SL’s LGBTQ champion Rosanna in TIME mag’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024 list

Sri Lanka’s LGBTQ champion Rosanna Flamer-Caldera has been listed among the popular TIME magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People of 2024.”

Time 100 is a list of the top 100 most influential people in the world, assembled by the American news magazine Time. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now a highly publicised annual event.

The list, the 101st year, is published in the 23 April 2024 issue of TIME.

 ”Rosanna Flamer-Caldera has spent more than two decades advocating for LGBTQ rights in Sri Lanka and her relentless advocacy led to a major victory for queer women globally,” writes TIME reporter Sanya Mansoor in the magazine.

It said in a landmark decision in 2022, the UN sided with Flamer-Caldera in her case against Sri Lanka’s ban on same-sex intimacy between women, declaring it a human rights violation. The case brought LGBTQ rights to the fore in Sri Lankan politics, and soon after the decision, a lawmaker introduced a bill to decriminalise homosexuality in the country. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has said he won’t oppose the amendment but the proposed law’s constitutionality was challenged before the Supreme Court, the TIME article said.

“Flamer-Caldera’s LGBTQ-rights group, Equal Ground, was among those that petitioned to support the bill. The court ruled in their favour last year, clearing the path for the law to progress in Parliament, where Equal Ground is now working to help ensure it passes,” the TIME said.

The magazine said it spent months discussing who belongs on the TIME100, the people who we believe most changed the stories that define the past year.

Later in April, the magazine will gather together with the newest members of the TIME100 community for a day of conversation at the TIME100 Summit and for the annual TIME100 Gala. For the fifth year in a row, the gala will be broadcast in the US on ABC, on 12 May and stream on Hulu.

Flamer-Caldera joins an elite list that includes anti-corruption activist Yulia Navalnaya, actor Taraji P. Henson, who is fighting for equality in Hollywood; National Football League star Patrick Mahomes, who has led his Kansas City Chiefs to four Super Bowl appearances in his young career; and entertainer Dua Lipa, who Patti Smith describes as redefining “the pop-genre cosmos.”

There are 12 climate and sustainability leaders on this year’s TIME100, including Brazilian Government Minister Marina Silva, Chinese automaker Wang Chuanfu, and researcher Suzanne Simard. In a year of change in medicine, the magazine recognises health care executive Dave Ricks and scientists Dan Drucker, Joel Habener, and Svetlana Mojsov. The Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October and subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza have transformed the region and the lives of millions. The TIME100 includes negotiators William Burns and Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza, and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of an Israeli hostage. Each of their stories has shifted the world.