DSN Statements
Here you’ll find all the statements issued by the DSN
Solidarity Statements
Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) Statement of Solidarity with Palestine
26 May 2021
We express unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, including Palestinian LGBTIQ+ people and organisations such as Al-Qaws and their campaigns for liberation.
The Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) - a transnational community of academics, activists and artivists across the global norths and souths - condemns in the strongest terms possible the recent violence against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza and the ongoing occupation. We also call upon the British government to acknowledge its responsibilities to the Palestinian people since establishing the conditions under the British mandate from 1948 which led to the Nakba.
We express unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, including Palestinian LGBTIQ+ people and organisations such as Al-Qaws and their campaigns for liberation. We call upon academics, activists and artivists, particularly feminist, antiracist and LGBTIQ+ people in the global north, to demand that their governments immediately cease providing military, financial and other aid to Israel, so as to end the murders and brutalising of all Palestinian people.
Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) Statement of Solidarity with LBGTQI+ People in Ghana
28 February 2021
We stand with our queer friends and organisers in Ghana and all over the world as they organise to dismantle colonial genders and sexualities that criminalise queer existence.
It is with utter horror that the DSN takes note of the attack on queer communities in Ghana. The Ghanaian government and Church colluded in an unprecedented attack on queer communities in Ghana by closing down the offices of an organisation that works with and for LGBTQI+ people in the country.
The DSN has members from every continent. It has been involved in queer mobilisation across the global north and south for the last decade and it is incumbent upon us not to give the comfort of our silence to institutional repression of our queer communities across the world. We support our queer siblings in Ghana and stand in solidarity with their mobilisation for queer liberation. Ghanaian queer communities are part of the larger queer communities of the world and the DSN is committed to supporting their lives, actions and political movements.
Ghana has inherited in its post-independence legacy forms of queerphobia instated under British colonialism across the global south. We stand with our queer friends and organisers in Ghana and all over the world as they organise to dismantle colonial genders and sexualities that criminalise queer existence. We understand that at this particular juncture in history, the field of genders and sexualities is steeped in colonial and continued postcolonial queerphobia on the one hand, and neo-colonial, newly weaponised, saviour human rights agendas and humanitarianisms (read ‘civilising mission’) on the other.
The DSN, whilst refusing to partake in either of the positions, stands firmly in support behind queer communities in Ghana and the world to imagine a future, without State, institutional or other harassment or threats to life itself, for queer people to thrive.
DSN Board of Coordinators
Paola Bacchetta, Suhraiya Jivraj, Silvia Posocco, Sandeep Bakshi
Statement by the group The Silent Majority in Ghana:
Article of interest on queers in Ghana: