider for LGBTI persons in Uganda. Adrian was a member of Envisioning’s law and human rights mechanisms research team. He was coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law Uganda, the Coalition that led the challenge to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill/Act (AHB/AHA). It won the US State Department’s Human Rights Defender of the Year Award 2011 during his tenure. He currently chairs the Coalition’s legal committee, and in this capacity coordinated and organised the successful legal challenge against the AHA, 2014. He also led HRAPF in its challenge against the passing of the AHA at the East Africa Court of Justice, the first case to dispute legislation criminalising LGBTI people within the African regional framework. He brought a successful challenge before Uganda’s Constitutional Court to section 15(6)(d) of Uganda’s Equal Opportunities Commission Act, which had prevented the Commission from investigating matters affecting LGBTI persons. In recognition of his courageous work to advance the human rights of sexual and gender minorities in Uganda, Adrian was awarded the Vera Chirwa 2016 award by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.
Maryam Khan is a PhD candidate at York University’s School of Social Work. She is passionate about carrying out critical research on issues related to LGBTQ policy, race and racialisation, intersectional and transnational feminism, Islam and sexual diversity, gender and sexuality, decolonisation and anticolonial perspectives. For her doctoral research, Maryam focused on LBTQ Muslim women in the Global North. She is a full-time faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Social Work.
Gary Kinsman was a member of Envisioning’s Canada research team. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire, Homo and Hetero Sexualities (Black Rose Books, 1996) on the regulation of sexualities in ‘Canada’ (contributor’s quote marks), co-author (with Patrizia Gentile) of The Canadian War on Queers, National Security as Sexual Regulation (UBC Press, 2010), and editor of Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies (Between the Lines, 2000) and Sociology for Changing the World, Social Movements/Social Research (Fernwood, 2006) as well as numerous book chapters on gender and sexual politics. His current work revolves around the making of the neoliberal queer in the context of neoliberal capitalism and homonationalism. Gary is a long-time queer liberation, anti-poverty, Palestine solidarity, and anti-capitalist activist living on indigenous land. He is also involved in the AIDS Activist History Project, Faculty for Palestine, the We Demand an Apology Network (demanding an apology from the ‘Canadian’ government for the purge campaigns against lesbians and gay men) and with Queer Trans Community Defense, which is organising against gentrification in downtown Toronto. He currently divides his time between Toronto and Sudbury, where he is a professor emeritus at Laurentian University.
Corinne Lennox is senior lecturer in human rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and associate director of the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research interests include the human rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, global governance on human rights and civil society mobilisation. She holds a PhD and MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an MA in the theory and practice of human rights from the University of Essex, and a BA (Honours) in political science and human rights from McMaster University in Canada. She has worked for many years as a human rights practitioner with various non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Minority Rights Group International, and has been a trainer and consultant on minority rights for the UN Development Programme and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is a trustee of the Dalit Solidarity Network-UK, a fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex and associate editor of the International Journal of Human Rights. Corinne has published widely including in the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights and the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights and is co-editor of the Handbook of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (Institute of Commonwealth Studies/Human Rights Consortium, 2013).
Po Likimani is an anti-oppression activist, a farmer and a spoken-word artist. They3 were a co-founding member of Jinsiangu, a group working to create safe spaces for and enhance the wellbeing of intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming people in Kenya. Their chapter in this volume is a collaborative oral history of the founding and evolution of Jinsiangu. Po identifies as gender non-conforming and works towards a sustainable and just world through teaching, public speaking and community mobilisation and empowerment. They are deeply committed to gender justice and self-determination. Po has been involved in queer, trans and sex-worker liberation movements in East Africa for the past decade and co-authored Resilience, a resource guide for intersex, transgender and gender non-conforming Kenyans, published by Jinsiangu.
