In the almost 14 years since Evelyne Paradis became the Executive Director of ILGA-Europe it has grown to become the largest umbrella organisation for LGBTI activism in Europe and Central Asia, playing a key and essential role in resourcing and fostering the LGBTI movement, and influencing political systems towards ever greater consideration of LGBTI people’s equality, freedom and safety in decision making and legislation. The past two years in particular have been a time of unprecedented...

For the past 18 years with ILGA-Europe, 15 of which she spent as the organisation’s Executive Director, Evelyne Paradis has worked closely alongside hundreds of LGBTI activists and organisations across Europe and Central Asia. As she gets ready to hand over the reins to our new Executive Director, in this episode of The Frontline, Evelyne talks about how the LGBTI movement in Europe and Central Asia has evolved over her time leading ILGA-Europe, and how ILGA-Europe’s work to build and enhance...

This is the first of three interviews with ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director, Evelyne Paradis as she departs the organisation, after 18 years, nearly 14 of which she spent as its leader. With a decade and half of experience leading Europe’s largest LGBTI umbrella organisation, which is a driving force for political, legal and social change in Europe and Central Asia, Evelyne has had a helicopter view of the growing place of LGBTI rights on political agendas and how all of this has filtered...

Every year since 2009, ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map has been ranking the 49 countries that make up Europe based on the legal and policy situations of LGBTI people.  While during this time there has been much movement at the top of the map, with Spain, Finland, Greece and Moldova making big jumps this year, the countries at the bottom have largely been the same since the very first map, namely Russia, Armenia, Turkey, and at the very bottom Azerbaijan. In this episode of The Frontline, we ask...

Released every May since 2009, the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map ranks the legal and policy situation for LGBTI people in all 49 European countries, on a scale between 0% (gross violations of human rights, discrimination) and 100% (respect of human rights, full equality).   This year there was much movement on the map, with Malta holding the top spot and several countries entering the top ten. All of this has been reported across the world, but what truths lie behind the Rainbow Map rankings?...

All too often we hearabout exclusionary forces, or the voices of forces who seek to exclude trans women from the women’s movement, but does this adequately represent the truth? This episode focuses on the ways in which actors in the women’s movement are actively inclusive of trans women, questions the exclusionary narrative that dominates much of the media, and how this dominant narrative is both being driven by and playing into the hands of anti-democratic forces.    We ask what it...

The big story at the beginning of the World Cup 2022 centred on FIFA banning all players on European teams from wearing the ‘One Love’ armband during matches, highlighting the dire human rights situation for LGBTI people in Qatar.     But what happens when divisions over LGBTI issues become the leading stories surrounding a major sporting event like the World Cup? Do these stories serve the LGBTI communities in countries where people are at risk? Do they serve the greater goals of the LGBTI...

-part episode we’re looking at the new wave of accession to the EU and what it will mean for LGBTI people. With the recent news that Ukraine and Moldova are now candidates to the EU, the topic of EU accession is on the radar again, while Western Balkan countries such as Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro have been going through the process for some years now, and Turkey not acceded since its application in 1987.  With the current state of LGBTI rights in Central Europe, highlighted...

In the second of our two-part episode, looking at the new wave of accession to the EU and what it will mean for LGBTI people, we're looking at how ILGA-Europe uses the accession process in our advocacy work in Brussels, and we talk about the Serbian government’s anti-democratic instrumentalising of LGBTI people in an effort to try to stop EuroPride in Belgrade this September, and what it means for LGBTI people in that candidate country. We're joined by former member of European Parliament,...

In this, the second episode of our new mini-series exploring the opportunities and challenges that come with businesses supporting LGBTI equality, we’re taking a closer look at how business can support LGBTI civil society. With us to talk about how to build partnerships with business in contexts and countries requiring different responses, from advocacy to campaigns, are Nancy Kelley, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, which has long experience working with private business both in the UK and...

In this, the third and final episode of our mini-series exploring the opportunities and challenges that come with businesses supporting LGBTI equality, we are looking at how companies can bring about positive change through representation in advertising, meaningful campaigns, and partnering with LGBTI organisations. We’re looking at this through the lens of one very successful partnership and campaign, between Mermaids, a UK organisation helping trans, nonbinary and gender diverse children,...

This is the first episode of our new mini-series exploring the opportunities and challenges that come with businesses supporting LGBTI equality. Over the past few years, more and more companies have been engaging with LGBTI rights and equality, from putting inclusive employment policies in place, to celebrating Pride in their marketing campaigns, to speaking out in favour of laws that would support LGBTI equality. This provides some great opportunities for activist organisations, but it’s not...

