A Place to Belong: How LGBTQIA Advocates Are Remaking the Caribbean

For generations, it wasn’t only stigma that LGBTQIA people in the Caribbean had to fear. Colonial-era “buggery laws” criminalizing same-sex relationships remained on the books into the 21st century, licensing discrimination, political hostility, and waves of violence in small communities where invisibility was often the price of safety.

In recent years, a movement of advocates has driven a profound shift: challenging those laws in court, country by country—and, just as vitally, building what the law alone can't provide: safe spaces, health services, support for survivors of gender-based violence, and a sense of belonging for people long forced to hide.

In St. Lucia, the toll had names and faces. Over roughly a decade starting in 2005, more than half a dozen young gay men were brutally murdered. Kenita Placide knew some of them. An HIV and AIDS advocate at the time, Placide, who is queer, struggled to channel their grief—“I was just tired of losing people.” The question that wouldn't leave them: “How do we step up to protect the people, to allow individuals to be their genuine self without being fearful?”

The response, Placide believed, had to be collective. Advocacy groups existed across the region, but they were small, scattered, and under-resourced, each fighting alone. In 2016, with the support of the Open Society Foundations, Placide and a coalition of activists launched the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE), a regional network with an audacious goal: defeating the buggery laws in court.

In the decade since, the movement has won major victories. Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and St. Lucia have all struck down buggery laws following ECADE-backed constitutional challenges. But ECADE’s fight is not finished. A challenge in Grenada still awaits a ruling.

These victories echo far beyond the Caribbean: these cases have been drawn upon and are watched by movements challenging the same colonial-era laws across the Commonwealth, from India, which struck down its version in 2018, to Botswana a year later.

Today, ECADE serves 31 members across nine countries, providing small grants, trainings, communications support—and the legal architecture for challenges that individual islands couldn't mount alone. The model, Placide says, is “an opportunity to unify voices, to be able to negotiate, and to bring the spotlight and visibility to the issues that we're fighting for.”

Meet three of ECADE’s partners—and learn how this movement is reshaping what is possible for LGBTQIA people throughout the Caribbean.

GrenCHAP

For 20 years, GrenCHAP, a group of sexual and health rights advocates based in Grenada, has followed a simple principle, says director Kerlin Charles: “Provide the opportunities that the community asks for.”

That has led to the group offering a wide range of services, from campaigns promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights and legal assistance for LGBTQIA people to programs supporting aspiring entrepreneurs. While it focuses on marginalized people, “we also understand that we need to do more work with the general population,” Charles says.

In Grenada, where homosexuality remains criminalized, GrenCHAP has worked with ECADE to challenge buggery laws, in a case that’s currently pending. The group is also focused on addressing gender-based violence, which has increased in the region since the COVID-19 pandemic. It does this by offering online educational sessions and counseling services, while building close relationships with legal aid providers so that people can quickly obtain protection orders. The goal, as always, is to meet community needs, says Charles. “We do the work because it has to be done.”

St. Kitts and Nevis Alliance for Equality

When St. Kitts and Nevis struck down its buggery law in 2022, standing behind the challenge was a small community organization: the St. Kitts and Nevis Alliance for Equality (SKNAFE). But for Tynetta McKoy, who cofounded the group 12 years ago, the courtroom was just one part of the battle. Every day, SKNAFE provides services to the community, from health tests to rent assistance, from food packages to life skills programming.

For McKoy, the greatest reward is connection. Alongside its services, SKNAFE makes room for people simply to be together—through social gatherings, karaoke nights, and Pride celebrations. To McKoy, these moments matter as much as any formal program. They are where friendships form, where people find one another, where belonging takes hold in a place that has long asked LGBTQIA people to stay invisible. “I am a non-binary woman as well. I’m part of the community,” she says. “Even growing up, I always needed somebody to actually connect to.”

Building that community was not easy. Trust had to be earned slowly, by showing up consistently for people where they were. There were stretches when the work felt daunting. “There are times you feel like, ‘maybe you should give up,’” McKoy says. What kept her going was the people themselves. “Hearing from different community members that ‘you have made a difference’—that’s what motivated me to keep doing this work,” she says. “It makes me happy as a person.”

She sees the proof now in small, everyday things: people moving through public space with a confidence they didn’t have before, comfortable being who they are. What began as one woman’s search for connection has grown into something larger—a community bound together by trust, friendship, and care. “Our community is strong,” McKoy says. “We are together. And we are ready to face the way of the world.”