Richard Lusimbo was the chair of Envisioning’s Africa research team from mid 2012 to mid 2016 and a member of the team based in Uganda. He is SMUG’s research and documentation manager, based in Kampala, and co-director with Nancy Nicol of the Envisioning/SMUG documentary, And Still We Rise. Richard serves as co-chair of Pan Africa ILGA, has been heavily involved in a range of advocacy and community mobilisation activities in Uganda, Africa and internationally, and is helping to lead PrEP4 advocacy campaigns in Uganda and regionally. He also has a strong background in science and technology, digital security and documentation tools. In December 2017, Richard graduated with an M.Phil in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa from the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Justice Monica Mbaru is a judge at the High Court of Kenya. She contributed to the development of the Africa research team which brought together partners and researchers from Botswana, Uganda and Kenya; and chaired the team from 2011 to mid 2012. Activists, human rights defenders and country-based organisations contributed to the material used in the work. The project benefited from North/South collaboration, which has created a network of researchers and different experts on sexuality, human rights, law and art. Monica’s chapter in the book was written in partnership with human rights defenders from Botswana and Canada, who helped assess the work of UN bodies, African regional human rights mechanisms and national legal protections for sexual minorities.
Cameron McKenzie is a PhD candidate in Health Policy and Equity at York University. His research has focused on Indigenous Northern issues, disability and the queer and trans community. His current doctoral research, titled: Policy in Motion: LGBTQ Health from the Fringes to the Mainstream?, examines how the sociopolitical climate and economy serves, and has served, to shape responses to LGBTQ population health needs in Canada. Cameron also has a private practice and is a full-time faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Social Work.
Nick J. Mulé is an associate professor at York University’s School of Social Work and he has been seconded to teach policy, theory and practice at the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies there. Nick was a co-applicant on Envisioning and a member of its executive team. He was the academic chair of the Canada research team, which studied the experiences of LGBT-identified asylum seekers and refugees who were settling in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and their service providers. He was also a member of Envisioning’s law and human rights mechanisms team, on which he conducted research regarding the interaction between treaty bodies and LGBT human rights initiatives, including decriminalisation. He publishes and has research interests in the areas of social inclusion/exclusion of gender and sexually diverse populations in social policy and service provision focusing particularly on the degree of their recognition as distinct communities in cultural, systemic and structural contexts. He has also undertaken a critical analysis of the LGBT movement and the development of queer liberation theory. A queer activist, Nick is the founder of Queer Ontario. Additionally, he is a psychotherapist in private practice serving gender and sexually diverse populations in Toronto.
Fridah Mutesi is a Ugandan human rights lawyer and an advocate for equality and social justice for women and sexual minorities. As one of the lawyers who challenged the AHA in Uganda’s Constitutional Court and in the East African Court of Justice, Fridah co-authored, along with Adrian Jjuuko, the chapter in this volume on the struggle against the AHA. She is the current coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a coalition of NGOs that was initially founded to challenge the AHB/AHA, and after the law’s downfall, continues with joint advocacy and response on human rights issues. She is one of the founding partners of Veritas Advocates, a law firm that provides affordable and pro bono legal services to marginalised and indigent persons, among others. Fridah worked as the head of HRAPF’s access to justice department, and on many other cases that target LGBTI and other marginalised persons, including Adrian Jjuuko v. attorney general which challenged Section 15 (6)(d) of the Equal Opportunities Commission Act barring the Commission from investigating matters considered immoral and/or socially harmful to the majority in society. The act was declared unconstitutional. Fridah’s advocacy work transcends borders. She has advocated and has contributed to reports and papers submitted to various institutional advocacy platforms, including the United Nations Human Rights Council and The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. She was nominated for and participated in the prestigious US state department’s international visitor leadership programme.
Arvind Narrain is ARC International’s Geneva director. He contributed expertise to Envisioning’s India research team, and its law and human rights mechanisms research team. Prior to his ARC International position, Arvind was a founding member of the Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore, India) and was one of the team of lawyers litigating the historic case against section 377, the law criminalising same-sex conduct, in both the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. Arvind has co-edited three volumes which focus on queer politics in the Indian context: Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India (with Gautam Bhan, Yoda Press, 2006); Law Like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law (with Alok Gupta, Yoda Press, 2011); and Nothing to Fix: Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (with Vinay Chandran, Yoda Press and Sage Publications, 2016).
