Making Rainbow Waves 1×02: Pride is how you choose to express: a conversation with Julian Sanjivan (InterPride)

[Musical interlude]

[0.08] Daniele Paletta

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

Welcome everybody to Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World telling the stories and raising the voices of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide.

My name is Daniele Paletta, and in this episode, we are going to talk about Pride.

We have a special guest: Julian Sanjivan, who is the co-president of InterPride, the global organisation that brings together Pride organizations from around the world, as well as regional, national, and local Pride networks. We came together to talk about their personal story, how the Pride movement has made it through the Covid-19 pandemic, and so much more. Here’s what they told us.

I first wanted to start by asking about your personal story. And how did you get into activism for LGBTI rights and into the Pride movement?

[1.13] Julian Sanjivan

That’s a great question. I was actually born in Malaysia, I grew up in Malaysia, I’ve been in the United States now for, on August will be exactly, nine years. I got my asylum granted here in the United States. Back in Malaysia, I started my career doing a lot of feedbacks, training programmes, etc. I even started on my own company, focusing on corporations and all of that. I’ve gotten into advertising. But, at some point in my life, I realised, this is not what I really want to do, I really want to be able to give back to the community, and as I started accepting myself more. But I think being in a country like Malaysia, it was very difficult. We don’t have the type of legal environments that just really allow for us to be up and around screaming proudly that we’re gay. It’s just a very dangerous environment, to be really out and open. So, knowing that being part of the community, and I felt like that’s where my passion lies, I started volunteering. I started volunteering with a non-profit called the PT Foundation. It’s one of the biggest non-profits in Malaysia, dealing with HIV and AIDS. And they also work with a lot of the community on gender, sexuality. Issues around HIV, and AIDS is the priority.

And so, by volunteering, conducting training sessions, I realised it’s really what I was passionate about. So, I gave up my corporate job, got into non- profit world, I became the HR director, and eventually I was there for a few years. But through that experience, I realised the challenges that we had to deal with, with the authorities, with the government. There were some really scary moments that we’d actually experienced, I personally experienced too. I think, at that point, when I really wanted to start doing activism more actively: I started noticing violations that the community that we were serving… And so, given the work that we were doing, I realised how much of a problem and challenge they faced with authorities. For example, if there were sex workers, and if they were transgender, and also doing sex work, the experience with the authorities was really awful. So, I started noticing a lot of this kind of violation.

And so, to me, it was very frustrating even though I was doing HR, but you know, I started doing a lot of programmatic stuff. And I started getting into advocacy and all of that, and started getting meetings together with the local police authorities to bring awareness and how can we address this? So, a lot of those things. So yeah, I think that’s when it really started and moving to the United States just started focusing a lot more on issues pertaining to the community. And being an immigrant myself, and having having been granted asylum, I’m really passionate about working for the community issues that affect the community as well. And of course, being a person of colour myself and non-binary, those are also issues are very personal to my heart.

[4.27] Daniele

Thanks for sharing your story with us. And how did you come to InterPride? And can you tell us a little bit more about what InterPride is and does?

[4.41] Julian

InterPride is actually, it’s pretty much an umbrella organisation, for Pride organisers around the world. And thus, InterPride, it’s international Pride. And we represent about 400 members from about 70 different countries from around the world. And, of course, through our Pride Radar Initiative, where we try to identify where the Prides are around the globe, we recognise there are anywhere between 1200 to 1500 Pride organisations around the world. And Pride looks very different. And so even though we may have 400 active organisations who are members, but we’re technically representing all of these Pride organisations. And so, InterPride, our focus is bringing Pride organisations together, networking, education, support, standing in solidarity, advocating for issues that’s affecting the community that we serve… so these are the core areas of the things we focus on, and that’s what we do.

