From Home to Hostile Host: Structural Violence Against LBQ Women Across African Contexts,

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Authors: Melanie Nathan
Cited by: 0

Abstract

African Human Rights Coalition report examining how lesbian, bisexual, and queer women experience systematic violence that begins within families and communities and continues through displacement, detention, and so-called host countries. Drawing on AHRC’s long-standing documentation, protection, and country-conditions work across Africa, the report exposes patterns of sexualized violence, forced marriage, family expulsion, and State-enabled harm that are frequently excluded from both women’s rights and LGBTI protection frameworks. By centering LBQ women’s lived realities and structural protection failures, the report calls for urgent accountability and concrete reforms across humanitarian, asylum, and human-rights systems. The report further situates these patterns within a shifting global protection landscape, noting with concern that the United States has stepped back from key human-rights guardrails through the suspension or curtailment of regular international reporting and engagement mechanisms. This retreat weakens accountability frameworks that have historically supported documentation, protection standards, and asylum adjudication for SOGIESC-related claims, and signals a broader erosion of leadership at a time when State hostility, refoulement risks, and structural violence against LBQ women are intensifying across regions.

Fields of Study & Subjects

African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues Gender and Feminist Studies Gender and Women's Rights

Publication details

Journal / source
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Publication date
16 January 2026