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Eyal
Weizman on the Architectural-Image Complex, Forensic Archeology and Policing
across the Desertification Line







Incidents
in global politics are usually apprehended as the patterned interaction of macro-actors
such as states. Eyal Weizman takes a different tack—an architect by training,
Weizman tackles incidents through detailed readings of heterogeneous materials—digital
images, debris, reforestation, blast patterns in ruins—to piece together concrete
positions of engagement in specific legal, political, or activist controversies
in global politics. In this Talk,
Weizman—among others—elaborates on methods across scales and material
territories, discusses the interactions of environment and politics, and traces
his trajectory in forensic architecture.




Print version of this Talk (pdf)




What
is—or should be—according to you, the biggest challenge, central focus or
principal debate in critical social sciences?



We
live in an age in which there is both a great storm of information and a
progressive form of activism seeking to generate transparency in relation to government
institutions, corporations or secret services. These forms of exposure
exponentially increase the number of primary sources on corporations and state
and provide also rare media from war zones, but this by itself does not add
more clarity. It could increase confusion and increasingly be used disseminate
false information and propaganda. The challenge is to start another process to
carefully piece together and compose this information.



I'm
concerned with research about armed conflict. Contemporary conflict tends to take
place in urban environments saturated with media of varicose sorts, whenever
violence is brought into a city, it provokes an enormous production of images,
clips, sounds, text, etc.



As
conflict in Iraq, Syria, Missouri and the Ukraine demonstrate, one of the most
important potential sources for conflict investigations is produced by the very
people living in the war zones and made available in social networks almost
instantly. The citizens recording events in conflict zones are conscious of
producing testimonies and evidence, and importantly so, they do so on their own
terms. The emergence of citizen journalists/witness has already restructured
the fields of journalism with most footage composing Al Jazeera broadcasts, for
example, being produced by non-professional media. The addition of a huge
multiplicity of primary sources, live testimonies and filmed records of events,
challenge research methods and evidentiary practices. There is much locational
and spatial information that can be harvested from within these blurry, shaky
and unedited images/clips and architectural methodologies are essential in
reconstructing incidents in space. Architecture is a good framework to
understand the world, alongside others.



Whereas
debates around the 'politics of the image' in the field of photography and
visual cultures tended to concentrate on the decoding of single images and
photojournalistic trophy shots we now need to study the creation of extensive
'image-complexes' and inhabit this field reconstruct events from images taken
at different perspective and at different times. The relation between images is
architectural, best composed and represented within 3D models. Architectural
analysis is useful in locating other bits of evidence—recorded testimonies,
films and photos—from multiple perspectives in relation to one other bits of
evidence and cross referring these in space.



But
'image complexes' are about interrogating the field of visibility it is also
about absence, failures of representation, blockages or destruction of images.





How
did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about global
politics?



I'm
an architect, and my intellectual upbringing is in architectural theory and
spatial theory. I tend to hold on to this particular approach when I'm entering
a geopolitical context or areas that would otherwise be the domain of
journalists and human rights people, traditional jurists, etc. Architecture taught
me to pay attention to details, to materiality, to media, and to make very
close observations about the way built structures might embody political
relations.



When I study political situations, I
study them as an architect: I look at the way politics turns into a material—spatial
practice—the materialization, and at the spatialization, of political forces. Architectural
form—as I explained many times—is slowed-down force. My thinking is structured
around a relation between force and form. And form, for an architect, is an
entry point from which to read politics. So when I look at matter and material
reality—like a building, a destroyed building, a piece of infrastructure, a
road or bridge, a settlement or suburb or city—I look at it as a product of a political
force field. But it is never static. A city always grows, expands or contracts
recording the multiple political relations that shaped it.



Buildings
continuously record their environment. So one can read political force on buildings.
In taking this approach, I am influenced by building surveyors, and insurance
people going into a building to look at a scratch in a wall to piece together
what might have happened, and what might still happen. So I feel like a kind of
property surveyor on the scale of a city at times of war. But in practicing
this forensic architecture
I also work like an archaeologist: archaeology is about looking at material remains
and trying to piece together the cultural, political, military, or social spheres.
But I'm an archaeologist of very recent past or of the present. While
some of my investigations will always retain a haptic dimension based on
material examination, much of it is an analysis of material captured and
registered by various medias. Verify, locate, compose and cross-reference a
spatial reality from images of architecture.





What
would a student need to become a specialist in your field or understand the
world in a global way?



The institutes I run do not recruit
only architects. We need to open up the disciplinary bounds of education. We work
with filmmakers and architects and with artists.



It embodies a desire to understand
architecture as a field of inquiry, with which you can interrogate reality as
it is effectively registering material transformation. I see architecture as a
way of augmenting our way of seeing things in the world, but it's not for me a
kind of sacred field that should not be touched or changed.



But I'm also using architecture
across the entire spectrum of its relation to politics, from the very dystopian—with
forensic architecture, a kind of architectural pathology—to the utopian. I have
a studio in Palestine with Palestinian partners of mine, and internationals.
Alessandro Petty and Sandi Hilal
are in this group, which is called Decolonizing Architure. It's this group that is engaged in
very utopian projects for the West Bank and Palestine and the return of
refugees and so on. So I use architecture across the entire spectrum, from the
very dystopian to the very utopian. Architecture is simply a way of engaging
the world and its politics. Space is the way of establishing relations between
things. And actually space is not static, it is both a means of establishing
relations between people and objects and things. Just as material itself is
always an event, always under transformation. So that is something I have taken
from architecture and try to bring into politics, but not only in analyzing
crimes, but in producing the reality yet to come.



So what we
need from people is the desire to understand aesthetics as a field of inquiry,
not simply as a pleasurable play of beauty and pleasing kind of effect, but as
a kind of very sensorial field, sensorium, in which you can interrogate reality
as it is effectively registering material transformation. So I would look
simply for that kind of sensorial intensity and high critical approach and
understanding and speculating of how it is we know what we think we know. Of
course, you cannot see, or you do not know what you see, you do not have the
language to interpret or question what it is you 'see' without abstract
constructs. This means I don't necessarily look for theoretical capacities in
people: I see theory as a way of augmenting our way of seeing things in the
world, of registering them, of decoding them, but it's not for me a kind of
sacred field to which I submit in any way.







So
what is it you work on now?



I'm mostly trying to establish forensic architecture as a
critical field of practice and as an agency that produce and disseminate
evidence about war crimes in urban context. Recent forensic investigations in Guatemala
and in the Israeli Negev involved
the intersection of violence and environmental transformations, even climate
change. For trials and truth commissions, we analyze the extent to which
environmental transformation intersect with conflict.



The imaging of this
previously invisible types of violence—'environmental violence' such as land degradation, the destruction of fields and forests (in the tropics), pollution
and water diversion, and also long term processes of desertification—we use as new type of evidence of processes dispersed across time
and space. There are other conflicts that unfold in relation to climatic and
environmental transformations and in particular in relation to environmental
scarcity.



Conflict has reciprocal
interaction with environment transformation: environmental change could
aggravate conflict, while conflict tends to generate further environmental
damage. This has been apparent in Darfur, Sudan where the conflict was
aggravated by increased competition over arable due to local land erosion and desertification.
War and insurgency have occurred along Sahel—Arabic for 'shoreline'—on the
southern threshold of the Sahara Desert, which is only ebbing as million of
hectares of former arable land turn to desert. In past decades, conflicts have
broken out in most countries from East to West Africa, along this shoreline:
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal.
In 2011 in the city of Daraa, farmers' protests, borne out of an extended cycle
of droughts, marked
the beginning of the Syrian civil war. Similar processes took place in the
eastern outskirts of Damascus, Homs, al-Raqqah and along the threshold of the
great Syrian and Northern Iraqi Deserts. These transformations impact upon
cities, themselves a set of entangled natural/man-made environments. The conflict
and hardships along desertification bands compel dispossessed farmers to embark
upon increasingly perilous paths of migrations, leading to fast urbanization at
the growing outskirts of the cities and slams.



I'm
trying to understand these processes across desert thresholds. There has been a
very long colonial debate about what is the line beyond which the desert begins.
Most commonly it was defined as 200 mm rain per annum. Cartographers were
trying to draw it, as it represented, to a certain extent, the limit of
imperial control. From this line on, most policing was done through bombing of
tribal areas from the air. Since the beginning, the emergence of the use of air
power in policing in the post World War I period—aerial control, aerial
government—took form in places that were perceived, at the time, as lying
beyond the thresholds or edges of the law. The British policing of Iraq, the
French in Syria, and Algeria, the Italians in Libya are examples where control
would hover in air.



