Transphobia – Understanding the Plight of Immigrant LGBTIQ+ in Europe
Channel: OPP Netherlands
Date: 2021-07-02

Do we believe we are equal human beings irrespective of religion, race, creed, nationality and gender orientation? No one is superior to another in any regard? And do we promote this equality or try not to label others or preach hatred and intolerance?

The dialogue was meant to provide information, raising consciousness, and tackling the prejudices that exist among the Pakistanis and the other communities for LGBTIs. We briefly unpacked the terminology used in the Queer community for broad understanding. However, on the premise of “Equal Rights and Equal Treatment for All” the discussion focussed on social and cultural exclusions of these gender categories.
Our panellists had shared a range of psycho-cultural issues with which a child has to deal while growing up in a family, more specifically in a South-Asian/Muslim family. How to create empathy and compassion while dealing with people who have different gender and sexual orientation; how to create an environment where these differences are rationalized, accepted and celebrated? Shouldn’t we consider it as serious as we take discrimination based on race, culture, religion and minority?

Our Panellists:

Lilith Khanum
Lilith is a trans woman with a migration background. She is working for the rights of LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers in Germany since 2015. Since November 2017 she is working for the German-wide LSVD e.V Project “Queers Refugees Deutschland”. The aim of this LSVD project “Queer Refugees Deutschland” is to network the structures existing throughout Germany as well as refugee LGBTI activists and to support them in their work.”

Dr Laine Munir
Dr Munir is a legal and political anthropologist examining the intersection of gender politics, law, and forced displacement from the Global South. As a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Rwanda, she takes a comparative approach in examining postcolonial political environments, juxtaposing the Pakistan case with those of African states. For the Migration Institute of Finland, she is currently working on a book chapter on the diasporic relationship between transgender Pakistanis in Europe and their families back home. She has also published on the drivers of asylum-seeking by LGBTIQ+ Pakistani migrants and their subsequent challenges in the EU system. She is an active contributor to the UNSW's Kaldor Center for Refugee Law in Australia as well as Emerging Scholars and Practitioners in Migration Issues. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD from New York University in Law and Society and an M.A. in Human Rights from Columbia University.



Tina Dixson
Tina Dixson has worked in the area of LGBTIQ, refugee and women’s rights both in Australia and overseas. Tina has a solid experience engaging with international human rights bodies such as Tina has been involved in the development of the Global Compact on Refugees in UNHCR, focusing on inclusion and mainstreaming of age, gender and diversity sensitive approaches. She is a PhD candidate writing a thesis on the lived experiences of queer refugee women that are viewed through the lens of trauma theory and concepts of empowerment. Tina has extensively contributed to the public discourse on people from refugee backgrounds in particular queer women, raising issues of intersectionality, ethics, and representation. She is a co-founder of the Queer Sisterhood Project, a peer-run support and advocacy group for queer refugee women in Australia.