We are almost 100% volunteer run, we used to be for many, many years. We recently brought in part time help just two weeks ago, our leadership team is from all of the different continents, various countries, very diverse team. And so, we’re really proud of that. Of course there’s always room for improvement, but we represent our global audience. Some of the work that we’re doing and have done in the past include World Pride. World Pride is our signature event, we own the brand. We licence it to different cities. So, this year, it’s going to be in Copenhagen in 2021. And, Copenhagen is focusing a lot on human rights as well in their event. And the 2023 is in Sydney, Australia, we’re really proud that. This is the first time it’s going to a country in the southern hemisphere, which we’ve never really hosted before. And so, there are bidders for future hosts.

And then we have Global Pride, we hosted Global Pride for the firsttime last year: There was an opportunity to bring folks together from around the world, on a virtual platform: when the pandemic happened it affected a lot of us in the community quite significantly. Pride is an opportunity for us to come forward, come together, for a lot of people it’s when they come out, and that was taken away with the pandemic. And it’s also important to understand the members that we serve are not just big names like New York City Pride, Sydney Mardi Gras, or Paris and London. No, there are so many of them that are really small Pride organisations in small towns and regions that some of us may not even have heard of, and they could look very different, they could be a picnic or a cycling event.

Depending on where you are in the world, Pride looks different because of culture and law. So, Global Pride really brought all of these people together, virtually, hundreds of different entries with nearly 60 million viewers, so that’s something that we did, and we raised a lot of money, and we gave back to a lot of the Pride organisers. Because essentially, people need to understand that Pride organisers – even though they are an organisation – they represent an entire community that they’re serving. A lot of our members are organisations that are one-stop centres, they provide multiple services, and Pride celebrations are just one of them.

ROPE, which is a racism and oppression awareness programme is something that we introduced last year, to really talk about racism and oppression, that’s a major issue. That’s been around for centuries. But really, it’s with the George Floyd incident, the death of George Floyd, and how that brought about the Black Lives movement was a lot more visible around the world, not just in the United States. And so, racism and oppression became a major discussion around the world. And that’s something that we wanted to embark on, to educate our members, support and share resources. So, these are just examples of many more – like the Solidarity Fund, which we created to support folks around the world. And so, these are things that are InterPride. And that’s what InterPride is about.

[Musical interlude]

Starting from 2020, the whole world has been battling with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many were left struggling to survive in a world that has become even more unequal and violent. LGBTI communities were left particularly vulnerable. In many places where laws were already a cause of inequality, things have only got worse. We asked Julian how have Pride organisers made it through 2020, and what is the situation for the Pride movement at the moment.

I think 2020 was a disaster for all of us. I mean, it just happened so quickly. And everyone around the world is just taken by surprise. It really affected us significantly. And, it was so close to Pride season, too. And I think for a lot of people that uncertainty showed. People were starting off with “okay, we’re going to have a march, we’re going to have this Pride festival, we’re going to have concerts” and all of that stuff. And then everything had to change. Some people already signed up sponsors, signed up vendors, secured locations, and brought planning to bring in temporary staff members.

Everything had to change overnight. At first, I think people like, what do we do? How do we go about it? We cannot just not do anything, Pride still needs to happen. And, so there’s a lot of conversation around exploring virtual components started. I think it is a very quickly, there’s the progression. And I must say, Pride organisers, generally, we are a very resilient bunch. I think generally the LGBTQIA population, we just have to be resilient, given out difficult situation that we’re in, the discrimination, and all of the struggles that we face, we’re just naturally resilient and strong.

So, we just came up we had to come up with solutions and figure out and keep moving on that way. It didn’t mean that it didn’t impact us, I think there’s a lot of emotional psychological impact on so many different levels, the trauma of it all, just knowing that things are happening so quickly, you’re losing a lot of stuff very quickly, whether it’s employees, the possibility of not knowing whether your organisation will be around anymore, not being able to come together and meet people. Especially for the queer community at large, the LGBTQIA+ community, we rely a lot on our chosen families, and not being able to interact with each other was significant.

