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Eradicating Conversion Practices in South Africa: Legal and Policy Approaches Webinar
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Outright International would like to invite you to the launch of the publication ‘Eradicating Conversion Practices in South Africa: Legal and Policy Approaches’.
This report narrows in on South Africa and aims to provide advocates with some strategies to curtail conversion efforts using the law. South Africa already has a strong substantive legal framework on other elements of LGBTQ equality but has not been successful in creating a society where LGBTQ people live free from discrimination, violence, and intolerance. There remain pervasive traditional, cultural, and religious elements that reject sexual and gender diversity and lead to conversion practices. Legal approaches to eradicating conversion practices are only one part of the equation; a sustainable response will also require engagement with religious and traditional leaders, mental health practitioners, families, and others. This guide, with its recommendations for legal strategies to end conversion practices, should be understood as one piece of a puzzle, and Outright will continue to partner with LGBTQ advocates in South Africa and beyond to explore effective responses within and outside the limitations of the law.
This report was researched and written by Keaton Allen-Gessesse. Outright International would like to recognize its national partners, The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS), galck+, and Access Chapter 2, whose reports on the nature, extent, and impact of conversion practices informed the conceptualization of this publication and provided much-needed data on the manifestation of conversion practices in Africa.
Moderator: Matuba Mahlatjie, Communications and Media Relations Manager
Speakers
Commissioner Madlingozi
Commissioner Tshepo Madlingozi studied law and sociology in South Africa, Cameroon, and the United Kingdom. Before being appointed to the Commission, he was the Director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at WITS University and an Associate Professor at the same university where he taught human rights and social justice. He has been a consultant for local organisations and inter-governmental organisations including the Pan-African Parliament and the U.N. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
He sat on the boards of several civil society organisations including the boards of the following civil society organizations: the Rural Democracy Trust, the Mining-Affected Communities United in Action/Women-Affected by Mining Action, the Institute for Social Dialogue, the Socio-economic Rights Institute of South Africa, Imbiza: Journal of African Writing, the Centre for Human Rights, the Zimbabwe ExilesmForum, UFS, amandla.mobi, and the Afrika Ikalafe Pluriversity. He was also a member of the Steering Committee of the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA), the Right to Protest Project Coalition, and the Advisory Board of the Health Justice Initiative. For thirteen years (2015-2018), he worked with and for Khulumani Support Group, a 120,000-strong social movement of victims and survivors of Apartheid as National Advocacy Coordinator and later the Chairperson. Between 2021 and 2022, he was appointed Chief Panelist for the South African Human Rights Commission Enquiry into Racial Discrimination and other forms of Discrimination in Advertising.
He is a Visiting Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Faculty member of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights. He is a co-editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights. He is a co-editor of Symbol or Substance: Socio-economic Rights in South Africa (Cambridge UP) and a co-editor of Introduction to Law and Legal Skills in South Africa, 2nd Edition (Oxford UP South Africa).
Keaton ‘Kidist’ Allen-Gessesse
Keaton Kidist Allen-Gessesse (she/her) currently serves as the Global Legal Advisor at Equality Now where she supports legal advocacy to advance sex & gender equality in the law, prevent gender-based harms, and enable access to justice for victims and survivors of gender-based discrimination and abuse.
She is a human rights lawyer with over six years of experience specializing in protecting and advancing the rights of African LGBTI+ communities. Ms. Allen-Gessesse led the Strategic Litigation Program for the Defending Fundamental Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons program in Ghana for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative from 2023-2024. Her substantive work encompasses strategic litigation, advocacy at local, regional and international levels, and coalition building to address homophobic legislation and state practices across the continent.
Ms. Allen-Gessesse joined ISLA (Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa) in 2018 as a legal researcher in the Sexual Rights Program, where she contributed to research on substantive issues of comparative and international human rights within the context of sexual rights and developed the capacity strengthening curriculum for the network’s lawyers. In 2020, she was promoted to Senior Lawyer in the Sexual Rights Program, where she worked with domestic lawyers in various African countries to provide technical legal expertise on litigating cases before domestic and regional courts.
Her professional background includes engagements with various human rights mechanisms, including the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Cambodia, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. Keaton completed her J.D. from Harvard Law School where she was a student-attorney in the Immigration and Refugee Clinic and the International Human Rights Clinic.
Khanyisile Phillips
Khanyisile Phillips is the Founding Director of Hlohleletsa Seetsa Management and Consulting, a firm dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. As a transgender woman of colour, Khanyisile brings a wealth of experience and unwavering dedication to her role, informed by her upbringing in the culturally rich yet challenging Cape Flats. She is the current Secretary of the Board for Beyond the Margins, a non-profit online publication dedicated to producing content focused on LGBTQIA+ persons and communities across Africa.
Hlohleletsa Seetsa Management and Consulting specialises in comprehensive training programmes, policy analysis, inclusion strategy development, cultural competence, and diversity management.
Previously, Khanyisile served as the Education Programme and ILGA World Manager at Gender Dynamix, where she developed and implemented strategic tools and initiatives to advance the rights and well-being of transgender and gender-diverse persons in educational settings. At Hlohleletsa Seetsa Management and Consulting, she leads efforts to promote affirming policies and practices that ensure inclusive and equitable spaces for all.
Thiruna Naidoo
Thiruna (she/her) is a program officer, Africa based in Pretoria, South Africa. They support the OutRight Africa team in developing advocacy initiatives for OutRight’s Africa regional programming, with a focus on expanding Southern African programming. Previously, they have worked as a program officer, litigation coordinator and co-project manager in the non-profit world. Thiruna loves working with creative advocacy initiatives to promote inclusivity across the continent and beyond.
She served as the co-project manager for the Queer Strategists for Change leadership program in 2017 hosted by the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender in Pretoria, South Africa. Thiruna has worked as a project officer at the Centre for Human Rights within the SOGIESC Unit and as an associate with the Communications and Advocacy Unit. Most recently, Thiruna worked as a litigation coordinator for the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa. In her work surrounding LGBTIQ+ rights, she has contributed to ‘A Guide for African National Human Rights Institutions for Implementing Resolution 275 in Africa’. She participated in the drafting and advocacy work to further the UP Trans Protocol which was recently adopted at the University of Pretoria, the first of its kind on the African continent. She has developed a Model Policy Framework for Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion Within Higher Institutions of Learning for South Africa through a consultancy project with Gender DynamiX.
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