Rebecca Sommer

German artist, journalist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and activist.
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroGerman artist, journalist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and activist.
PlacesGermany
isPhotographer Journalist Documentary filmmaker Filmmaker
Work fieldArts Film, TV, Stage & Radio Journalism
Gender
Female
The details

Biography

Rebecca Sommer is a German artist, journalist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and a human rights, nature rights and climate justice activist. 

She works with international NGO's in special consultative status to the United Nations (ECOSOC) in participatory status with the Council of Europe, and civil society observer status to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She convened and co-founded in 2001 Earth Peoples in NYC, a global network working together to promote natural and human rights, with special focus on Indigenous Peoples, Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. 2004 she was commissioned by the United Nations to film and produce the awareness-raising video "Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Nr.1", which was first presented at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium at the United Nations Headquarters. 

In 2007, prior to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the UN General Assembly, she created a video lobby-tool"Discussions on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" to encourage discussions with a number of countries that expressed concern about some key issues, such as self-determination, access to lands, territories and resources and the lack of a clear definition of the term indigenous. UN agencies UNHCHR and UNHCHR as well states such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Germany supported her awareness-raising efforts and enabled during the year several film screenings of her work to encourage debates among states that were reluctant to adopt the Declaration. Since 2013 she is the president of the Arbeitsgruppe Flucht+Menschenrechte (AG F+M), a network supporting refugees in Europe.

Sommer earns her living as an artist in print and film, and has worked as the editor-at-large for British magazines such as Scene,The Face, and Spirit and American magazines such as Black Book and Madison, while living in Germany, India, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the United States.

Filmography