Leslee Udwin
Dec 08 2015.
views 606
Full Name - Leslee Udwin
Hometown - London
Status - Married with 2 children (19 and 16)
Birthday - August 9
Idols - Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Shakespeare
Passions - Human rights, film, education. A safe, free and equal world.
Favourite Colour - Sometimes red, sometimes green.
How is it to be ranked as the second most influential woman in the world after Hillary Clinton by The New York Times?
Very humbling and a little perplexing. I don’t take it too seriously, but am immensely grateful for the acknowledgement that my work is making a difference in a long overdue demand and sustainable and comprehensive solution for gender inequality and its evils. It is a positive affirmation that my extremely challenging and harrowing journey of 3 years working round the clock making the film and disseminating the message, has been worthwhile in terms of what has been achieved with it, and its wide reach.
Tell me about India's Daughter, and how close is it to your heart?
India’s Daughter is closest to my heart out of anything I have ever done because it has led me to commit to what I consider to be the greatest contribution I can give to the world. The blindingly clear insights and perspective I gleaned while making the film have led directly to the perspective of the solution to the problems the film lays bare. What I discovered from the film’s 87 hours of interviews, is that the root cause of rape and violence against women is the mindset which ascribes no value (or at best lesser value) to women and girls. In other words, the mindset of gender inequality. That is the disease. And rape, trafficking, child marriage, domestic violence, female genital mutilation are merely the symptoms of the disease. The rapists were not the monsters I was led to believe they would be by the media. They also felt no remorse at all (not for 1 second of the 31 hours of interviews with them) and this was because they didn’t actually believe they had done wrong. I realised that they had been hard-wired – programmed by their culture and society to think as they think about women. In that sense, they are victims of the mindset that has been robotically imbued in them since the day they entered the world. And the further, extraordinary insight I gained was that access to education (which I naively thought must be a factor when I discovered that 6 out of the 7 rapists I interviewed had not finished school), had nothing to do with it. The lawyers of the rapists, who had had the highest degree of access to education, were perhaps even more prejudiced against women and rigid in their misogynistic thinking than the rapists. I realised that the most significant factor we should concern ourselves with as a world if we want to change the mind set that leads to violations of human rights, is the contents of education. What we teach our children.
What would you say to those who have not seen the documentary yet?
Seek it out immediately on Vimeo on demand and see it. It will blow your mind and give you the crucial insights that will make you understand where you, we, society at large have failed our citizens (including victims and also perpetrators) and what we need to do to change the world into a safe, free and equal place for all.
What do you feel about the Indian government and the reaction to the documentary?
I think the Indian government has been really misguided, naive, and counter-productive in its ban on this public interest film which only asks for a better world for women and girls across the globe. They have accused me and the film of a conspiracy to bring shame on India, but it is they (and only they) who have brought shame on India due to the ban. The ban has given the lie to the fact that India’s is a democracy. Also, it is naive in the extreme to think you can ban a film in a digital age. The ban underlines the fact that India (alone in the world) is not willing to introspect and commit to change for its women and girls. It is more concerned for its image than for its women. And it is a counter-productive move, because its image is suffering as a result of the ban.
What do you feel is the reason behind, such cruel crimes in the world?
The fact that for 2 millenia we have been focused on educating the heads of the children of the world and not their hearts. We have irresponsibly failed to teach our children empathy, respect, gender sensitisation, and the value of each and every human being. One of the rapists I interviewed had raped a 5 year old girl. When I asked him to help me understand how he could do this, he said: ”She was a beggar girl. Her life was of no value”. Lack of empathy, lack of the lesson that that this little girl was a valuable life despite being a ‘girl’ and ‘poor’ and of a lower ‘caste’ (another evil aspect of Indian culture – the caste system), is what allowed the rapist to do what he did. He felt entitled and he didn’t see her as a human being.
What is the purpose of your visit to Sri Lanka?
I am coming to Sri Lanka to screen the film and disseminate the message in post-screening discussions, and also to have some very exciting high level meetings with government about the education initiative. Sri Lanka is at the centre of debate on religious and racial co-existence, and violence against women. Sri Lanka’s new political leadership, with great and admirable foresight and wisdom, and Sri Lanka’s civil society has understood that education on equality is the only sustainable and comprehensive way to address these problems. I want to see Sri Lanka lead the world in adopting our Equality Studies education curriculum, and in their commitment to building a truly equal and prosperous society.
Tell me about “Equality Studies Global Initiative”.
