FannyAnn Eddy - Nominee

Lesbian activist FannyAnn Eddy was a courageous woman with a deep commitment to LGBT Rights in her native Sierra Leone and throughout Africa.  In 2002, she founded the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, the first organization of its kind in the country. Eddy and her group documented harassment and discrimination as well as the beatings and arbitrary arrests of LGBT people in the West African nation. The organization also provided social and psychological support to a fearful underground community. Eddy publicly lobbied government ministers to address the health and human rights of gays and lesbians and to end state-sponsored oppression. In April 2004, she was part of a delegation of sexual-rights activists who attended the annual session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Eddy met with the Sierra Leone delegation, and testified to the Commission that gays and lesbians faced ongoing harassment and that "Homophobic attacks go unpunished by authorities, further encouraging the discriminatory and violent treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." Eddy was also an active participant in the All Africa Human Rights Symposium in Johannesburg, earning a position on the interim steering committee. On September 29, 2004, the 30-year-old activist was brutally murdered when a group of assailants broke into the office of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association in central Freetown. According to the official investigation, the incident was not politically-based nor an anti-gay hate-crime. Eddy left behind a 10-year-old son and her girlfriend, Esther Chikalipa.