Up
to now I was writing about borders that were physical and manmade: walls in the
West Bank or Gaza and the siege around it—most notably in Hollow Land (2007, read the introduction here).
Now I started to write about borders that are made by the interaction of people
and the environment—like the desert line—which is not less violent and brutal. The
colonial history of Palestine has been an attempt to push the line of the
desert south, trying to make it green or bloom—this is in Ben Gurion's terms—but
the origins of this statement are earlier and making the desert green and
pushing the line of the desert was also Mussolini's stated aim. On the other
hand, climate change is now pushing that line north.



Following
not geopolitical but meteorological borders, helps me cut across a big
epistemological problem that confines the writing in international relations or
geopolitics within the borders organize your writing. Braudel is an
inspiration but, for him, the environment of the Mediterranean is basically
cyclically fixed. The problem with geographical determinism is that it takes
nature as a given, cyclical, milieu which then affects politics—but I think we
are now in a period where politics affects nature in the same way in which
nature affects politics. The climate is changing in the same speed as human
history.





What does your background in
architecture add to understanding the global political controversies you engage
in?



We are a forensic agency that
provides services to prosecution teams around the world. With our amazing
members we ran 20-odd cases around the world from the Amazon to Atacama, for
the UN, for Amnesty, for Palestinian NGOs, in Gaza of course, West Bank, issues
of killings, individual killings in the West Bank that we do now, and much more
drastic destructions.



Forensic Architecture is unique in using
architectural research methodologies to analyze violations of human rights and
international humanitarian law as they bear upon the built environment—on
buildings, cities and territories, and this is why we get many commissions. We
produced architectural evidence for numerous investigations and presented them
in a number of cases in national and international courts and tribunals. We
were commissioned by the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to study single
destroyed buildings, as well as patterns of destruction, resulting from
drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza. This study was presented at
the UN General Assembly in New York. We developed techniques to locate the
remains of buildings and villages overgrown by thick rain forests and presented
this material as evidence in the genocide trial of former president Efraín Ríos
Montt in the National Court of Guatemala and the Inter-American
Court. We quantified and analyzed levels of architectural destruction in Gaza
after the 2014 conflict for Amnesty International. We provided architectural
models and animations to support a petition against the wall in Battir
submitted to the Israeli High Court, helping to win the case.



Recently, we use and deal with the
reconstruction of human testimony. Witnesses to war give account of the worst
moment of their lives; times when their dear ones have died or hurt. Their
memory is disturbed, and tends to be blurred. We have developed a way of very
carefully interviewing and discussing with witnesses. Together with them, we
build digital models of their own homes. So we can see a very slow process of reconstruction
of the relation between memory space and architecture. And events start coming
back, through the process of building.



In order to develop this, we needed
to explore the historical use of memory and architecture, such as Frances Yates'
The Art of Memory (read it here), as well as different accounts on
the use of trauma, and bring them into the digital age, bring an understanding
of the relation of testimony and evidence into contemporary thinking. Single
incidents tend to be argued away as aberrations of 'standard operating
procedures'. To bring charges against government and military leaderships, it
is necessary to demonstrate 'gross and systematic' violations.
This means finding consistent and repeated patterns of
violations. Architectural analysis, undertaken on the level of
the city is able to demonstrate repetition and transformations in patterns of
violation/destruction in space and time—within the battle zone along the
duration of the conflict. Architectural analysis is useful not only in dealing
with architectural evidence—i.e with destroyed buildings—but also helpful in
locating other bits of evidence—testimony films or photos—in relation to one
other bits of evidence, and cross referring these in space.



Urban violence unfolds at different
intensities, speeds and spatial scales: it is made of patterns of multiple
instantaneous events as well as slower incremental processes of 'environmental
violence' that affects the transformation of larger territories. We aims to analyze
and present the relation between forms of violence that occur at different
space and time scales. From eruptive kinetic violence of the instantaneous/human
incident through patterns of destruction mapped across and along the duration
of urban conflict, to what Rob Nixon calls the 'slow violence' of environmental
transformation (read the introduction of the eponymous book here,
pdf).





Last question. How does your approach to research relate to, or differ
from, approaches to international politics?



