Two more Plenary Session speakers announced

We are pleased to announce the two remaining Plenary Session speakers for IFLA WLIC 2014: Her Royal Highness Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands and Le Monde journalist, Florence Aubenas.

Her Royal Highness Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands

Founder and Honorary Chair of Stichting Lezen & Schrijven (Reading & Writing Foundation)

Princess Laurentien works on issues concerning the development of individuals and their impact on society. In particular, she is active in the fields of literacy and sustainability. In 2004 she founded Stichting Lezen & Schrijven (Reading & Writing Foundation), which works both in the Netherlands and internationally to prevent illiteracy among children and to reduce it among adults.

The Princess is UNESCO’s Special Envoy on Literacy and Development and served as Chair of the EU High Level Group of experts on Literacy, which presented its findings in 2012. Princess Laurentien has also been professionally engaged on sustainability and wildlife preservation for over a decade. She is Founder and Director of the Missing Chapter Foundation (MCF), which brings together children and (corporate) leaders to engage in dialogue aimed at changing mind-sets of both the adults and children.

Princess Laurentien is also the initiator and author of the Mr Finney series of children’s books.

Florence Aubenas

Florence Aubenas is a Belgian born, French journalist who has worked for Le Monde since 2012. For nearly 20 years she worked at Libération as well as several years with Le Nouvel Observateur. As an international reporter and war correspondent, she has covered critical events in Rwanda, Kosovo, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya as well as many important criminal trials.

She gained public attention in France during the first Outreau trial in 2004. In this famous “judiciary disaster” she was one of the first to (correctly) question the guilt of some of those convicted.

Florence Aubenas was taken hostage in Iraq on January 5, 2005 along with her translator Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi. Both were freed on June 11, 2005. Her abduction transformed Ms Aubenas into a rallying figure for press freedom advocates in France and beyond. The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders worked tirelessly for her release. A photo of her and Hanoun Al-Saadi hung on walls in cities all across Europe. During their six-month period of captivity, French broadcasters regularly reminded viewers of their situation.

From July 2009 until June 2012, Florence served as President of L'Observatoire international des prisons (OIP), a French organization dedicated to ensuring decent conditions of confinement and the respect of fundamental rights for detainees.

In 2009 she embarked on an extensive piece of undercover journalism in Caen, Normandy that exposed the plight of temporary workers forced to subsist on below minimum wages—in a similar manner as Günter Wallraff did in Germany during the 1980s and Barbara Ehrenreich in the USA during the 2000s. Her goal was "to tell the story of the people in France who are going under.” After many temporary jobs, she worked as a cleaning lady on ferries on Ouistreham’s quays. The resulting book, “Le Quai de Ouistreham” became a bestseller in France.

Florence Aubenas regularly speaks publicly on her ideas and ambitions for journalism.