On Friday 20 August 2021 elected officials from all over the world gathered both physically and digitally for the Copenhagen 2021 LGBTI+ focused Interparliamentary Plenary Assembly (IPA) taking place at Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament, also called the Folketing. This event took place physically and was interpreted and accessible digitally for active participation in English, French, Spanish, and Danish.
Watch the main session
Background
Together with our Executive Partners, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, the LGBTQ Victory Institute and the Global Equality Caucus we put together an ambitious program including elected officials coming from all over the world, with a strong focus on challenging regions.
Invitations were extended by the Speaker of the Folketing, the Hon. Henrik Dam Kristensen, co-signed by seven parliamentarians from different political parties within the Danish Parliament coming from Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. The event was officially supported by six Danish MEPs representing different party groups within the European Parliament.
The Master of Ceremonies for the event was the first openly lesbian Austrian politician, former Vice-President of the European Parliament, and LGBTI+ activist and feminist Ulrike Lunacek.
Invitations were extended to a diverse group of elected officials from different parties, regions, backgrounds and political ideology, to make this event an impactful networking and learning experience. The invited legislators were not required to be LGBTI+ community members, although we did invite a broad coalition of LGBTI+ elected officials.
More than 300 legislators participated. These legislators came from more than 53 different countries across six continents and represented diverse national/federal constituencies, supranational constituencies and in some cases also local or regional constituencies. Furthermore, fulfilling our diversity aim, almost 40% of the participants comes from the Global South, Central and Eastern Europe, in many cases strongly representing vulnerable communities in their home constituencies. Also of importance to us is a strong female identified representation, with currently over 60 legislators identifying as female.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on Copenhagen 2021. Therefore, we guaranteed various digital solutions to make sure that elected officials that could not travel, could participate actively including the opportunity to ask questions using a special chat function. Different parts of the IPA were also made available to the broader public through livestreams on different platforms.
Participation in the physical and digital IPA program and the Pre-Program was free of charge.
Partners for the Interparliamentary Plenary Assembly
