The Human Rights, Sexuality and The Law Summit organized by The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS) and the Equality Hub is slated to be the most important event this year for people committed to the fight for the recognition of the rights of LGBTIQ persons in Nigeria and by extension the rest of Africa. Since 2015, when President Goodluck Jonathan, looking to score some much needed popularity points with his Nigerian constituents allowed for a law targeting LGBT persons in Nigeria to pass, the conversation around the rights of sexual minorities and how our laws are often misinterpreted and used as a tool for oppression has  become even more important. The Human Rights, Sexuality and the Law summit comes at the end of a series of symposia, town hall meetings and talks aimed at slowly reorienting our general perceptions of LGBT communities in the country and working towards repealing the existing laws and providing better legal protections for minorities from directed hate.

Chude Jideonwo, managing partner at RED and Greenberg Fellow at Yale (where he has been doing a lot of studying on the intersections of faith, science and sexuality) has just been announced as the Keynote speaker at this year’s Summit. Jideonwo is renowned for his radical expositions on intersections of faith and sexuality and his talk will expound on this year’s themes of the  impact of cultural, traditional and religious ideas on fundamental human rights of sexual minorities in Nigeria, and this will be one of his first major public appearances post Yale Fellowship.

Now would be a good time to go register.

#Equality4all Chude Jideonwo will be delivering the Keynote at this year Human Rights, Sexuality and The Law symposium. We are looking at the impact of cultural, traditional and religious ideas on fundamental human rights of sexual minorities in Nigeria #HumanNotNumber pic.twitter.com/NKb8TVQjVq

— TIERs (@TIERsNigeria) November 24, 2017

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