To study conflict as a reality that unfolds across
multiple scales, we use the microphysical approach—dealing with details,
fragments and ruins—as an entry-point from which we will unpack the larger
dynamics of a conflict. We reconstruct singular incidents, locate them in space
and time to look for and identify patterns, then study these patterns in
relation to long terms and wide-scale environmental transformations. This
approach seeks to make connections between, what Marc Bloch of the Annales
School called 'micro- and macro-history, between close-ups and extreme long
shots' in his thesis on historical method. This topological approach is
distinct from a traditional scalar one: the macro
(political/strategic/territorial) situation will not be seen a root cause for a
myriad set of local human right violations (incidents/tactics). In the complex
reality of conflict, singularities are equally the result of 'framing
conditions' and also contributing factors to phase transitions that might
affect, or 'de-frame' as Latour has put it, changes occurring in wider areas.
Instead of nesting smaller scales within larger ones, our analysis will seek to
fluidly shift from macro to micro, from political conditions to individual
cases, from buildings to environments and this along multiple threads,
connection and feedback loops.



While in relation to the single
incident it might still be possible to establish a direct, liner connection
between the two limit figures of the perpetrator and the victim along the model
of (international) criminal law, evidence for environmental violence is more
scattered and diffused. Instead, it requires the examination of what we call
'field causalities'—causal ecologies that are non-linear, diffused,
simultaneous, and that involve multiple agencies and feedback loops,
challenging the immediacy of 'evidence'. 




Establishing field causalities requires the
examination of force fields and causal ecologies, that are non-linear,
diffused, simultaneous and involve multiple agencies and feedback loops.
Whereas linear causality entails a focus on sequences of causal events on the
model of criminal law that seeks to trace a direct line between the two limit
figures of victim and perpetrator field causality involves the spatial
arrangement of simultaneous sites, actions and causes. It is inherently relational
and thus a spatial concept. By treating space as the medium of relation between
separate elements of evidence brought together, we aim to expand the analytical
scope of forensic architecture. It is inherently relational and thus a spatial
concept. By treating space as the medium of relation between separate elements
of evidence brought together, field causalities expands the analytical scope of
forensic architecture.



Let me illustrate this a bit. Forms
of violence are crucially convertible one to another. Drying fields along the
Sahel or the Great Syrian Desert, for example, reach a point in which they can
no longer support their farmers, contributing to impoverishment, migration to
cities, slumnization and waves of protest that might contribute to the eruption
of armed conflict. These layers call for a form of architectural analysis able
to shift and synthesize information at different scales—from single incidents
as they are registered in the immediate spatial setting, through patterns of
violations across the entire urban terrain to 'environmental violence'
articulated in the transformation of large territories.





Eyal Weizman is an architect, Professor of Visual Cultures and director
of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Since 2011 he also directs the European Research Council funded project, Forensic
Architecture - on the place of architecture in international
humanitarian law. Since 2007 he is a founding member of the architectural
collective DAAR in Beit
Sahour/Palestine. Weizman has been a professor of architecture at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna and has also taught at the Bartlett (UCL) in London at
the Stadel School in Frankfurt and is a Professeur invité at the École des
hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He lectured, curated and
organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include Mengele's
Skull (with Thomas Keenan at Sterenberg Press 2012), ForensicArchitecture (dOCUMENTA13
notebook, 2012), The Least of all Possible Evils (Nottetempo
2009, Verso 2011), Hollow Land (Verso, 2007), A
Civilian Occupation (Verso, 2003), the series Territories 1,2
and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines
and edited books. 



Related links





Facultyprofile at Goldsmith
Forensic Architecture homepage
Read
Weizman's introduction to Forensis
(2014) here
(pdf)
Read
Weizman's Forensic Architecture: Notes
from Fields and Forums (dOCUMENTA 2012) here
(pdf)
Read
Weizman's Lethal Theory (2009) here (pdf)
Read
the introduction to Weizman's Hollow Land
(2007) here
(pdf)


Print version of this Talk (pdf)