Now a year, more a little bit more than a year in 2021, for many of us, in certain parts of the world, there’s hope. For the first time with the introduction of vaccinations and the effectiveness of other testing and social distancing, and all of that. We’re seeing results, especially through vaccination. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that some of us are more privileged.

And so, I think for Pride organisers, looking at all of this, let’s hope we can start planning. The one thing I feel that strongly 2020 impacted is, how can we make our events more accessible for folks who have never really had the opportunity to be actually part of the celebrations because with doing in virtual, we have literally opened up our events to the whole world: folks from the Middle East, folks from parts of Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe,People who don’t really get to do a lot of this suddenly visible and able to see this, and they’re also able to share and organise their own. And so, that impact is so significant. And that’s something that people want is to try and do more and still keep doing, and that’s something that I feel is really important, a lesson that we all have, or at least something precious – the silver lining, if I may say from the pandemic – that we’ve come up with come out of.

A lot of folks are looking at hybrid events. That’s becoming a major discussion. And that’s good, that’s really, really good because it makes us more accessible. But at the same time, the reality of it is that many of our LGBTQIA family around the world don’t have the same privilege. For them, they’re still thinking about safety and their health. So, I think it’s important for us to also think about that for a second, and what can we do to support.

Another trend that I’m also noticing is a lot of the Pride organisers are looking at, okay, let’s give a little bit more time, let’s plan to do virtual in-person events later this year. So, we’re starting to see a significant increase in numbers, in terms of in-person events that are going to be happening in September, October and November. Most events tend to happen around this time of the year, but a lot of events that in-person events are moving towards the end. Because they still want to make sure that we have a responsibility to make our events safe. Safety is a priority.

[14.46] Daniele

I see. And, and yeah, you mentioned Global Pride, and I can only imagine how great but also stressful on the organising side it must have been for all of you involved. Yeah, I wanted to ask if you have a memory of that. If you had to share with like, one memory of the day, what would that be?

[15.09] Julian

I remember being very emotional. And I’m trying so hard not to get emotional right now. Because there’s a lot of work. And knowing how the pandemic it affected every one of us in here, including myself, seeing all of the celebrations and people coming together online, was just phenomenal.

When it started, I remember watching and then crying, because I was just so emotional, seeing all of it come together. And then I went and slept for like a couple of hours came back and I was watching again and I was crying again. It’s just tears of joy and tears of just being overwhelmed and seeing all of this complicates… I remember that distinctly but also remember how I’m just looking at how Pride is celebrated and the representation, looking at folks from the Middle East, folks from Southeast Asia, folks from Africa, communities putting the content out there. Being in the United States for nine years now, I’m used to seeing how Pride looks like here, for a while now. I haven’t had the privilege to travel to many parts of the world, especially in the global south for Pride. I was in India last year, just before the pandemic, to celebrate Pride in Mumbai. And it was a very interesting experience, it was my first time to India, I’ve never been there and seeing just how the community was celebrating was really, it was an eye-opening experience for me as well.

So, seeing all of that online, the dances, the representation and the different way people were expressing that it was so empowering. So, so empowering, and that’s why I was overwhelmed. We did this, like: we put this together in such a short period of time, with the entire world watching. almost 60 million people. It was a lot. And it’s a sense of achievement that I think it’s important to recognise because it was a community coming together to do this together.

[Musical interlude]

[17.30] Daniele

One very important topic remained to be discussed in this conversation: the connections between the Pride movement and broader human rights work. Here’s what Julian told us.

I have the feeling that sometimes, the very visible moments of Pride, like the marches and all the events, sometimes kind of overshadow all the human rights work that the Pride movement does – also in the eyes of our communities. And, of course, we know that’s not the case. So, my question to you was: How do Pride and human rights work connect?