Nancy Nicol was Envisioning’s principal investigator and currently is professor emeritus in York University’s School of Media, Arts and Performance, where she taught from 1989−2016. Nancy is a documentary filmmaker, writer and activist, whose work probes into issues of human rights, social justice and struggles for social change. Her documentaries explore women and work, reproductive rights, migrant workers’ rights, LGBT rights and social movement histories. They include the award-winning series, From Criminality to Equality, which traces 40 years of lesbian and gay organising in Canada, from 1969 to 2009. As part of Envisioning’s participatory documentary projects, Nancy directed Sangini (2016) and No Easy Walk to Freedom (2014); and co-directed And Still We Rise (2015) with Richard Lusimbo. Her recent publications include: ‘Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: strategic alliances to advance knowledge and social change’ (with Erika Gates-Gasse and Nick J. Mulé), Scholarly and Research Communication, 5 (3), 2014; ‘Sexual rights and the LGBTI movement in Botswana’ (with Monica Tabengwa), in C. Lennox and M. Waites (eds.) Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (Institute of Commonwealth Studies/Human Rights Consortium, 2013); and ‘Legal struggles and political resistance: same-sex marriage in Canada and the US’ (with Miriam Smith), in A. Crocker, J. Pierceson and S. Schulenberg (eds.) Same-Sex Marriage in the Americas (Lexington Books, 2010). In 2017, Nancy donated a large body of her original footage on queer history in Canada filmed between 1994 and 2009, to the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Caleb Orozco is an LGBT/human rights advocate in Belize, and a health educator and activist with two decades of experience in the human development sector. He was a member of Envisioning’s Caribbean research team. For the past seven years he has worked primarily within the field of HIV and human rights as executive director and founding member of the United Belize Advocacy Movement. Through legislative analysis, litigation and public education, he has worked tirelessly to advocate for a participatory and rights-based approach to health services for HIV-affected and marginalised populations, and for the eradication of discriminatory laws that affect these communities in the Caribbean. He was the principal litigant in the Caleb Orozco v. attorney general of Belize case, a constitutional challenge to Section 53 of the Criminal Code (which criminalised same-sex intimacy), that was ruled unconstitutional on 10 August 2016. Caleb is active at the hemispheric level in international and regional organisations, such as the UN and the Organization of American States, in the cause of raising the standard of protection and human rights enforcement for LGBT populations. He is also the author of articles and shadow reports on these issues.
Monica Tabengwa is a lawyer from Botswana and was a member of Envisioning’s Africa research team as well as its law and human rights mechanisms research team. Currently working for Pan Africa ILGA as executive director, Monica is a human rights activist and defender with extensive experience in human rights and social justice advocacy, extending to regional and international human rights mechanisms. Monica started her career as a prosecutor with Botswana police, and then joined the women’s rights sector, where she provided legal assistance to indigent women and children in Botswana. Subsequently, she left Botswana and joined the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) as advocacy adviser, doing regional and international advocacy work on LGBTI rights. Later, she joined Human Rights Watch as LGBTI researcher, including the documentation of human rights violations and specifically focusing on the rights of sexual and gender minorities in Africa. She has extensive experience in gender and rights-based training and strategic litigation. She was one of the early members of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) and has continued to provide them with legal support, which contributed to the successful litigation for freedom of association for the organisation in 2015.
Jane Wothaya Thirikwa is a social justice activist with more than eight years’ experience in LGBT organising efforts in Kenya. She provided expertise and insights to Envisioning’s Africa research team regarding Kenya’s LGBT rights movement. Jane was featured in a video portrait in the Telling Our Stories series, Envisioning’s video portraits of LGBT activists working in the countries involved in the study. She participated in advocacy programmes at both the Gay Kenya Trust and the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK), coordinating grassroots initiatives as well as building partnerships with the wider social justice movement in Kenya. Jane holds a BSc in Communications and Public Relations from Moi University, Kenya and is completing a Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies programme at York University, Toronto. She is a 2014 Atlas Corps Fellowship alumna and served as a global engagement fellow at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in Washington DC. Currently Jane is the global partnerships coordinator at KAIROS Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, Toronto.