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Navigating challenging and complex civic spaces is nothing new for local organizations working to advance the rights and inclusion of LGBTI communities. Join NDI Senior Program Officer for Citizen Participation for a conversation with three partners from across the globe working to sustain their advocacy for equality and inclusion, while tackling some of the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Find us on: SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | Google Play
Whitney Pfeifer: Navigating challenging and complex civic spaces is nothing new for local organizations working to advance the rights and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities. Regardless of the levels of tolerance and legal protection in a country, these groups know how to quickly adapt and utilize innovative approaches to maintaining their work and advocating for change.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has forced organizations to cancel Pride events, training, and in-person advocacy efforts, LGBTI organizations have been quick to respond and adjust, playing an integral role in meeting the basic needs of LGBTI individuals while utilizing online creativity to stay connected and sustain LGBTI community building.
Today, we are joined by three partners from across the globe, each working to sustain their advocacy for equality and inclusion, while tackling some of the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic.
We'll be speaking to each of these local partners to discover how they have successfully built digital communities that achieved real-life results. Welcome to DemWorks.
In Panama, Fundación Iguales is working to shift social attitudes towards greater respect and acceptance of LGBTI communities. Part of this process includes collecting stories of how LGBTI communities are being impacted by COVID-19 and its response, demonstrating that as humans, we are all impacted by the pandemic, regardless of how we identify. We spoke with Ivan to learn more. Ivan, thank you for joining us.
Ivan: Thank you.
WP: Could you tell us a little bit more about the LGBTI community in Panama and the types of challenges LGBTI individuals face in building and maintaining a community?
I: We are a country between Costa Rica, who just last month legalized civil marriage for same sex couples, and Colombia, a country with equal marriage since April 2016. We're a part of that less of the 30% of Latin Americans who live in a territory where marriage equality is prohibited. Moreover, are known for public policies that takes into consideration LGBTI persons.
The challenges, there are many. As a gay person, for example, I'm not protected by any non-discrimination law, or the gender identity of the trans community is not part of what is respected by the government. There is unfortunately still a lot of stigma and discrimination for being queer.
We're a small country where there's a strong control from conservatives and religious groups, but what are the good news, I guess? The civil society is finally organized, and organizations like Fundación Iguales are doing a marvelous work promoting the respect of our human rights, creating community, helping the LGBTIQ community to be more visible, and therefore more respected by the general public.
We start a legal process to have marriage equality in Panama since 2016. We are very optimistic we will conquer in the courts and in the public opinion, by strategic innovative and emphatic messages of equality.
WP: You alluded briefly to how Fundación is contributing to building and strengthening the community in Panama. Could you discuss the facts a little bit more about how Fundación is contributing to and strengthening during these uncertain times?
I: First of all, with positive messages and with a clear presence in national conversations about the measures during the pandemic, highlighting the reality of LGBTI persons. We have had a very tough situation with restriction based on sex to restrain mobility of people here in Panama, and that had impacted dramatically the trans community and the nonbinary community of Panama, in some cases affecting their access to food and medicines. Yes, to be able to even go to the supermarket and buy bread and milk.
We decided to join forces with other organizations, specifically with an organization called Hombres Trans Panamá. It's an organization conformed by trans men to create a solidarity network. The network was created for two main activities. The first one, it is to assist directly trans and non binary people who register for humanitarian assistance. We already covered 120 people who were in need of food and medicines.
The second part of that program is an online survey to register discrimination cases for the trans community during the quarantine time. We have already had the report of 26 cases, mostly of trans person who were restricted to enter supermarkets to buy food because their gender identity or expression did not match what the police "expect" from them that day. That report was sent to the government, to regional organizations that monitor human rights, and we hope that impact possibly their lives.
For other programs that Fundación Iguales is promoting during this times of pandemic, one that is very important is a series of podcasts called Panademia LGBTIQ+, a program of Fundación Iguales with [foreign language 00:06:20], which is an independent group of journalists to highlight stories of LGBTI persons during these times, telling their stories, especially the trans community.
WP: That sounds like a lot of excellent work and strengthening the collaboration between groups has been really effective, I think, in this COVID pandemic situation.
I: Indeed.
WP: You alluded briefly to these podcasts. Are there other forms of technology that Fundación is using to continue the work that you're doing?
