The Frontline Club

It is just over a year since protests to save Istanbul’s Gezi Park escalated after being met by an uncompromising stance from the government and a police crackdown. What started as an environmental movement became a wider protest against the perceived increased authoritarianism of the country’s leader.As the protests continue and with the country due to vote in the first round of the presidential elections in early August, we will be bringing together a panel to gauge the political climate. With accusations of cronyism and mass corruption inside the government, we will explore what the protestors are fighting for and how much support they have across the country.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced large-scale criticism following his reaction to the industrial disaster that killed over 300 miners. We will be asking how much support he still maintains in the country and if he is to contest and win the election what does this mean for Turkey?Chaired by Murat Nisancioglu, the head of Turkish Service at BBC Global News.The panel:Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance journalist and Turkey correspondent for Newsweek, The Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. He has lived and worked in Istanbul for the past four years.Fadi Hakura is an associate fellow at the Europe programme, Chatham House.Sir David Reddaway was British Ambassador to Turkey from 2009 until January 2014. His other posts include Ambassador to Ireland, High Commissioner to Canada, Charge d’Affaires in Iran and UK Special Representative for Afghanistan.Karabekir Akkoyunlu has recently completed a PhD in comparative politics at the LSE, where he researched political change in Iran and Turkey and taught classes on democratisation and Middle East politics. He was also a research associate at the Southeast European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) working on Turkish foreign policy.

Iraq is on the brink following the takeover of Mosul and other cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Leaders from across the region and internationally are now faced with the challenge of how to halt the advancement of ISIS and steer the region away from sectarian conflict.With a panel of experts we will take a view of events on the ground and the measures being taken by Iraq, its neighbours and the international community. Asking how ISIS has been able advance so quickly and what can be done to prevent further escalation of sectarian polarisation. We will also be looking at the new alliances that might be formed in this new front on the fight against extremism.Chaired by Ian Black, The Guardian‘s Middle East editor.The panel:Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme, Chatham House.Zuhair al-Naher, a spokesman for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party.Dominic Asquith, has 30 years of Middle East experience earned in the British Diplomatic Service. He was deputy special representative and then deputy head of mission in Iraq in 2004, director of the Iraq Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2004–06 and Ambassador to Iraq 2006–7.Zaid Al-Ali (via Skype), is a senior adviser on constitutional building for International IDEA and author of The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy. He was a legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

Iraq is on the brink following the takeover of Mosul and other cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Leaders from across the region and internationally are now faced with the challenge of how to halt the advancement of ISIS and steer the region away from sectarian conflict.With a panel of experts we will take a view of events on the ground and the measures being taken by Iraq, its neighbours and the international community. Asking how ISIS has been able advance so quickly and what can be done to prevent further escalation of sectarian polarisation. We will also be looking at the new alliances that might be formed in this new front on the fight against extremism.Chaired by Ian Black, The Guardian‘s Middle East editor.The panel:Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme, Chatham House.Zuhair al-Naher, a spokesman for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party.Dominic Asquith, has 30 years of Middle East experience earned in the British Diplomatic Service. He was deputy special representative and then deputy head of mission in Iraq in 2004, director of the Iraq Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2004–06 and Ambassador to Iraq 2006–7.Zaid Al-Ali (via Skype), is a senior adviser on constitutional building for International IDEA and author of The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy. He was a legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

Following months of unrest, Ukraine has a new leader. Known as the Chocolate King, Petro Poroshenko is tasked with restoring law and order, and steering the country away from conflict.As fighting in the east continues, we will be looking at the challenges that lie ahead for Poroshenko and asking how he will unite the country.Central to the battle in Ukraine has been the use of disinformation and propaganda in an information war. With a panel of journalist who have been covering the crisis, we will look at how the facts have been distorted and to what end.Chaired by Bridget Kendall, diplomatic correspondent, BBC News.The panel:Katya Gorchinskaya is deputy editor of the Kyiv Post, a position she has held since 2008. She belongs to a group of journalists who investigate documents found in Mezhyhirya (YanukovychLeaks).Dmitry Linnik is the head of the London bureau for Voice of Russia. He began his career in 1973 working for the English-language service of Radio Moscow, he went on to work for BBC World Service, initially in Moscow and then in London before moving to Voice of Russia.Yevhen Fedchenko is director of the Mohyla School of Journalism and head of their PhD programme in mass communication. He is one of the founders of stopfake.org, a watchdog of Russian disinformation regarding Ukraine.Victor Balagadde is the editor of Kommersant UK, a position he has held since 2009. He has also written for New Style, a Russian language magazine published in London and the Ukrainian Kharkovsky Courier.

