Human Rights, Sexual Equality and Youth (HRSEY)

In July 2014, IGDS: NBU commenced the implementation of the Human Rights, Sexual Equality and Youth (HRSEY) participatory action project.
This three-pronged initiative will: (a) assess the vulnerabilities of LGBTQ youth to violence, discrimination, and victimization, (b) seek to remove barriers to LGBTQ youth’s access to necessary services by engaging in advocacy among social care providers and other key resource persons and (c) conduct a thorough review of Barbados’ laws and legal agreements that clarifies the nation’s human rights obligations and promotion of sexual equality. This project builds on the recently completed pilot study titled: "Education and Teen Sexuality in Barbados: A Gender Perspective" completed in 2012.
A significant portion of the project's data was collected at the Caribbean Women and Sexual Diversity Conference in 2014. Investigators from the IGDS: NBU used the lived experiences interviewing tool to gather data from 28 women representing 11 countries across the region: Trinidad, Dominica, Suriname, St Lucia, Jamaica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Croix, Guyana, St Martin and Barbados. Using a mixed methods methodology, qualitative data was collected through three focus groups and individual guided narratives, as well as a written survey instrument. The data collected focussed on safe spaces, support systems, multiple forms of violence that LBT women experience.
HRSEY has also established partnerships with key actors who provide input and feedback at all major stages of the project.
Under this project, the “Capturing the Experiences and Knowledge of Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (LBT) Women Across the Caribbean” report was also completed as a major output of the project. The report includes rich narratives from LBT women as they negotiate relationships and deal with prejudice, discrimination and/or violence in the community, family, church, law, healthcare and employment. Read the report here.

Quotes

" By denying or refusing the myriad unscripted ways in which people chance upon, live and love each other, different categories of belonging are created, rendering some families less normal or less valued. This is similar, by the way, to how we tend to think of households headed by women as secondary to the nuclear/male breadwinner family, despite the fact that they represent the family experience of over forty percent of children in the region, or the laws that outlaw lesbian and gay sex and make criminals and non-citizens out of all of us whose desires refuse to be strai(gh)tjacketed. "
Gender, Generation and Memory: Remembering a Future Caribbean, Alissa Trotz

News & Events

The LIVITY Project Launched

IGDS Biennial Conference: Global Feminisms and the Anti-Colonial Project

Q&A with Dr. Nicole Charles