World Refugee Day Embraces PRIDE’S: Love Will Keep us Together
World Refugee Day is on Monday June 20. THE MOST BASIC OF HUMAN RIGHTS is the RIGHT to live safely, openly and freely in one’s OWN COUNTRY… No one wants to be forced out of their home or country.
World Refugee Day is an international day organized every year on 20 June by the United Nations. It is designed to celebrate and honor refugees from around the world. The day was first established on 20 June 2001, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
TODAY we have reached a catastrophic milestone where the numbers of people forcibly displaced by war, climate, famine and violence, gender based, and anti-LGBTQI has reached over 100 MILLION people.
Today we acknowledge the strength, courage and resilience of ALL refugees.
LGBTQI refugees are fleeing criminalizing laws, including long prison terms and death penalties, which give license to extreme violence by non- state actors. The resources are few and far between. The hope for pathways to freedom, few!
World Refugee Day is an occasion to build understanding, to recognize resilience and to embrace and welcome…
African Human Rights Coalition serves as an imperative bridge, guiding light and partner for LGBTQI displaced people, who have suffered persecution through criminalizing laws, discrimination and brutal violence- by community, family, friends and governments, alike.
Many refugee receiving countries are hostile toward LGBTQI refugees, requiring safe shelter even within the protection systems. The work of African Human Rights Coalition is critical to such gaps.
PLEASE DONATE at www.africanHRC.org/donate
African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC) plays a unique and critical role in the advocacy for protection and pathways, as well humanitarian services and resources for LGBTQI refugees in and from African countries. We are celebrating this WORLD REFUGEE DAY with PRIDE by bringing our messages of LOVE and PRIDE to PRIDE events and stages across the World, in person and virtual:
SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE
On the weekend of JUNE 24th-26th Melanie Nathan and AHRC has been invited to present a segment for AHRC about LGBTQI+ people in forced displacement on the main stage of SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE, a venue attended and visible to millions locally and around the world. We have compiled a video greeting with voices from Africa to Central America expressing feelings about the SF PRIDE theme: LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER. This moving Video will end with a most moving and historic greeting that we are keeping as a surprise until after its San Francisco Pride main stage debut and then we will send you the VIDEO to view through an email on June 27th. On this World Refugee Day, JUNE 20, 2022, we embrace with PRIDE the remarkable courage, strength and resilience of refugees and asylum seekers from across the Globe, who are fleeing criminalization and brutal violence and in the face of such adversity remain committed to spreading messages of LOVE and PRIDE.
WEHO PRIDE, L-PROJECT WOMENS FREEDOM FESTIVAL
Earlier this June PRIDE month Melanie Nathan, Executive Director of AHRC presented a keynote opening sending off the “Dykes on Bikes” Rally at the inaugural WEHO PRIDE, California, where she was honored with the first WOMEN’S FREEDOM AWARD from the L-PROJECT WOMENS FREEDOM FESTIVAL, sponsored by the City of West Hollywood. The award had all the more meaning when presented to her by King Cyborg, in a moving reminder of their years of work together, some of which is memorialized in the award winning documentary UNSETTLED. The Women’s Freedom Award gives platform to inform many who do not know that over 70 countries criminalize our SOGIESC. It gave stage to speak of the need for funding, resources and pathways and to impart awareness to so many in the LGBTQI+ community, hearing about these issues for the very first time.
NARBERTH PRIDE AT THE PARK
Last weekend Nathan gave the closing speech at PRIDE AT THE PARK, NARBERTH, Pennsylvania. In tandem with so many small towns, worldwide, a group of courageous teens from local high schools formed a committee and undertook the mammoth task of organizing and rallying the local authorities, businesses, musicians, speakers and community, and held the first NARBERTH PRIDE. It was packed and attended by an estimated 600 people. Young, old, parents, grandparents, friends, business owners, and officials, all showed up. It was here that AHRC delivered the message of global connectivity: We are all interconnected, throughout this world, with human rights our common denominator. We expressed the significance of the Narberth PRIDE event in the ecology of global visibility, speaking of the courage PRIDES across the world in countries where people are criminalized, emphasizing the most basic of all human rights – the right to live safely, openly and freely IN ONE’S OWN COUNTRY! The feedback and outpouring of love towards those forcibly displaced for being LGBTQI+, globally was moving and energizing.
We hope that you will partner with us through grant-funding, coalition building, volunteering, and donations. Please help us reach our urgent GOAL to fund several safe shelter and food programs, by donating HERE.
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