Following months of unrest, Ukraine has a new leader. Known as the Chocolate King, Petro Poroshenko is tasked with restoring law and order, and steering the country away from conflict.As fighting in the east continues, we will be looking at the challenges that lie ahead for Poroshenko and asking how he will unite the country.Central to the battle in Ukraine has been the use of disinformation and propaganda in an information war. With a panel of journalist who have been covering the crisis, we will look at how the facts have been distorted and to what end.Chaired by Bridget Kendall, diplomatic correspondent, BBC News.The panel:Katya Gorchinskaya is deputy editor of the Kyiv Post, a position she has held since 2008. She belongs to a group of journalists who investigate documents found in Mezhyhirya (YanukovychLeaks).Dmitry Linnik is the head of the London bureau for Voice of Russia. He began his career in 1973 working for the English-language service of Radio Moscow, he went on to work for BBC World Service, initially in Moscow and then in London before moving to Voice of Russia.Yevhen Fedchenko is director of the Mohyla School of Journalism and head of their PhD programme in mass communication. He is one of the founders of stopfake.org, a watchdog of Russian disinformation regarding Ukraine.Victor Balagadde is the editor of Kommersant UK, a position he has held since 2009. He has also written for New Style, a Russian language magazine published in London and the Ukrainian Kharkovsky Courier.

Governments often fail to protect whistleblowers and instead subject them to various forms of retaliation, including prosecution, for disclosing information governments wrongly want to keep secret. This includes information about human rights violations.A panel of speakers with first-hand knowledge of these issues will talk about the experience of whistleblowers who face retaliation for their actions. They will explore how whistleblowers can be protected, and by extension protect the public’s right to information. This includes implementing measures such as those laid out in the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (“Tshwane Principles”). These principles, which gained the support of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, provide critical guidance for ensuring that the public’s ‘right to know’ is protected.Chaired by Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International.The panel:Frank La Rue has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2008. He has worked extensively on a range of freedom of opinion and expression issues, including the links between the right to access to information and the right to truth. La Rue participated in the development of the Tshwane Principles. He has worked on human rights for over 30 years and is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) in Washington DC and Guatemala. He also brought the first genocide case against the military dictatorship in Guatemala and has previously served as a presidential commissioner for human rights in Guatemala, as a human rights adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, as president of the governing board of the Centro-American Institute of Social Democracy Studies and as a consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.Avigdor Feldman has practiced law since 1974 and obtained his master’s in civil rights in 1985. He worked for the Israeli Association for Civil Rights (ACRI), is a key founder of B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), and co-founded the Public Committee Against torture in Israel (PCATI). He founded the Litigation Center of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and received the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1991. He has worked on many prominent criminal cases related to civil rights and of a political nature including Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who was abducted by Mossad agents in 1986 and brought to trial in Israel, charged for leaking information about Israel’s nuclear capacity to The Sunday Times newspaper. He represents Vanunu today mainly relating to a string of punitive restrictions, which include barring him from leaving Israel, and which, after over ten years of appeals to the Supreme Court, remain in force. Feldman has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court many times on behalf of human rights organizations including in a case calling for a judicial inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982; the torture case relating to the use of physical force in Israel’s General Security Service’s interrogations; and Israel’s targeted killings police in 2006.Peter Hounam is a British investigative journalist who has worked for The Sunday Times, The Mirror, the London Evening Standard, and the BBC, and has also published several books including The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program. Hounam interviewed Mordechai Vanunu in Australia in 1986 and, with other members of The Sunday Times Insight Team, investigated his story of the inside workings of Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. The story was published that September but beforehand Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service (Mossad). On behalf of The Sunday Times and the BBC, Hounam went to Israel for Vanunu‘s release from his 18-year prison sent