It is an initiative which I am advising the UN Human Rights Office on. It meets head on 6 of the 13 post-2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (and embraces 3 other goals also, since it incorporates education in sustainable environment and climate change too). The initiative recognises that education is the primary engine of progress and that the crucial years during which a child is cognitively modifiable is between 3 and 5 years of age. The initiative therefore has 2 imperatives: 1) that equality studies must be compulsory, and 2) that the new subject must be taught from the first day of a child’s entry into school. The initiative makes the plea that if mathematics is a compulsory subject, deemed to be an absolute necessity for a child’s progress into adulthood, then so should human rights education, so that the child can live an empowered, healthy life with respect and tolerance for others, and freed of stereotypes and prejudices. We have gathered together the best brains across the world on education, human rights, gender and psychology. A panel of visionaries and experts drawn from across the globe will design and construct 3 detailed, extended curricula: for Early Years. Middle Years and Senior Years. Adopting countries will adapt the curricula to the cultural specifics of its country, and will start rolling out the Early Years Curriculum is schools across the country from 2018. The curriculum draws on all that exists to teach human rights from exemplary guiding education philosophies and prgrams and indeed creates new instruments to teach moral values and emotional intelligence.
Which Sustainable Development Goals does ESGI address?
Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.
Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.
Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies.
Goal 17: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
What is the benefit of this initiative?
It will lead to transformation of mind-sets in children and young people It will result in the education of rounded, sensitive, respectful, empathetic, more equitable human beings. It will create equal opportunity, and empowerment of girls in whom potential will be unlocked to contribute in a palpable and enriching way to the development and the economy of countries. It will free boys from the limiting straitjacket of gender stereotypes. It will provide children with the tools to succeed on a lifelong journey of learning, and the ability to promote human rights and moral values in their communities. It will create a new generation of global citizens who can rise to the challenges of the 21st century within 15 years in all schoolgoing youth. It will lead to a reduction in wasted costs for government on incarceration of perpetrators and medical and other costs for dealing with and rehabilitating victims. The fuller participation of girls in the economy of the country will increase GDP and enhance social development. The initiative will lead to a safe, healthy, caring society with confident, sensitive, empathetic and contributing citizens.
What inspires you in life?
People. I am not religious in the conventional sense - I don’t believe in a former life or an afterlife. For me this life on earth is all there is and the only worthwhile objective of a life is to leave the world a better place than it was when I entered it.
What are your thoughts about Sri Lanka?
I draw parallels between Sri Lanka and Rwanda. Both countries have suffered immensely as a result of prejudice and civil war – they have experienced the untold pain of loss of life and destructive misguided ‘testosterone driven’ decisions to resolve conflict with conflict. Both countries now have new enlightened regimes who have understood that there must be a new way forward, to build their countries instil new values of tolerance of co-existence in previously warring factions. Rwanda is the only country in the world so far to have not just equalised gender in parliament but exceeded equality with a majority (60%) of women in parliament in order to right the balance and create free and equal world in their country. The more a country has suffered and experienced moral crisis, the more profound its appreciation of liberty and human human rights and the deeper, therefore, is its commitment to change.
What do you plan to do in 2016?
I plan to focus 100% on the Equality Studies Global Initiative. I will travel relentlessly, country to country, persuading and inspiring education ministers to adopt the global human rights curriculum, and I will work with my Education Director, Helen Lumgair and committee of visionaries to build the most effective, powerful and brilliant detailed curriculum for the Early Years that is possible to achieve.
You started your career as an actor, tell me about your experiences.
I loved acting, and enjoyed a very successful theatre career, but I was always frustrated by it not being a ‘full’ enough life. I had more than energy than was required of me as an actor. When I rehearsed during the day, I was bored at night; when I played at night, I was bored during the day. Then I experienced a very harrowing siege in my home by an unscrupulous criminal landlord who wanted to frighten his tenants out of their homes in order to realise a massive profit on the property with vacant possession I fought him for 2 years and won a difficult battle against him through the courts, setting a legal precedent in the High Court of England to protect tenants’ rights in the face of harassment by landlords/ I resolved to tell the story as widely as possible in order to inspire people to stand up and fight when faced with injustice. This is the point at which I became a producer, moving from being the vehicle through which the story was told, to the engine which decides what the story is, and guards and implements its vision.
0 Comments
Richard Cunning says:
Dec 09, 2015 at 12:00 amWith a little help from Shakespeare, I rearrange appropriately: "Leslee Udwin comforteth like sunshine ousteth the havoc of hail."