March, 2024
Event Details
When: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 | 19:00
Where: The Demos Center (17b Ipitou Str., Plaka)
Organized by:
The Demos Center, Institute for Hellenic Culture & the Liberal Arts
Focus Human Rights
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
About the event
Join us for the second event in the Focus: Human Rights series for spring semester 2024. There will be two parts to this event.
The first will be a screening of two short films – profiles of two trans refugees, Sonya and Ryan, in Athens. The films have been made by Fridoon Joinda, in conjunction with the NGO A Safe Place.
The second part will be a talk by the political scientist and communication expert Gregory Vallianatos, speaking about the state of human rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, and urging us to recognize that LQBTQ+ rights and minority rights are human rights.
About the Speakers
Fridoon Joinda is a speaker, UN award-winning filmmaker, founder and director of Joinda Production, a video production entity focused on questions of social justice. He grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan, and was forced to flee in 2016 due to his previous media work. His story begins in Moria camp, an experience which led him to become a human rights advocate.
Through his films and speeches, he aims to inspire integration, to challenge negative perceptions of refugees, to advocate for refugee rights, and to influence citizens and EU policy-makers.
In 2017, he received a scholarship from The American College of Greece, and he will earn his BA degree in Communications and Journalism this June. He also received a scholarship from Harvard University for their Summer Course in Refugee and Migration studies last year. He has just started a podcast, “The Untold,” looking at the refugee perspective from a 360-degree perspective.
Gregory Vallianatos is a retired Greek journalist, political scientist, communication expert, and activist. He was at the forefront of the Greek movement for the LGBTQ+ community and was involved in AIDS activism from the beginning of the epidemic. He is one of Greece’s best known gay rights and human rights activists, and he is most known for the case he brought before the European Court of Human Rights (Vallianatos and Others v. Greece) that won the right of civil union for same-sex couples. He will speak on the fact that rights for LGBTQ+ individuals and rights for minorities are human rights – and thus rights that all of us have a responsibility to work for and protect.
About the Demos Center
The Demos Center is a part of the Institute for Hellenic Culture and the Liberal Arts. It promotes democracy by fostering civic engagement, multiculturalism, and inclusivity through the practice of engaged and effective citizenship.
It celebrates and creates programming around the pillars of healthy democracies. This includes promoting dialogue, debate to inspire sustainable global societies.
Human Rights are the foundation of any healthy democracy. This series, Focus: Human Rights, will address multiple aspects of human rights and the challenges being faced today.