Governments often fail to protect whistleblowers and instead subject them to various forms of retaliation, including prosecution, for disclosing information governments wrongly want to keep secret. This includes information about human rights violations.A panel of speakers with first-hand knowledge of these issues will talk about the experience of whistleblowers who face retaliation for their actions. They will explore how whistleblowers can be protected, and by extension protect the public’s right to information. This includes implementing measures such as those laid out in the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (“Tshwane Principles”). These principles, which gained the support of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, provide critical guidance for ensuring that the public’s ‘right to know’ is protected.Chaired by Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International.The panel:Frank La Rue has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2008. He has worked extensively on a range of freedom of opinion and expression issues, including the links between the right to access to information and the right to truth. La Rue participated in the development of the Tshwane Principles. He has worked on human rights for over 30 years and is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) in Washington DC and Guatemala. He also brought the first genocide case against the military dictatorship in Guatemala and has previously served as a presidential commissioner for human rights in Guatemala, as a human rights adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, as president of the governing board of the Centro-American Institute of Social Democracy Studies and as a consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.Avigdor Feldman has practiced law since 1974 and obtained his master’s in civil rights in 1985. He worked for the Israeli Association for Civil Rights (ACRI), is a key founder of B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), and co-founded the Public Committee Against torture in Israel (PCATI). He founded the Litigation Center of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and received the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1991. He has worked on many prominent criminal cases related to civil rights and of a political nature including Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who was abducted by Mossad agents in 1986 and brought to trial in Israel, charged for leaking information about Israel’s nuclear capacity to The Sunday Times newspaper. He represents Vanunu today mainly relating to a string of punitive restrictions, which include barring him from leaving Israel, and which, after over ten years of appeals to the Supreme Court, remain in force. Feldman has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court many times on behalf of human rights organizations including in a case calling for a judicial inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982; the torture case relating to the use of physical force in Israel’s General Security Service’s interrogations; and Israel’s targeted killings police in 2006.Peter Hounam is a British investigative journalist who has worked for The Sunday Times, The Mirror, the London Evening Standard, and the BBC, and has also published several books including The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program. Hounam interviewed Mordechai Vanunu in Australia in 1986 and, with other members of The Sunday Times Insight Team, investigated his story of the inside workings of Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. The story was published that September but beforehand Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service (Mossad). On behalf of The Sunday Times and the BBC, Hounam went to Israel for Vanunu‘s release from his 18-year prison sent

On 10 June, world leaders and NGOs will gather in London for a global summit with the aim to create “irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and practical action that impacts those on the ground”. Ahead of the summit, we will be joined by a panel of speakers who have been working towards this aim for many years. They will be discussing what needs to be done to make it a reality.The eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been described as the “rape capital of the world”. Increased cases of sexual violence against women in DRC coincided with the emerging armed conflicts of the early 1990s. Although Congolese law criminalises many forms of sexual violence, these laws are often not enforced.With a particular focus on the DRC our panel will be mapping out what is being done to help individuals and societies affected by sexual violence and what more needs to be done. We will be asking what measures can be put in place to help victims bring the perpetrators to justice.Chaired by Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian’s Global Development website.The panel:Doctor Juliet Cohen is head of doctors at UK-based charity Freedom from Torture. She specialises in the examination of victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking and has written over 1000 forensic reports documenting the psychological and physical sequelae of torture, including rape, for use in international protection claims. In 2012 she provided an expert witness statement on late disclosure of sexual violence for the European Court of Human Rights and is a commentator to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the new International Protocol on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.Fiona Lloyd-Davies is an award winning filmmaker and photojournalist who has worked in areas of conflict for over 20 years. She’s been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2001 making films for the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 News and France24. In recent years her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and led to the completion of Seeds of Hope – a feature length documentary that tells the story of women survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC through the extraordinary life and work of multiple rape survivor, Masika Katsuva. Seeds of Hope will be shown as part of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, details here. She has just finished a film about the Minova rape trial which will be shown on BBC Newsnight.Serge-Eric is a co-founder and member of the Survivors Speak OUT! (SSO) network. SSO is a group of torture survivors and former clients of Freedom from Torture who draw on their lived experience of torture and seeking protection through asylum in the UK, to influence decision-makers and raise public awareness of the challenges facing survivors trying to rebuild their lives. The network has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the development of a new International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict.Sarah Cotton is the public affairs and communications advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mission in the UK and Ireland. She leads the work of the ICRC with Parliament and works in both the UK and Ireland to communicate ICRC policy, operations and concerns. She also works to develop and disseminate ICRC policy on sexual violence and violence against healthcare. In this capacity she travelled to Lebanon in April 2014 to join an assessment of sexual violence in Syria.Photograph: Andrew McConnell, 2008. A woman who was raped by a government soldier recovers at the Heal Africa hospital in Goma. Sexual violence has become systematic in DRC with the brutality of attacks often leaving the victims with severe damage to reproductive organs, resulting in multiple fistulas and incontinence. An average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month.

