Cynthia Rothschild

Cynthia Rothschild is an independent activist and consultant with a focus on United Nations advocacy and policy, sexual rights, LGBT issues, HIV & AIDS, and women human rights defenders. A human rights, sexual rights and feminist activist for over 20 years, she has worked with global networks and NGOs within and outside the US, including the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (where she was the Senior Policy Advisor from 2005-2009), and a number of women’s and reproductive rights groups and AIDS service organizations. Cynthia is a trainer and facilitator, and also has supported NGOs in organizational development projects, including in work related to UN advocacy at the Human Rights Council and the Commission on the Status of Women. In 2011 and in 2015, Cynthia consulted with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), where she made significant contributions to the UN’s two groundbreaking reports on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. She is the author of Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women’s Organizing; the co-author of Strengthening Resistance: Confronting Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS, and Amnesty International’s Crimes of Hate, Conspiracy of Silence: Torture and Ill-Treatment Based on Sexual Identity. Most recently, she edited “Gendering Documentation: A Manual For and About Women Human Rights Defenders.” She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice from 2010-2015 and of Amnesty International USA in the early 2000s.