Harvard IOP Hosts First Global LGBTQ+ Human Rights Forum

The Harvard Institute of Politics and the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School invited activists to the JFK Jr. Forum to discuss their fight to further queer rights at the first ever Global LGBTQ+ Human Rights panel.

Activists from Uganda, the U.S., Pakistan, and Canada gathered on Wednesday night to discuss LGBTQ+ rights at home and abroad. HKS professor Timothy P. McCarthy ’93 moderated a conversation between Kasha J. Nabagesera, David France, Saro Imran, and Kimahli Powell about their advocacy for queer people around the world.

In an interview with The Crimson, McCarthy said the forum is a “historic moment for Harvard and the Kennedy School.”

“It’s really important to have the school — for Harvard — to create space and to provide platforms for those of us who care about this work,” he said.

During the panel, Nabagesera said that as an openly-gay university student in Uganda, she was “surprised” to learn it was “illegal to be gay” in the country. She said the discovery motivated her to start her career as an activist.

“Talking to my friends, I told them, ‘I’ll speak. I have nothing to lose,’” she said.

For the past 24 years, Nabagesera used her voice to platform the voices of LGBTQ+ individuals in Uganda. She founded the magazine Bombastic in 2013 as a way for queer Ugandans to share their experiences with discrimination.

“Things happen in Uganda, and we want the whole world to know,” she said. “We want a lot of noise — we want people to go demonstrate, we want people to write letters, we want all the capitals to be on fire.”

Activist Saro Imran is from Pakistan, where, she said, “money holds power.” She said this realization informed her economic-based advocacy to empower LGBTQ+ people in her country.

“If you have money, your gender is secondary, your sexual orientation is secondary,” she said.

Imran founded the PINK Center — the first organization of transgender Pakistani entrepreneurs — with this in mind. She said that the organization works to ensure transgender Pakistanis are “empowered” through financial independence.

“Now is the right time to improve the intersectionality of economic and financial freedom for the transgender, other sexualties and minorities, so they can make better choices with their lives,” she said.

Powell — a Carr Center fellow from Canada — works across borders to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ refugees. At the forum, he discussed his work with the Biden administration to “allow people to enter the country and resettle based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“But many countries don’t have mechanisms to seek protection on the basis of sexual orientation,” he added.

He said his work as CEO of Rainbow Railroad — a charity dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ refugees facing persecution — was inspired by this problem. The organization works to ensure that “civil society has stepped in to support people.”

David France, an Oscar-nominated American filmmaker, said in an interview with The Crimson that he works through “subversive media” to highlight stories from historical and contemporary queer individuals.

“I just feel that there’s something about the human spirit that calls some people to do some really dangerous and heroic things,” he said at the forum. “That’s what I wanted to see if I could understand better.”

McCarthy, who moderated the discussion, said the forum was an important step in increasing LGBTQ+ advocacy on campus.

“One thing we know from the history of queer movements, historically, is that visibility matters,” he said. “That visibility brings people together.”