Kim Vance is the executive director of ARC International and was a co-chair of Envisioning’s law and human rights mechanisms research team. Prior to co-founding ARC International in 2003, Kim served as president of Egale Canada (Canada’s national LGBT organisation), and is a seasoned activist within LGBTI communities at the international, national and local levels. For more than a decade, Kim served on the editorial board of Atlantic Canada’s LGBT community newspaper, Wayves, and helped found Nova Scotia’s provincial LGBT organisation, NSRAP. She has received the Pride Community Service Award and the Rev. Darlene Young Community Award in her province. Kim secured the first registered domestic partnership in Canada and was a successful litigant in one of the Canadian court challenges to secure equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. She is the very proud mother of two adopted children, Marcus and Patty. Kim founded and chaired an international affairs committee within Egale, and oversaw the organisation’s participation in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa (including a research project on the intersections of race and sexual orientation). She oversaw the development of the first conference for LGBT activists in the South East Asia region. Kim has also participated in all of the UN Beijing review conferences in New York City, examining advancement and development for women around the world, and has planned numerous international dialogues in locations around the world, including Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Montréal, Geneva, Argentina, Saint Lucia and Istanbul.
Amar Wahab is associate professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. He is a co-investigator with Envisioning and also a member of its Caribbean research team. His research interests include: sexual citizenship in liberal multicultural and postcolonial nation-state formations (mainly related to the Caribbean and Canada); race and queer transnational politics; critiques of queer liberalism; and race, gender and the politics of representation. He is the author of Colonial Inventions: Landscape, Power and Representation in Nineteenth-Century Trinidad (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), which explores the racialised and gendered construction of colonial subjects in the contexts of slavery and indentureship. His work in queer and sexuality studies is published in journals such as GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies and the Journal of Homosexuality. His current project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is ‘Queer Diasporas in Canada: a case study of transnational activism and politics’, which focuses on queer anti-racist critiques of homonationalism in Canada.
Matthew Waites is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Glasgow. He is author of The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); and co-editor (with Corinne Lennox) of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (Institute of Commonwealth Studies/Human Rights Consortium, 2013). He is co-editor, with Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb and Damien Short, of three special issues on sociology and human rights, including two issues of the International Journal of Human Rights in 2010 (14 (6), ‘Sociology and human rights: new engagements’) and 2012 (16 (8), ‘New directions in the sociology of human rights’) − both also published as books by Taylor and Francis; and a special issue of Sociology, ‘The sociology of human rights’ (46 (5), 2012). He also co-edited (with Kelly Kollman) ‘The global politics of LGBT human rights’ special issue of Contemporary Politics (15 (1), 2009). He has authored articles in journals including Sociology, Social and Legal Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, International Journal of Human Rights, Contemporary Politics and Sexualities. A recent article in Sociological Review is titled ‘LGBTI organisations navigating imperial contexts: the Kaleidoscope Trust, the Commonwealth and the need for a decolonizing, intersectional politics.’ As an activist he has supported and worked with LGBT asylum seekers, and he has collaborated with Envisioning on such events as ‘LGBTI Human Rights Activism and Film’ at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow on 15 November 2015.
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1 The anthology editorial team is comprised of Nancy Nicol, Adrian Jjuuko, Richard Lusimbo, Nick J. Mulé, Susan Ursel, Amar Wahab and Phyllis Waugh. For more information on Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights, and to access its resources, publications and participatory documentary films, please see: www.envisioninglgbt.com.
2 Guillit identifies by the pronouns ‘they, ‘their’ and ‘them’.
3 Po identifies by the pronouns ‘they’, ‘their’ and ‘them’.
4 Pre-exposure prophylaxis medical intervention to radically reduce the risk of HIV infection.