Conference Keynote Speakers

Professor Vitit Muntabhorn
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok

Vitit Muntarbhorn is Professor of Law at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. He is a graduate of Oxford University and is a barrister of the Middle Temple in London. Prof. Vitit has taught at a number of human rights institutions around the world, including in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria and he has written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. From 1990 to 1994 he was the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and he is currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea. He is also a member of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation on Human Rights. Professor Vitit wrote Thailand's first report for the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In 2001, he was appointed a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Government's International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. Prof. Vitit is a member of the academic advisory board for the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions and his publications include "Dimensions of Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region" published by the Office of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand in 2002.

Conference Keynote Speaker Honoured with UNESCO Human Rights Award

On March 23rd, UNESCO honoured Conference keynote speaker Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn with its biennial Human Rights Education award. Thailand's "The Nation" newspaper reported, "Professor Abdelfattah Amor, president of the international jury for the prize, said that Vitit was 'very well-known nationally, regionally and internationally'. He added that the award was also to honour Thailand and the region."

Previous individual recipients of the award include former Czech president Vaclav Havel in 1990 and Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia in 1998. Prof. Vitit, who received a cash prize of US$10,000 and a trophy from UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura, said he would donate the money to HIV-infected children in northern Thailand. Prof. Vitit is also currently a UN special rapporteur on the human-rights situation in North Korea and author of numerous articles on human rights.

Professor Vitit Muntabhorn's Keynote Speech Topic:

"Sexualities, Genders and Rights in International Law: Implications for the Asian Region"

Abstract
International human rights has moved unevenly, often fitfully, on issues of gender, reproductive rights, sexual diversity and gender identity – as demonstrated in 2005 in the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Women's Conference, and the tensions over the "Brazilian resolution" on sexual orientation at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Nonetheless, substantial progress has occurred in some parts of the international human rights system - with the setting up of human rights treaty bodies and the special rapporteurs. As well we see reforms in place in parts of Asia. These developments show us the road ahead.

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Professor Josephine Ho
National Central University, Taiwan

Feminist scholar Professor Josephine Chuen-Juei Ho has agreed to be a keynote speaker at the conference. Prof. Ho has written extensively and provocatively over the past decade to open up new discursive space for gender and sexuality issues in Taiwan. Her theoretically informed yet popularly accessible books, all written in Chinese as timely interventions into the politics of gender and sexuality in Taiwan, include The Gallant Woman--Feminism and Sexual Emancipation (1994), Gendered Nations--Sexuality, Capital and Culture (1994), Sexual Moods: A Therapeutic and Liberatory Report on Female Sexuality (1996), Radical Sexuality Education: Gender/Sexuality Education for the "New Generation" (1998), and The Admirable/Amorous Woman (1998). She has since written and edited eight volumes of Taiwanese gender/sexuality research in sex work studies, queer studies, and transgender studies which have greatly enhanced local academic research into marginal genders and sexualities. Her present research interests lie with extreme bodies and sexualities. She heads the Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University, Taiwan, which was established in 1995 and is well known for both its activism and its intellectual stamina. The Center is noted for its international conferences that have featured celebrated activists/scholars including Cindy Patton, D. A. Miller, Eve Sedgewick, Neil Garcia, Judith Halberstam, Leslie Feinberg, Anne Bolin, and Jamison Green. Professor Ho's tireless work has been instrumental in nurturing the emergence of a new generation of young local scholars in sexuality studies. The Center's annual conferences provide an indispensable forum for showcasing new work, and facilitate lively exchanges among both scholars and activists on the politics of gender and sexuality.

The Center's website is at http://sex.ncu.edu.tw.

Professor Josephine Ho's Keynote Speech Topic:

"Is Global Governance Bad for Asian Queers?"

Abstract

I would like to focus on what I believe to be a very significant and broad-based development in Asia that not only seriously impacts upon Asian queer existence but also poses serious challenges to queer politics and queer theory in the region. The analysis will center upon two major points:

(1) the emerging global hegemony of morality that has quantum-leaped its forces of persuasion against queer representations and interaction by bringing into place new legislations and litigations against the latter; and

(2) the construction of child protection as a universal imperative that in actuality works both to re-enforce heterosexual monogamy and to debunk cultural diversity as inherently confusing and thus harmful for children.

This hegemony of morality and its child-protection war-cry constitute important dimensions of what has come to be known as "global governance". And I am suggesting that it is in relation to this new global development that queer theory and queer activism must reconfigure their scope and engagement.

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