Founded in 2010 by a group of Syrian filmmakers, Abounaddara anonymously releases weekly films on the web in order to avoid censorship. These weekly short films are a testimony of the fight for freedom in Syria. The film Syria: Snapshots of History in the Making is an intimate journey constructed from these short films.The film alternates personal stories and poetic images, fragments of an unfinished story, in which the actors are ordinary Syrians. We meet an old taxi driver who insists on searching for a lost street while listening to Arab tango on the radio; a young woman who preferred elections over the revolution; and a deserter from the Free Syrian Army who now believes they are going in the wrong direction.Abounaddara is one of the projects supported by WARM, an international foundation dedicated to war reporting, war art, as well as history and memories of war. Before the screening, WARM members Patrick Chauvel and Paul Lowe will join founder and head of the organisation, Remy Ourdan and producer of Abounaddara Films Charif Kiwan to discuss how the depiction of conflicts has changed over the years.

Founded in 2010 by a group of Syrian filmmakers, Abounaddara anonymously releases weekly films on the web in order to avoid censorship. These weekly short films are a testimony of the fight for freedom in Syria. The film Syria: Snapshots of History in the Making is an intimate journey constructed from these short films.The film alternates personal stories and poetic images, fragments of an unfinished story, in which the actors are ordinary Syrians. We meet an old taxi driver who insists on searching for a lost street while listening to Arab tango on the radio; a young woman who preferred elections over the revolution; and a deserter from the Free Syrian Army who now believes they are going in the wrong direction.Abounaddara is one of the projects supported by WARM, an international foundation dedicated to war reporting, war art, as well as history and memories of war. Before the screening, WARM members Patrick Chauvel and Paul Lowe will join founder and head of the organisation, Remy Ourdan and producer of Abounaddara Films Charif Kiwan to discuss how the depiction of conflicts has changed over the years.

Disruptive technology is transforming journalism. Revolutions are tweeted. Drug lords and hitmen have Facebook fans. Wars are waged with cyber attacks. Surveillance and espionage have never been so widespread or easy to conduct.Traditional news organisations are falling behind as pioneering new tools are being developed to understand and stay at the forefront of fast moving global events. The way we do journalism is being redefined.Cyber pioneer Rafal Rohozinski will be joining us in conversation with Robin Pembrooke, head of product at BBC News Online, to explore what the next generation news organisation will look like and the techniques and technology that they will be using. We will be discussing the possibilities they present as well as the challenges in ensuring the validity and accuracy of content.Rafal Rohozinski is co-founder and principal of the SecDev Group, a recognised leader in complex analytics. He spent 17 years working in an operational capacity in 37 countries including conflict zones in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa. He is also a co-founder and past CEO of Psiphon, he served as director of the Advanced Network Research Group University of Cambridge, is the co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor, and co-author of the Ghostnet study of Chinese cyber-espionage. He has written many publications and is a frequent commentator on cyber security and cyber war.This event is in partnership with BBC World Service.

Disruptive technology is transforming journalism. Revolutions are tweeted. Drug lords and hitmen have Facebook fans. Wars are waged with cyber attacks. Surveillance and espionage have never been so widespread or easy to conduct.Traditional news organisations are falling behind as pioneering new tools are being developed to understand and stay at the forefront of fast moving global events. The way we do journalism is being redefined.Cyber pioneer Rafal Rohozinski will be joining us in conversation with Robin Pembrooke, head of product at BBC News Online, to explore what the next generation news organisation will look like and the techniques and technology that they will be using. We will be discussing the possibilities they present as well as the challenges in ensuring the validity and accuracy of content.Rafal Rohozinski is co-founder and principal of the SecDev Group, a recognised leader in complex analytics. He spent 17 years working in an operational capacity in 37 countries including conflict zones in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa. He is also a co-founder and past CEO of Psiphon, he served as director of the Advanced Network Research Group University of Cambridge, is the co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor, and co-author of the Ghostnet study of Chinese cyber-espionage. He has written many publications and is a frequent commentator on cyber security and cyber war.This event is in partnership with BBC World Service.

