Belarusian LGBTQ movements/initiatives: within the bounds of oppression and irrecognition

Katsiaryna Borsuk is the Executive Director of The LGBT Human Rights Project "GayBelarus". She has worked as a consultant of organisational development and project designing for civil society NGOs on behalf of Prague based organisation «Civic Belarus» and Brussels based organisation «Office for a Democratic Belarus». She has 7 years of professional experience working in different Belarusian civil society organisations within the fields of youth policy and human rights promotion.

In her talk Katsiaryna will discuss the specifics of the development of LGBTQ movements in Belarus from the beginning of the 1990s until today. She will discuss the discriminative and homophobic attitudes of Belarussian society and the authoritarian state towards LGBTQ people and activists.

She will specifically focus on cases of harassment and violence towards LGBTQ people and activists in Belarus over the past 6 years, and analyse briefly the approaches and strategies of LGBTQ rights promotion in the country.

The talk will be followed by a Q & A session.