French-speaking LGBTQ+ activists want Canada to do more to address funding gap

DOUALA — LGBTQ+ activists across francophone Africa say Western governments and global foundations are ignoring funding gaps for French-speaking countries where repression differs from English-speaking regions.

Last year, the Global Philanthropy Project reported that just one per cent of global LGBTQ+ funding between 2013 and 2020 had been focused on francophone countries.

It’s a gap the governments of Canada and Quebec have been working to fix, and one where activists say Canadians need to speak out more.

“Basically we’re invisible,” said Michaël Arnaud, executive director of Égides, a Montreal-based alliance of francophone organizations fighting for LGBTQ+ rights worldwide.

The Canadian Press travelled to Cameroon as part of an investigative series looking into a global backslide in LGBTQ+ rights and the consequences for Canada, including the issues faced by French-speaking groups.

Patrick Fotso sees these issues first hand. His HIV prevention group and clinic, Alcondoms Cameroun, is among the most prominent sexual-health organizations in Cameroon, a mostly French-speaking country. It doubles as an LGBTQ+ advocacy centre.

But Fotso literally does the human-rights side of his work off the side of his desk, while the better funded HIV work gets the lion’s share of the space.

The executive director beams as he walks through the clinic rooms, the testing lab and the psychologist’s office. But the group’s public advocacy and awareness campaigns are limited to a small tray of folders on Fotso’s office desk.

The folders include posters calling for equality, and letters asking diplomats to speak out for certain activists facing arrest. There are outlines of sensitivity training for local police, who extort bribes by threatening to arrest LGBTQ+ people.

The tray of folders is a far cry from the reams of data and communications campaigns Fotso’s group has collated to help fight HIV.

“There is no balance,” he said with a shrug.

Fotso knows that his peers in anglophone countries have bigger budgets to try and change the societal attitudes and government policies that drive LGBTQ+ repression.

“It’s important that the French-speaking zone can mobilize more funds, to get at least a little closer to our friends on the English-speaking side,” said Fotso.

In Montreal, Arnaud said his organization exists to help fund and advocate for groups abroad that face barriers in accessing large American or British aid budgets, and find limited support from French-speaking governments.

The group was founded in 2019 with the support of the Quebec government, after the province made a formal commitment to advocate for LGBTQ+ human rights internationally.

At global LGBTQ+ conferences, Spanish is more likely to be heard during panels than French, and there are rarely budgets for interpreters to translate for French-speaking advocates, he said.

“Those activists are not able to highlight their needs, priorities and work to important stakeholders like donors, partners and governments,” Arnaud said.

Caroline Kouassiaman, executive director of the Sankofa Initiative for West Africa, sees the difference between English and French funding every day.

The initiative is an activist-led funding organization for LGBTQ+ groups in both French- and English-speaking countries.

Kouassiaman said French-speaking countries in Africa are generally less politically stable, making it hard for advocates to publish information about their activities, in case their rights are suddenly suspended.

She stressed that English-speaking countries still experience instability, such as terrorists in Nigeria kidnapping young girls. But the countries that have experienced recent military takeovers or rising al-Qaida affiliates have been predominantly French-speaking.

“The majority of countries that are in crisis, where they are battling issues of terrorism, massive displacement, political conflict, coups d’état — the majority are francophone countries,” she said.

That includes Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Niger.

In countries with turbulent governments, some activists deliberately shun social media, because they say it only attracts homophobes and leaves groups vulnerable to persecution if the military stages a coup and suspends civil rights.

“Some of the oldest organizations in the region are actually in francophone countries,” Kouassiaman said. “But you wouldn’t find that information online.”

Francophone countries also face different issues.

The British Empire left a legacy of anti-sodomy laws that are still enforced in numerous English-speaking countries, notes Carlos Idibouo, cofounder of Fierté Afrique francophone. French-speaking countries face more nebulous challenges, such as pushing for the right to free expression and assembly.