The politics of Iran are frequently analysed and debated on the international stage but rarely do we glimpse what everyday life is like in Tehran. In her new book City of Lies, Ramita Navai returns to the city where she was born to explore the lives of its residents.Navai focuses on eight protagonists: a porn star, an ageing socialite, an assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, a volunteer religious militiaman who undergoes a sex change, a dutiful housewife who files for divorce and an old-time thug running a gambling den. Drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society, their lives present a fascinating and intimate portrait of a complex, colourful and changing city.Ramita Navai will be joining us in conversation with the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, to talk about her exploration of modern-day Tehran and what life in the city signals about how the country will develop.Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian journalist and reporter for Channel 4’s foreign affairs series, Unreported World. Born in Tehran, she has reported from over 30 different countries, including Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. She was awarded an EMMY for her undercover report from Syria. She has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, northern Iraq and Iran, and was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 to 2006. 

Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, lies at a crossroads. Bordering Iran and Afghanistan and boasting huge reserves of gold, gas, oil and uranium, it is a land of enormous strategic importance and great natural beauty and yet it remains all but inaccessible to the outside world.Currently barred from Pakistan due to his work in the region, journalist Willem Marx joins award-winning photographer Marc Wattrelot to discuss their project Balochistan at a Crossroads.With access to foreign journalists all but non-existent, and permanent expulsion or physical intimidation often the price for transgressing its boundaries, Marx and Wattrelot offer a rare insight into an area that has become one of the most hermetic and dangerous on earth; in the process uncovering a conflict so often ignored or misunderstood by the world’s media, an unparalleled landscape without an audience to view it and a people who long for recognition whilst engaged in a constant fight for survival.Chaired by Declan Walsh, The New York Times bureau chief for Pakistan. He started his career in foreign correspondence in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was based for five years covering sub-Saharan Africa for The Independent and a number of other outlets. He moved to Islamabad in 2004 as Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent for The Guardian, and moved to The New York Times in January 2012.Willem Marx has reported from more than 40 countries and has been published by Harpers Magazine, The Los Angeles Times,The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. He is currently a correspondent for Bloomberg TV, based in New York, having previously worked as a television journalist for ABC News, Al Jazeera and CBS News.Marc Wattrelot has exhibited internationally and has previously been based in New Delhi, where he worked as a journalist for several French television channels. He is currently based in Beirut and works as a documentary filmmaker throughout the Arab world.

Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, lies at a crossroads. Bordering Iran and Afghanistan and boasting huge reserves of gold, gas, oil and uranium, it is a land of enormous strategic importance and great natural beauty and yet it remains all but inaccessible to the outside world.Currently barred from Pakistan due to his work in the region, journalist Willem Marx joins award-winning photographer Marc Wattrelot to discuss their project Balochistan at a Crossroads.With access to foreign journalists all but non-existent, and permanent expulsion or physical intimidation often the price for transgressing its boundaries, Marx and Wattrelot offer a rare insight into an area that has become one of the most hermetic and dangerous on earth; in the process uncovering a conflict so often ignored or misunderstood by the world’s media, an unparalleled landscape without an audience to view it and a people who long for recognition whilst engaged in a constant fight for survival.Chaired by Declan Walsh, The New York Times bureau chief for Pakistan. He started his career in foreign correspondence in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was based for five years covering sub-Saharan Africa for The Independent and a number of other outlets. He moved to Islamabad in 2004 as Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent for The Guardian, and moved to The New York Times in January 2012.Willem Marx has reported from more than 40 countries and has been published by Harpers Magazine, The Los Angeles Times,The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. He is currently a correspondent for Bloomberg TV, based in New York, having previously worked as a television journalist for ABC News, Al Jazeera and CBS News.Marc Wattrelot has exhibited internationally and has previously been based in New Delhi, where he worked as a journalist for several French television channels. He is currently based in Beirut and works as a documentary filmmaker throughout the Arab world.