Klaus Mueller, the founder and chair of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum, discussed the importance of having a multidisciplinary, global network to combat issues of LGBT human rights on a wide scale.
In an increasingly globalized world, both rapid progress and severe backlashes in the human rights situation of LGBT people are apparent, said Klaus Mueller, founder and chair of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum. To understand and contextualize these changes, a global perspective is needed.
The Forum was established to bring leaders from political, legal, artistic, cultural, and religious backgrounds together and advance LGBT human rights across the world. Mueller founded the Forum with the inaugural Forum meeting in 2013. The most recent gathering, under the theme of 'Strengthening Communities: LGBT Rights & Social Cohesion', took place in June 2015.
“We are a growing global network with the explicit goal to advance LGBT human rights around the world in all aspects of life and to reach full equality now” said Mueller. He emphasized that the Global LGBT Forum today has members from 54 countries.
Mueller explained that the Forum is a personal network of trust that is slowly expanding and developing into a long-term network to exchange expertise and life experiences. “The Forum is really guided by many voices, and I think that is necessary in a global conversation."
"What we do right now is that we connect on many different layers,” said Mueller. “We connect to governments, we connect to cultural new developments, we connect to religious communities, and I think that's the only way how real change can happen.”
Not only do leaders come together to discuss rights issues, said Mueller, but regain energy, a sense of community and a shared understanding of the importance of their work. “We often get people who come and think what they do is not really that important, whereas all of us think that’s amazing what they're doing,” he said. “So we create a space in which we actually understand that these are the leaders to move forward on basic human rights around the world. And when they leave, they have the energy to continue and deepen their mission.”
Mueller (www.kmlink.net) is an international consultant for museums, foundations, and NGOs and has been working on LGBT human rights for many years. He is an author, independent film maker (Paragraph 175) and exhibition curator, with exhibitions on the Nazi persecutions of homosexuals in the Netherlands, South Africa, and Germany. He is working as the European Representative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and consulted the Holocaust Museum on the inclusion of related materials in its permanent exhibition. He is also chair of Salzburg Global’s Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Initiative.
For the full interview, check out the clip below.
Klaus Mueller is founder and chair of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum. The Salzburg Global program Strengthening Communities: LGBT Rights & Social Cohesion is part of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum. The list of our partners for Session 551 can be found here. For more information, please visit: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/551