[18.17] Julian

Both are not mutually exclusive. They’re not. I mean, Pride is a human rights component. When you think about it, the Stonewall uprising, a year after the Stonewall uprising, the first part much has happened here in New York City and many other cities around the country here in the United States. You know, in parts of the world that’s still used as a major landmark, even in Germany, for example, they still call it the CSD (Christopher Street Day). And so, it has had its impact. And that is human rights, the fact that we, we rose up and we fought back, because we were being oppressed, how can it not be us advocating for our community? So, that’s why I think we need to take a moment and recognise that this is part of the human rights work that we do.

Going out there organising in an environment that you have so many different resistance is not easy. It’s about visibility, it’s about making people know we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re proud. And that is a huge component of what human rights is about. The fact that in many parts of the world, people can’t even do that, and they want to do that and they arrested or they are killed for being even, for even trying to do that. It’s a human rights violation by itself.

So, the ability for us to speak up and have a voice heard in a platform like Pride is about human rights, at the end of the day. I don’t think human rights is just sitting in the United Nations and having your voice heard. And, it’s not just about making legislation, legislative change. Yes, don’t get me wrong: all of these are very important, it has to happen. But they all work together, we all work together, we all come together, and we do our parts.

We are trying to do more, we are hoping that in the years to come, we will have more formal representation in specific decision-making organisation at the global level that can really uplift the community a lot more and more of a voice. But in the meantime, we’re still going to do what we do, bringing Pride organisations together and keep uplifting them, so that they in turn, can do what they’re doing in terms of human rights, which is letting people organise Pride for the community. Because it’s what brings us together, whether you’re protesting, whether you’re celebrating. Pride is how you choose to express.

[20.56] Daniele

I think all of this and, all of the work that you Pride organisers do deserve the recognition because it really brings all the community together. So, thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much, Julian, for being here with us today and for all the conversation, and I hope we will continue to be working together for our communities.

[21.19] Julian

Thank you so much for having me, Daniele, this is amazing. And I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for all of the work that you that you do as well. Y’all are doing such an amazing work. I must say like even my presentation that I did, and I do regularly talk to people, I use a lot of information from ILGA. So, thank you for the work that you all do.

[21.39] Daniele

Thank you so much.

[Musical interlude]

[21.51]

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted by Daniele Paletta, and edited by Nazlı Mayuk. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms or on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.

transcription Making Rainbow Waves 1×01: How laws and policies impact on trans persons’ lives

[Musical interlude]

[00:08] Daniele Paletta

Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World.

[00:19]

Welcome everybody to Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by ILGA World telling the stories and raising the voices of LGBTI human rights defenders worldwide.

My name is Daniela Paletta, and this week we’re going to talk about a report detailing the impact of laws and policies on trans persons across the globe.

The Trans Legal Mapping Report is the latest publication released by us at ILGA World, and I’m here today with two colleagues of mine, Julia Ehrt, who is the Director of Programs at ILGA World, and with Zhan Chiam, who has led the Gender Identity and Gender Expression program for five years and has also been the author of all the editions of the Trans Legal Mapping Report that we have released so far.

So welcome, Julia and Zhan

[01:14] Zhan Chiam

Hello, thank you

[01:15] Julia Ehrt

Thank you, Daniele

[01:16] Daniele

OK, so let’s start a conversation today. We have just released the Trans Legal Mapping Report. So first of all, congratulations to you. And yeah, can you just tell us what the report is about and how it’s structured?

[01:32] Zhan

So, I guess that’s for me. So, the Trans Legal Mapping Report: we have been doing it since 2016 and this is the third edition. The first two editions in 2016 and 2017 were only covering legal gender recognition processes for trans people around the world.

So, legal gender recognition: we interpret that as meaning a person’s ability to change their name or their gender markers in laws or policies or administrative processe

And then in this edition, we decided to add a new chapter which we called “criminalisation”. So, in some of the countries, you’ll see the possibility for the person to change the name or gender marker or not, and then you’ll see after that a chapter on how criminal laws are used against trans people in that country.

