December 29, 2024
Dear Friends,
For a Meaningful 2025: May We Survive and Thrive
At this end of our tenth anniversary year at African Human Rights Coalition, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the support you have shown in so many ways, through following our work, spreading the information, volunteering, your kind and generous donations and so importantly helping us amplify the voice of the most marginalized in our LGBTQI+ global community.
While we are able to proudly boast the successes of these past years, which include advocacy, humanitarian services for thousands of forcibly displaced LGBTQI+ people, never before has the start of a new year been so worrisome, and we are compelled to express our deep concern as well as go to great lengths to prepare.
In addition to our humanitarian services this past year we saw significant success in our life-impacting advocacy work. While much of the work is too sensitive to make public, our impact included cases of resettlement to several overseas countries. We provided emergency relief, advocacy and other services to people who had been arrested and detained on borders and in criminalizing countries. We also provided expert witness reporting and testimony in 32 Asylum / CAT withholding cases in the U.S.A., one in Sweden and two in the United Kingdom. All U.S.A. cases were granted except for 1 which is currently on appeal. Six cases are ongoing.
While the Biden administration had its problems with regard to asylum policies impacting our Southern Border, the incoming administration is poised to ensure much worse for our constituents as we brace for harsh and cruel outcomes. We are concerned about mass deportation, the reduction in the Presidential refugee determination numbers, all under conditions where the forced displacement numbers are growing exponentially.
We are concerned for all of us working as global human rights defenders, including here in the United States. We are concerned about the impact of a failing democracy and freedoms in the United States that once served the world, as a guardrail for LGBTQI+ refugees.
The U.S. has been a crucial ally for LGBTQI+ Africans who have been forcibly displaced by violence and persecution, licensed by the horrific old Penal Codes and now terrifying new anti-LGBTQI+ legislation. We cannot afford a landscape where the harms increase while a critical shield collapses.
We know the incoming administration has verbally attacked LGBTQI+ people, Africans, immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees – every aspect of the life and being of the African Human Rights Coalition constituent. The policies previously employed, with the promise of new policies evidence the adversity that will impact LGBTQI+ identities, lives, protection mechanisms, pathways, and humanitarian needs, at every phase of the displacement cycle. We are preparing for the looming harms to our constituents and beneficiaries as they continue to be the subject of false narratives and harsh cruel policies by the new American administration.
Despite what we anticipate, I want to assure you that AHRC is committed to continue our work and to fight even harder for LGBTQI+ Africans suffering violence and displacement. We know it won’t be easy and subject to a situation even worse than we experienced during the previous Trump presidency.
We will push back and continue to advocate for resources, services, improved protection environments, and pathways to freedom. We will lean heavily on the governments who are friends such as Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Canada. We will push South Africa to abide its promise to a Mandela constitution.
We will continue to seek partners in all our endeavors. We will hold the LGBTQI+ American organizations and community accountable to its global family, to step up like never before. We will continue to implement much needed food and supplemental programs in refugee camps and transit centers. We will continue to provide shelters, emergency transportation, emergency medical and dental assistance, and much more. We will also continue our annual PRIDE and holiday meal programs which bring so much joy and uplift those who feel so hopeless.
We cannot do it without you: We have stood in this work as a uniquely poised organization, without government, foundation or operational grants, yet superbly impactful in this work. Imagine how many more people we could reach and what we can accomplish with more of your kindness and generosity.
This year we are moving forward on two new plans in addition to our usual work:
Our plan is to bring trauma counseling to those in the most remote of situations, so that they do not have to wait years and years for treatment as has been the case in most instances.
We are developing an exciting unique innovative plan for pathways to freedom, which we hope to announce later in 2025.
We are asking that you give special consideration as we prepare for 2025. We want to be prepared to act in the moment when the inevitable crisis arise.
Please help us as we prepare for
• Additional interim shelters to accommodate influx of people
• Additional food programs
• Emergency transport, medical and legal
• Asylum expert witness reporting and testimony
PLEASE DONATE HERE
We know we are in for a tough time however with your help we will be able to manage the likely setbacks with immediate action.
Our thanks go to all our supporters, many of you who have been here from day one, and to all donors, where even the smallest donation adds to make so much possible.
We THANK our Ambassadors in 20 African countries, our Partners, our global Volunteers and our Directors, for your work and dedication.
With deep appreciation and hope for the future, we wish you all a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.
To all - may we survive and thrive.
Warmly,
Melanie Nathan
Executive Director
African Human Rights Coalition
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