“In English-speaking African countries, it revolves around criminalization,” said Idibouo, who lives in Ivory Coast.

“They have a fundamental challenge that makes their agenda more stark.”

Kouassiaman adds that some countries that have made the most strides in LGBTQ+ rights are those that historically had a high number of HIV cases — which are primarily English-speaking. That’s because global funding for health clinics helped build decades of activist networks that could capture data and advocate for civil rights.

As a result, Arnaud said organizations in many francophone countries lack the technical expertise to take on large-scale funding for projects that can move the needle on LGBTQ+ rights.

He said many are buried in translating paperwork for funding organizations and governments that primarily operate in English, instead of having project managers who can succinctly complete funding applications and reporting requirements.

George Lafon, a spokesman for the group Working for Our Wellbeing Cameroon, said the difference in grant money available in English and French is “an existential problem.”

His group serves LGBTQ+ people in the country’s anglophone minority, and finds access to funding for French-speaking countries “very limited.”

Lafon also said the needs vary by linguistic groups in Cameroon, as he believes the English-speaking minority is more conservative and more likely to act out violently against LGBTQ people, compared to the relatively more tolerant French-speaking majority.

That means French-speaking populations might be better served by trying to change how government agents like police or nurses interact with LGBTQ+ people, while English-speakers might need programs to prevent violence from relatives, colleagues and strangers. Western governments might fund one approach, but not the other.

Meanwhile, activists lament having no space to make their case within gatherings of la Francophonie, the global alliance of French-speaking countries.

The Commonwealth has a civil-society mandate which allows activists to present at high level meetings. It also means LGBTQ+ activists with a group called the Commonwealth Equality Network can speak with their own governments as well as those of partner countries, to try pushing for civil rights.

La Francophonie has a comparatively smaller role for civil society, and has only embraced the term “equality of men and women.” Arnaud says that is a deliberate rejection of “gender equality,” a more expansive term that recognizes people outside of binary gender identities.

Canada and Quebec have pushed for more inclusive language, Arnaud said, unlike European peers.

“Canada and Quebec have really shown up and stepped up,” he said. “Some countries have some interests in keeping African countries happy. So unfortunately, they’re not as loud as we would like them to be.”

Ulrich Mvate, who leads health-advocacy group Humanity First Cameroon, said the U.S. and France are big funders, but they lack “the African approach” of acting discreetly, to not be seen as imposing foreign values.

“They don’t very often take our opinions into account, us who are in Cameroon, to know what approach to have,” he said.

“Canada is the one that takes this into account.”

The issue came up in June 2023, when Cameroon barred entry for France’s ambassador for LGBTQ+ rights, Jean-Marc Berthon, who was set to address a conference for gender rights in Cameroon. That incident set off claims that France was trying to change local values.

Kouassiaman said Canada has earned a reputation, from both LGBTQ+ organizations and local governments, as a country that aims to respond to local needs without inflaming situations on the ground.

“When you look at overall the contribution of the government of Canada to global (LGBTQ+) work in the last few years, there has been growth; the data shows it, it’s very clear.”

She said that means Ottawa can use its clout to push its European peers to step up, in funding groups and advocating for rights abroad.

“Canada, I’d say, is doing a lot more, and it’s doing a lot better in terms of specifically resourcing and supporting the LGBTQ+ movements,” she said. “That leadership role within the Francophonie is really important.”

If not, Kouassiaman fears that draconian laws in English-speaking countries that criminalize people for publicly identifying as LGBTQ+ will be replicated across the linguistic divide. Already this year, military juntas running Mali and Burkina Faso have enacted anti-gay policies.

“There are a number of francophone countries that are very tenuous right now around (LGBTQ+) issues, and this is where we need our allies,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2024.

This is the final story of an eight-part series investigating a backsliding of LGBTQ+ rights in Africa and the consequences for Canada as a country with a feminist foreign policy, which prioritizes gender equality and human dignity. The reporting in Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya was written with financial support from the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press