For criminal laws, we have divided them into two parts: one part is direct criminalisation and the other part is indirect criminalisation. The direct criminalisation we called it de jure criminalisation, and indirect criminalisation is called de facto.

In a way you can say that maybe the impact of the laws might not be that different on the lives of trans people.

So there are 13 countries where trans people are directly criminalised, which means that – in either a piece of legislation or in a religious law of the country – it says that a person… for example, it will say something like a man is not allowed to wear women’s clothes or something like that, and those are de jure criminalisation. So we say that there’s actually a law that actually targets someone’s gender identity or gender expression.

And then, on the opposite side, you have what we have called de facto criminalising examples, which means that they are basically where we have found evidence of the police or the authorities using laws that on the face of it don’t target trans people but have used those laws to target trans people. So, those laws could be most relating to sex work, vagrancy, loitering, drug laws, nuisance… any range of laws that we have received examples of how they are used to target trans people.

[04:00] Daniele

I see. So, basically, there’s a very wide range of laws that can be used. I guess the effect for people on the ground is really that they can be constantly targeted and they probably don’t even know where the legal official threat is coming from and what form will take, is that correct?

[04:20] Zhan

Yeah, exactly. I think what we were trying to show with this report was systemic oppression of trans people, and how the criminal system is used to control people’s gender expressions and also to control people’s gender identities.

For example, if you look at the examples that were recorded, it’s not in the countries where there was actual… so it’s not in those 13 countries where they were actually criminalising trans people specifically that the most number of instances took place. So it was in other countries as well, where there were de facto laws that were used against trans people where there were also lots of human rights abuses and discrimination against people.

[05:03] Daniele

What I find particularly interesting about this report is that it is a combination of desk-based research – the research on laws and books – but it also collects the experience of lots of trans activists and trans people on the ground to see how actually these laws impact them.

How did you work on that research? How did you get in touch with all these people?

[05:28] Zhan

Yes, we were a team of a group of different researchers, so some people worked just on one region and some people worked across a couple of regions. Some of the researchers worked only on criminalisation and some worked only on legal gender recognition.

The ones who worked on criminalisation really had to make contact with activists on the ground to double-check the information and to get the examples. We also used, you know, very useful resources like Human Rights Watch’s reports, the Human Dignity Trust’s report last year on trans criminalisation. So these also formed a kind of blueprint for us to start our different research in different regions.

Yeah, it definitely did rely a lot on people making contact with activists in different countries. The Latin American researcher, Mati, is really well connected in her region and so you can just get a sense of that, for example, in the footnotes: for Latin America, there’s so many different organizations and activists that are listed there. And same for the African researcher, Nigel, so they collected and were in contact with a lot of activists in the continent.

[06:45] Daniele

The report talks not only about criminalisation of trans persons but also about legal gender recognition. We asked Zhan what is the situation right now around the world and whether there had been countries in the past years with significant advances had been seen in this regard.

[07:03] Zhan

The report does list a number of countries that have advanced. So, by advance we mean either finally allowing a legal gender recognition process in their country or making the process less discriminatory or have fewer obstacles for people.

For more states in Australia, that’s been possible. In Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Greece, and Luxembourg there have been advances. In Pakistan and also hopefully finally in Vietnam.

[07:37] Daniele

Even if laws are positive and progressive on paper, however, the lived reality for trans people on the ground can be way different.

[07:50] Julia

I think that positive laws in very many cases do have a positive impact on the lives of trans persons. However, the absence of positive laws does not necessarily have, meaning that this state is a bad state for trans persons to live in.

So usually, in most states in which laws are introduced to either protect or recognize trans persons, that will have a positive effect on the lives of trans persons. Of course, not on the life of every trans person. Then there’s of course as well a lot of intersectional discrimination on the trans community, so not everyone within the community will benefit to the same extent from a positive law.

But in general, I think the positive law introduced in the state will have a positive effect.

The way how this record was conducted, in particular when it comes to criminalisation, shows both the big strength of this report but as well its limitations.