I: Yes, and that's very interesting because we have to reinvent our work, basically. Just before COVID, we finished a super nice, unprecedented program going through the different provinces of Panama that we call the human rights tour, with the idea to be more democratic on the contents of human rights, specifically talking about Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision on equal marriage and gender identity, the Advisory Opinion 24. It was such a success and we planned to right away continue around the whole country. With this situation we have, being confined at home with mobility restrictions, we have to change all that, but we were lucky to have a strong presence in social media with a robust content that we were able to share and build from it. Also, our capacity of doing initiatives jointly with other NGOs like I mentioned before and you highlight, were also key to show the work that we were doing on respecting human rights.
That coordination and collaborations, like the podcast example, the solidarity network, the level of infographic videos and social media interactions of Fundación Iguales are very solid. Since we dedicate an important part of our work to be present in national and international platforms for political participation, that allowed us to be more visible and not to be forget during these complicated times,
WP: It sounds that you've been able to pivot pretty smoothly and quickly, despite I'm sure what have appeared to be challenges that we're all facing during the pandemic.
Would you be willing to talk about kind of the role and benefits of partnering with international organizations such as NDI in your work?
I: When I started Fundación Iguales, I was very privileged to know that working with international organizations like NDI was essential. I lived almost eight years in Washington, D.C., And before that I studied in New York City, and I worked for almost eight years in multilateral organizations. That experience gave me a different look to understand how, and how specifically a country like Panama, a country with so many challenges, with the lack of the government support and local support, I would say, organizations and enterprises and so on ... so for me, it was very important to know that a key part of my work was to knock some doors abroad because it's essential to boost the work that we do here. Definitely, without the help, assistance, donations and more important, the moral support of embassies and organizations like NDI, our work would have been way more difficult than what actually is.
WP: As NDI, we like to partner and collaborate with our partners and recognize you as the experts and provide the technical assistance and guidance as needed. So it's good to hear that this has been beneficial for Fundación. My last question is about what's next for Fundación?
I: We're very focused that we want a social change for our country in a social change for good. We want a Panama where all persons will be respected and where they can all be happy. We want Panama to join the club of countries where same sex couples can have the support and protection of the government, and more importantly, where society in general welcomes their families. We're trans persons can fully live and decide about their dreams and lives. And we're going to conquer that by strategic campaigns, with messages, with empathy.
WP: Thank you, Ivan, for taking the time to speak with us. We look forward to seeing what Fundación is able to do in creating a safer and more equal space for LGBTI communities in Panama.
I: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
WP: For more than 35 years, NDI has been honored to work with thousands of courageous and committed democratic activists around the world to help countries develop the institution's practices and skills necessary for democracy's success. For more information, please visit our website at www.ndi.org.
You've heard about how an organization is engaging with communities and collecting stories to plan for future advocacy efforts from Fundación Iguales. But what happens when you are in the middle of a project, when things get disrupted? LGBTI communities in Romania successfully organized to prevent an amendment to the constitution that would ban same sex marriage that was put to a referendum in 2018. In the aftermath of these efforts, there was a need to establish priorities moving forward and create space for dialogue within the community about the next steps for the overall movement. Mosaic organized different segments of the LGBTI community, including transgender communities, LGBTI, Roma, women, and older people to build consensus around an advocacy agenda moving forward.
In the midst of these community outreach efforts, COVID-19 happened. Vlad Viski, executive director of MosaiQ is with us. Vlad, thanks for joining us.
Vlad Viski: Thank you for having me.
WP: Can you tell us a little bit more about your project?
VV: Between 2015 and 2018, in Romania, there was a national campaign to change the constitution and ban gay marriages, initiatives which were supported by conservative groups and a large share of the political party. For three years, in Romania, society has been talking, probably for the first time in a very serious manner, about LGBTI rights, about the place for the LGBT community in society. This conservative effort ended with a failure at the polls for the referendum to change the constitution, only 20% of Romanians actually casting the vote for this issue when the minimum threshold of votation, of turnout, was 30%.
This was possible with quite a successful campaign coming not from not only from MosaiQ but from other LGBTI organizations in Romania throughout the country. We all kind of went on the boycott strategy, we're actually asking people to boycott the referendum because human rights cannot be subject to a popular vote.
Once the referendum in 2018 failed in Romania, there was a question in the community. What should we do next? How should our agenda look like for the next couple of years? We at Mosaic, we really tried to focus and we really thought the issue of intersectionality as being extremely important. This is how the idea of this project started, Engage and Empower was the name of the project. It focused on six groups within the LGBT community: transgender people, LBTQ women, elderly, people living with HIV, Roma LGBT people, and sex workers.
