Melanie Nathan, July 02, 2026 Emergency Appeal: Protecting LGBTQI+ Refugees Trapped by Xenophobia in South Africa For more than a decade, the African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC) has provided humanitarian assistance, advocacy, and protection to LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers fleeing persecution across Africa. Many of those we serve have escaped imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, forced marriage, family rejection, and death threats because of their sexual orientatio

The African Human Rights Coalition responds to the U.S. Supreme Court's asylum ruling, warning that LGBTQI+ refugees fleeing persecution, criminalization, and violence face heightened risks when denied access to seek asylum at U.S. ports of entry.

As anti-LGBT laws decline in many Christian-majority countries and expand across parts of the Muslim world, this analysis examines the global religious, political, and legal dynamics shaping LGBTQI+ rights. Melanie Nathan adds critical context from her work as a country conditions expert, highlighting Ghana's sweeping new anti-LGBTQ bill, the continuing role of religion in persecution, and why legal reform alone often fails to protect LGBTQI+ people from violence, discriminat

A new AHRC report warns that South Africa's xenophobia crisis is escalating as anti-foreigner movements demand undocumented migrants leave the country by June 30, 2026. The report examines violence, displacement, organized anti-migrant mobilization, and the growing humanitarian consequences for migrants, refugees, and LGBTQI+ asylum seekers across Africa.

BY MELANIE NATHAN , JUNE 12, 2026 Niger has adopted a new Penal Code that, for the first time in the country's history, explicitly criminalizes consensual same-sex relations. The legislation introduces severe penalties, including prison terms of up to twenty years for certain offenses related to same-sex relationships, marriage, and association. Enacted under military rule, the legislation represents a significant escalation in the criminalization of LGBTQI+ people and reflec

Melanie Nathan, May 31, 2026 Friends, do you realize that Ghana has just passed one of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ laws the world has ever seen? While it does not carry the death penalty like Uganda's infamous "Kill the Gays" law, it may as well. This is social death. It is a law likely to send LGBTQI+ people, professionals, allies, advocates, family members, and human rights defenders to prison. What makes this law especially dangerous is that it criminalizes identity itself

AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION (AHRC) STATEMENT, May 29, 2026: Condemning Ghana Parliament’s Passage of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025 The African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC) unequivocally and in the strongest possible terms condemns the passage by the Parliament of Ghana of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025. This legislation represents one of the most sweeping and dangerous assaults on human rights enacted by a democratic legislatu

AHRC Staff, May 29, 2026 POST UPDATED:The Parliament of Ghana has passed the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, popularly known as the anti-LGBTQ bill, on Friday, May 29, 2026, following parliamentary proceedings in Accra. The bill now awaits the assent or otherwise by President John Dramani Mahama. On Thursday, 28th May 2026, the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs presented its report on the "Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill" (the anti-LGB

By Melanie Nathan, May 22, 2026. Rightify Ghana has Raised Serious Concerns Over Exclusionary Public Hearing Process on Ghana’s 'Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025' (Anti-LGBTQ Bill) and African Human Rights Coalition, which provided an opposition submission on behalf of Ghanaian asylum seekers and refugees, to Ghana's Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, stands in solidarity with these concerns: Accra, Ghana — 22 May 2026 Rightify Ghana expresses deep c

By Melanie Nathan, May 23, 2026 Community Service Proposal as Part of Penalties Delayed Consideration of Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill — Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga Says Some MPs Raised Concerns About Harsh Punishments In my assessment of the following - I want readers to be aware that criminalization of LGBTQI+ people, regardless of the punishment, in and of itself, causes stigma, fear of the "other" as in homophobia - and to such an extent that LGBTQI+ people in such environments are