Cynthia Rothschild is the on-site faculty director of Oxy at the U.N. She is a writer, a trainer, and an advocate whose work has revolved around and traveled through the UN for over two decades.
In recent years, she’s been a consultant with a focus on UN advocacy and policy, sexual rights, LGBTI issues, women human rights defenders, religious fundamentalisms, clampdowns on civil society, and HIV & AIDS. Her UN experience has been centered on the Human Rights Council/Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Commission on the Status of Women. In 2011 and in 2015, Cynthia consulted with OHCHR, where she made significant contributions to the UN’s two groundbreaking reports on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In the mid-2000s, Cynthia worked with various NGOs to promote women’s rights and human rights in UN reform processes, including in the creation of the Human Rights Council and in the transition from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to UN Women. She had previously worked at UNIFEM in areas related to HIV/AIDS and CEDAW. She’s worked with many NGOs inside and outside the US to create and support activist engagement in the UN system.
Rothschild's writing includes:
- Denigration, Distraction and Detraction: Forging Ahead, Even in Crisis
- Sex at Dusk and the Mourning After: Sexuality Policy in the Obama Years
- Human Rights Council: Women Monitor Advances and Note Concerns
- Gendering Documentation: A Manual for and about Women Human Rights Defenders.
- Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women's Organizing