WP: Could you talk a little bit more about how the organization is trying to maintain momentum in this community building efforts, despite what's going on with the pandemic?
VV: We at MosaiQ, we had to reimagine some of the projects that we were involved in, so that included canceling events or postponing them or rescheduling for the fall. But the problem is also that we don't really know the timeline for this story or when it will end. We've had issues related to personal issues of people in the community. People living with HIV were not getting their treatment due to the fact that hospitals were closed except for the coronavirus. Then we've had issues related to sex workers not being able to work anymore. The issue of poverty has been quite an important issue. A lot of people have been laid off, a lot of people were not able to pay rent, a lot of people were either in unemployment benefits, and so on.
At the personal level for us and as an organization, all of a sudden we got a lot more messages from people asking for help. We've tried to help them on a case by case basis. We are not a social health kind of organization, but we've tried to fix as many problems as we were able to. Then throughout this, and actually talking about issue of intersectionality and the issue of the project and the way we work with the Roma LGBT community, what we've witnessed throughout this pandemic and the lockdowns, especially, was an increase in violence, against Roma people from the police. So together with colleagues from civil society, especially Roma groups, we had to monitor hate speech in the media, monitor cases of abuse and violence from the police, and also make statements and letters to official institution, to the president and the prime minister and so on. So for us, it was an issue of also solidarity with other groups affected by the pandemic.
WP: I believe that you've had to move some of your activities online, correct?
VV: That was another part, which we kind of tried to make the best out of the situation. We felt that there were a lot of young kids, for example, who, because schools were closed, they had to go back and live with their homophobic parents. A lot of organizations, LGBT organizations in Romania were not able to have the Zoom meetings with their volunteers because they were living with homophobic or transphobic parents so they could not reveal what they were doing or who they were talking to. So the issue of depression and psychological pressure that comes on people being locked down, people trying to survive throughout this pandemic, we decided to have a campaign online, which was called MosaiQ Quarantine, and that included parties online in order to support queer artists who were not able to earn any money because there were no gigs. We organized these online parties and we paid them and we supported their work.
Then we had the zoom talks with, or like talks online, with all of the organizations and groups in Romania, LGBT groups, to kind of better see the situation on the ground in different cities in Romania. That was for us extremely important because we felt like there was a need to have this dialogue within the community.
Then we had the all sorts of posts on social media and different kinds of events. We also talked with organizations from the region, from the US, from Moldova, from Russia, to kind of see what the feeling also over there.
So for us, it was quite an exercise to take advantage of the fact that using social media and using online tools, we were able to reach out to people who otherwise would not have been able to participate in our events, being so far away.
WP: It sounds like Mosaic has certainly stepped up to the challenges. Could you just briefly talk about what NDI support has meant to Mosaic?
VV: I think the project funded by NDI was extremely important, both for the community ... right now, we have an active Roma LGBT group. We have all of these, the issue of intersectionality being put on the agenda. We have the [inaudible 00:19:36] sports, which is a sports club run by women who is also trying to grow based also on the support that Mosaic has offered through NDI. We've had, at the Pride last season, the first Roma LGBT contingent putting the issue on the agenda. So for us, in many regards, this project kind of focused us more on this intersectional approach to activism and the need to include all voices within the community. The trust that they had in us was very important.
WP: I'm glad to hear that it's been a fruitful partnership, both for NDI and Mosaic. Vlad, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
VV: Oh, that's it.
WP: We'll be back after this short message.
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Before the break we heard from two partners using digital platforms to create and support communities. But how are groups sustaining their online networks and communities once created? Rainbow Rights trained paralegals in the Philippines on legal issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity and how to support LGBTI communities. Through Google Classroom, these paralegals formed an online network to help communities facing discrimination and violence. Eljay, welcome to our podcast. Could you tell us a little bit more about the paralegal support project?
Eljay: Yeah. One of the main components of our community paralegal program is to create a national online platform wherein all of the trained paralegals of our organization will be able to share their experiences, their cases, and they could also refer some of the difficult cases to us. So that's the main idea. It's just that it gained a deeper significance in this COVID-19 pandemic that we're experiencing because a lot of legal organizations hurried to do to do what we had been doing in the past year, which is to create an online platform.
