The 2016 ILGA World Conference will be divided, as usual, into two main sections:
The pre-conferences, a set of meetings organised around a theme or an identity, which take place on the first two days of the event, and the 'proper' conference, or ‘main conference’, which occupies the last three days of the event and includes plenary sessions and workshops.
In Bangkok there will be 5 thematic pre-conferences on Monday 28 November dealing with Education, Health, Workplace Inclusion (hosted by Workplace Pride), Interfaith work (co-organised with the Global Interfaith Network), and UN Advocacy, followed on Tuesday 29 November by 4 ‘Identity’ pre-conferences (Women, Trans, Intersex, Bisexual), a donors’ pre-conference (on invitation only, hosted by the Global Philanthropy Project) and, at the end of the day (for ILGA Members only) regional caucuses and a meeting to select the Chairing Pool of the main conference (according to ILGA’s Standing Orders).
The main conference will consist of 3 ‘general meeting’ plenaries (reports, elections and proposals), 3 ‘content’ plenaries (a panel and two short-presentations plenaries) and 36 workshops, which will deal mostly with specific content (e.g. refugees, litigation strategies, sex-workers, ‘pink-washing’, domestic violence, social exclusion, etc.), in part with issues related to the general meeting (finance reports, budget, amendments to the Constitution of ILGA, etc.), and in part will provide introductory trainings for activists in relation to fund-raising, media, advocacy, etc.
Every evening there will be a social event, hosted by the Human Rights Commission of Thailand, the Ministry of Social Justice of Thailand, the local LGBT business community, with a farewell party on the last evening.
While the final version of the programme (i.e. with all the titles of the sessions and the confirmed speakers and workshop facilitators and/or presenters) will be published on ILGA’s webpage at the beginning of October, at the bottom of this page you can find a link to a table of the draft programme, which will be updated in the next weeks.
The ‘content’ plenaries (the panel and the short-presentations plenaries) will deal with the UNDP proposal of a global LGBTI Inclusion Index, the importance of the collection of LGBTI related data for advocacy purposes, the ILGA-Riwi global survey on attitudes towards LGBTI people, the 10th anniversary of the Yogyakarta Principles, the impact of advocacy within the framework of the UN Universal Periodic Review at national level, a report on the legal rights of Trans people, a report on LGBTI related funding, a report by Grindr on the Middle East, ILGA’s State-Sponsored Homophobia report, and several more subjects.
The workshops will deal with “Refugeeness” and LGBTI, Litigation strategies in Africa, Sex workers and stigma among LGBTI people, Fundraising in China and Latin America, Video production for advocacy purposes, The cost of social exclusion of LGBTI, Integrated security, Visibility Strategies for LBTI women in Cameroon, The Voices of Student LGBTQIA+ Groups in International Universities in China, The shrinking space for civil society, The New Zealand experience of Tiwhanawhana, Not being queer enough, Homophobia as anti-colonial resistance, Sustainable Development Goals and LGBTI, Hijras in Bangladesh, Climate change vs Human Rights in the Pacific, Suicide among LGBTI in Singapore and India, Trans parenting, Domestic violence, and several others.