The report, as Zhan has said, is very strongly informed by the trans community in the various states or in the various regions that the research was conducted. But when it comes to criminalisation, in particular when we look at the de facto criminalisation, the report relies on reports of cases from the community and which is, of course, the way how de facto criminalisation needs to be researched.

The limitation of that is of course that only because we have not found a case in a specific country, it does not mean that in this country there is no de facto criminalisation: it just means that we did not find the case.

It’s very difficult to say “these are the states that have de facto criminalisation”, and “these are the states that do not have de facto criminalisation” because it’s about finding cases. And there might be cases, and in fact very likely there are many cases which this research was not able to unearth.

[09:45] Zhan

I do agree with that. I think it was a methodological conundrum for us. Because even though we really wanted to cover criminalisation as the next area for this report, the very nature of the way that you collected, like Julia said, you know, is: you have to go through the evidence first before you find the law, If you think of it that way.

And it’s just so time-consuming if you really wanted to do, you know, every single country in the world, or as many as you could. It would take a very, very long time, or a very big team to actually be able to do it.

So this was a bit of an ethical dilemma in a way. We knew we wanted to cover it, but we knew that we couldn’t cover as much as we wanted to.

[10:36 Musical interlude]

[10:48] Daniele

The debate about legal gender recognition has been really, really heated, especially in the past few years and especially in a few countries. And it almost seems like whenever there has been a discussion on legal gender recognition, the hostility against the trans community has advanced in equal ways.

I asked Julia and Zhan if this is something that they have witnessed as well, and why do they think this is happening.

[11:06] Zhan

So, I think there’s some obvious countries when there has been a very public anti-trans rhetoric and so if this has impacted on legal gender recognition processes, or there’s been a legal recognition process and the anti-trans rhetoric has come in and made it more difficult to advance.

So like in the UK, for the Gender Recognition Act that process has stalled. For New Zealand, they weren’t able to advance their birth certificate change process and… you know, those had been definitely the result of anti-trans lobbying.

But then, there are also countries in which, mysteriously, things have just gone backwards. So: in Mongolia and Kazakhstan the age of consent for trans people has gone up. The requirements have become more onerous, and then Japan had a Court decision that confirmed the sterilization requirement for people.

So, on the face of it, and in talking to activists from those countries, it’s not the result. But there’s no seeming connection with any kind of obvious anti-trans agenda, but you really have to wonder what actually means when it is quite obvious in different regions of the world that there is quite a public anti-trans debate. So, yeah, I don’t really understand.

I’m hoping that the report can kind of bring this to people’s attention and, you know, those who are interested to investigate a bit further about the trends can be motivated to do so.

[13:08] Julia

Yeah, maybe I can add to that. Do we see a backlash in states that have introduced good trans legislation, particularly legal gender recognition? I think there is, as Zhan as well explained, but I think there’s another reason why we see trans-related backlash which has nothing to do with introducing legal gender recognition or trans legislation, but it has more to do with the fact that anti-rights actors and right-wing and conservative actors are using trans issues in order to attack gender equality.

So in a certain way, those opponents of ours are weaponizing trans issues in order to make political gains. Because the trans community is very small: we struggle to defend ourselves from these arguments and it’s very effective because these arguments that are using an anti-trans narrative connect easily to a rather conservative and right-wing mainstream.

That has proven an effective strategy to attack gender equality, so it doesn’t necessarily have to do much with attacking trans rights. It’s more about finding ways to take down the gains of the women’s movement, in a certain way, by using anti-trans arguments.

And that’s what we see in Latin America. That’s what we see in Eastern Europe. But I think there’s a dimension of that in states like the UK and New Zealand as well.

[14:35] Zhan

Right, and so would like in countries like, for example, in Poland where – again it’s LGBTI, so it’s not trans-specific – this narrative is that being LGBTI is being against the Polish state or cultural identity. So yeah, like Julia said, it’s a convenient way of invoking a certain ideology, which is really sad.