Right now, even though there's a lot of problems in the Philippines barring the central autocracy, we have been maintaining the platform. People are still referring cases to us and we are working on those cases. Part of the deeper significance that it has is in the Philippines, human rights violations have increased because of the lockdown. So it became a source of reporting documentation for these human rights violations during the lockdown. We did not expect that it will evolve that way but we're happy that it has, and despite some connectivity issues in the Philippines, it has been reaping as well.
WP: So when you're talking about the program, there've been increased human rights reports, is that generally more broad human rights abuses? Or are we talking specifically to the LGBTI community?
E: Yeah, we accept every report on numerous violations, but we take on the LGBTI human rights violations specifically. When we receive human rights violations that is not really in our lane, so to speak, we refer them to bigger organizations. We have seen increased numerous violation against the LGBTQI community here.
WP: You had mentioned that Rainbow Rights fortunately had organized the training for the paralegals before the pandemic hit and already have a plan in place to use online platforms, which was Google Classroom, to create this network across the country. You've briefly referenced what the current situation is like now, but could you go a little deeper into that? What kind of challenges is Rainbow Rights facing in continuing to engage with the community?
E: As I have mentioned, maybe a bigger challenge is the connectivity issues in the Philippines. We don't have good internet here, and that's a challenge. It's also challenged to keep the interest level of our paralegals and keep them engaged. That is also challenged because they have bigger problems now. Because of the pandemic, they're thinking of their health, they're thinking of their livelihoods, and that is a challenge during these times.
However, before the pandemic, we also saw that we had to be creative at the level of interest, so that's a challenge. The situation, it's working. Overall situation's working. We have referrals, we continue to share modules in our platform, refreshing their memory on the training. We also try to be light. There are some light moments so that they be so that they keep themselves also, the interest level is high and that they see us and they trust us in maintaining this platform.
WP: You alluded to the fact that it's often difficult to maintain interest of your paralegals when engaging online.
E: Basically, we had a two-pronged approach on this. One is to find the people who has a genuine interest to serve the community. So in our selection process, we have chosen people who have track records of service in their communities. The other side of the approach is to build on the spirit of camaraderie, friendship, and community solidarity between us. So even before the pandemic, we have been setting up calls and checking on them, even adding them on Facebook and Twitter just to continually engage with them. I think that's a big part of our strategies. We're also looking to ... I think in my personal view, I think a lot of what they do is labor, so I think in the future, we will be able to compensate them for their efforts in their community and we're looking into that as well.
WP: That's really interesting. Could you speak a little bit more to the role and benefits of partnering with international organizations such as NDI in your work and as well as helping to sustain this national network?
E: Yeah. I think it's invaluable. Foreign support, foreign funding support such as the NDI had been really great for us. We have been envisioning this project for a long time and NDI gave us the opportunity to really implement it. They also gave us a level of freedom in how to execute the program because there's a recognition that we in the ground know how to solve our problems. But there's also a lot of technical support aside from the funding. Like in digital security, NDI has given us a lot of resources, even given us a training for this and how to secure our online platforms. They also provided a lot of coalition building resources. So there, and I think we are also sharing what our experience with NDI to our other funders, because I think with NDI, we had a lot of freedom and we had a lot of support because you guys always check on us, so that's great.
WP: Well, I'm glad to hear that NDI is taking care of our partners. Thinking about how June is Pride Month for a lot of communities around the world, and Pride is often equated to the community of LGBTI people around the world how would you say Rainbow Rights efforts have contributed to strengthening the community in the light of the violence and the discrimination that LGBTI people face on a daily basis in the Philippines?
E: Since 2005, Rainbow Rights has been doing this approach wherein we come ... a top down approach at the policy level, but we also complement it with from the grassroots, bottom up approach. We make sure that whatever we bring at the policy level, it is informed by our grassroots services. I think that's one of our biggest contribution, is to really complement policy with experience on the ground. Most of the policies that we've pushed for is really coming from what our experiences and what are the real needs of the people that we serve in the communities. I think that's one of our biggest contributions in our approach. We're not just the legal, we don't just bring cases to court. We don't just bring legal expertise, but we also inform it with community level approaches and grassroots approaches.
WP: Well, thank you LJ again for taking the time to speak with us and telling us a little bit more about how Rainbow Rights is contributing to a holistic support system to the LGBTI community in the Philippines.
E: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
WP: Thank you to Ivan, Vlad, and Eljay for sharing their experiences and for the work you're doing to advance LGBTI equality and inclusion, and thank you to our listeners. To learn more about NDI or to listen to other DemWorks podcasts, please visit us at ndi.org

Rainbow Rights Paralegal Training



A Conversation With LGBTI Activists on Community-Building

Democracy (General), Podcast Listen LGBTI Pride National Democratic Institute NDICountries: All Regions