Sexual violence and family expulsion among the challenges facing African LBQ women 

A new African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC) report reveals 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.

Authored by Melanie Nathan, From Home to Hostile Host: Structural Violence Against LBQ Women Across African Contexts draws on AHRC’s work in 20 African nations to expose 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.

The report calls for urgent accountability and concrete reforms across humanitarian, asylum, and human-rights systems.

The report also notes the shifting global human rights landscape, as the United States has stepped back from key international human rights 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 structural violence against LBQ women is intensifying across Africa.

How LBQ Women’s Experiences Differ

The experiences of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) African women are distinct from those of gay men and other sexual minorities due to the intersection of gender, sexuality, and entrenched patriarchal control. LBQ women are frequently punished not through formal criminal prosecution but through sexualized and domestic forms of violence such as forced marriage, marital rape, “corrective” sexual assault, and reproductive coercion intended to enforce gender conformity and male authority.

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