[15:06] Daniele

This narrative is really pervasive. So the question is: how can our communities fight back and more broadly, what’s next for trans rights? How is the movement going to work from now on?

[15:19] Julia

I was saying something positive now. Because, I mean: despite what we just said about backlash and the way how anti-trans arguments are used, I still think that the general movement of development when it comes to trans rights and when it comes to the quality of life of trans people globally on average is positive. So we do still see a lot of progress, and I would say over the last decade trans rights have made a lot of progress in many many states around the world.

However, I will as well say that trans rights started on a very, very – you know – low level. So the bar for making progress was very low as well. I mean, there’s still a long way to go.

I do think there is still a momentum for positive legislation in regards to legal gender recognition, and we’ve just seen the announcement of India to introduce legal gender recognition based on self-identification. We don’t know yet whether this will be as good as it sounds at the moment, but that remains to be seen. However, there still is positive progress.

Of course, legal gender recognition is not the only – by far not the only – area where progress needs to be made, and there’s still a question of the impact of the reform of the ICD-11, i.e. the depathologisation of trans people globally and that has been in a certain way stalled a little bit with the COVID-19 crisis.

That’s at least our analysis, and clearly, there’s insufficient protection from violence across the board which still needs to be addressed by our communities and by legislators.

And then finally, coming to the backlash question. I think the way to attack the backlash and the anti-trans narratives is by forming alliances. Alliances with the women’s movement and alliances with the broader human rights movement.

Because I don’t think that neither the trans community nor the wide LGBTI community stands a chance in counter-narrating these narratives alone.

[17:25] Zhan

Yeah, I mean, that was the first thing that I thought about as well, which is an actual real cross-movement dialogue and coalition. I think that a lot of the movements just don’t understand each other. And really, people don’t know each other: people don’t know what each other is working on, which is a shame.

So we need to get better at that. I think a lot of LGBTI activists get very siloed within LGBTI work and don’t look further out, which is another shame. For me, that would be the first step in what we can do in the next two to five years. And then also, you know, making sure that we strengthen the mechanisms that we have.

So: the regional and international mechanisms to make sure that they stay informed and that they are protected and that they can continue to do their work. Continue to give them access to the issues.

So I think that is also very important and also to make sure that we don’t let things slip. So, for example, in the countries that I mentioned: (we need to) work out what the strategy is and whether it’s worth getting back the rights that people had before.

[18:40 Musical interlude]

[18:51] Daniele

To conclude our conversation I asked Zhan about ILGA World’s Gender Identity and Gender Expression program which he has led for five years. What is the best memory of the work that he has done?

[19:04] Zhan

You know, I think this report is actually a really nice memory. I mean, it’s not a memory: it’s a real thing! But I think, you know… at the time when I was asked to do it I just thought “Oh no, this is gonna take up half of my life”. But in the end, it’s turned out to be very satisfying.

And meeting the researchers that I was lucky enough to find and to work with has been a lot of fun, actually. I learnt about the situation in different parts of the world, and to be actually able to compile it in a way that is hopefully coherent has brought me a lot of joy. Also, since this is about research, I think… yeah, it would be really nice to see where it can go after this, what other kinds of research it can inform and how it can be used as more of a life tool. So that’s not a memory, but it’s a hope for this report: that it becomes an alive, interactive, regularly updated resource. I hope that is useful.

[20:03] Daniele

Thank you so much for being with us today and guiding through the Trans Legal Mapping Report. It can be downloaded on our website, ilga.org, so please go there, download it, and share with the world. We really hope it’s going to be useful for trans and LGBTI advocacy all over the world. So use it, and let us know what you think about it. Thanks again for following. Bye!

[20:29] Julia

Thank you, bye-bye.

[20:32] Daniele

Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by ILGA World. This episode was hosted and edited by Daniele Paletta. You can find every episode on all streaming platforms or on ilga.org. Thanks for listening.