With the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat to democracy it has intensified, now more than ever we need to be working together across many alliances to ensure that equality and freedom are at the cornerstones of European society. Our new mini-series was recorded before the war began, but with it’s deep dive into how actors in the private sector, from big corporates to small and medium businesses, can work with LGBTI organisations to shape a better future for us all, we think it is more...

At ILGA-Europe we recognise that the war is not going to be a short-term situation for vulnerable people in Ukraine, Russia, neighbouring countries, and all countries in Europe and Central Asia that are and will be hosting displaced people. With our deep and nuanced knowledge of the human rights situation for LGBTI people across Europe and Central Asia, we know that there will be great complexity and particular vulnerabilities in the experience of LGBTI refugees, and of those LGBTI people who...

In this episode of The Frontline, we are looking back at the year that was 2021, and what it meant for the LGBTI movement in Europe. It was a year of further lockdowns, of new strains of the COVID virus, and the uncertainty they have brought, and most of all, enormous reverberations of the unprecedented events of 2020 on people’s lives. At ILGA-Europe, when the pandemic first kicked in, our motto was ‘the work goes on’, and that work most certainly continued apace throughout 2021, with the...

Since the beginning of 2020, we have been deeply reminded that change can come unexpectedly and can wreak havoc. We’ve also seen in stark ways how our ability to deal with change is so often framed by bigger structures of inequalities, and most of us have been left with more questions than we have answers.  This episode of The Frontline features an enlightening conversation about navigating change as an activist, between ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director Evelyne Paradis and Natia...

What’s it like to be an LGBTI activist at this moment of enormous change for the world? What are the new challenges, and what’s the daily life of an LGBTI organisation like nowadays?   Joining us to talk about the reality of queer activism in the current context, the good sides and bad, are ILGA-Europe’s Programmes Director, Bjorn van Roozendaal; Ola Kaczorek, founding member of Love Does Not Exclude, the first organisation to demand marriage equality in Poland; Irena Cvetkovic, the...

To introduce our new series on empowering LGBTI activism, Bjorn Van Roozendaal from ILGA-Europe talks about the priorities of our work with activists in a world that’s going through enormous change, and what to expect as we explore the challenges are activists face in doing the work, and some of the key ways they are addressing those challenges.   

Wellbeing challenges have been affecting the work of the LGBTI movement for decades, but it is only recently that activists have begun talking about their wellbeing as an issue. While a number organisations and groups have already taken concrete steps to address wellbeing, there’s no golden rule on how to approach these challenges. In this episode we share what ILGA-Europe has been doing to support the wellbeing of the movement. Joining us are David Kakhaberi, the executive director of...

One thing is always clear, no activist or activism organisation can work alone, and the work needs support. But where can that support be found, how can it be accessed, and when it comes through, how can you use it effectively? In this episode, we’re exploring what it means and what it takes to be supported during the highs and lows of everyday activism. We’ll be taking a look at how international and foreign support can be experienced by LGBTI activists in the movement, the difference it can...

In 2019, the BBC appointed its first ever LGBT correspondent, Ben Hunte. Whenever an LGBT story breaks, he appears on the 6 or 10 o’clock news and across the BBC’s global websites. His first year on the job has been an unprecedented one, with the rise of anti-LGBT hatred in Europe, marked by stark developments in Poland and Hungary. In this episode of The Frontline, Ben sits down with us to talk about the relationship between the media and LGBTI issues, why some stories get all the attention...

In this episode we welcome the internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist, essayist, and advocate for women’s and LGBTI rights and freedom of expression, Elif Shafak. The author of 18 books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Bastard of Istanbul, Honour, and Three Daughters of Eve, Elif has come under fire from the Turkish authorities for writing about human rights abuses that its government denies. Her most recent novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, which tells the...

In this episode we’re discussing the results of ILGA-Europe’s 12th Rainbow Europe Map, which was published on May 17, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) 2021. Every year, Rainbow Europe ranks all 49 European countries based on the laws and policies in each to ensure equal rights and protection for LGBTI people. Countries are ranked from zero percent to one hundred, with zero representing gross violations of human rights and discrimination...

   In this episode of The Frontline, we looking at the rising issue of LGBTIQ youth homelessness in Europe. A new report from ILGA-Europe, in association with Cyndi Lauper’s LGBTIQ Youth Homelessness organisation True Colors United, and the Silberman Centre for Sexuality and Gender (SCSG) at Hunter College in New York, explores the experiences of LGBTIQ focused organisations in Europe working in with young people who have experienced homelessness. Over 60% of LGBTIQ organisations surveyed...