The inter-American human rights body has published its most comprehensive annual assessment of expression freedoms in the hemisphere. Two Georgetown organisations have spent decades building the case it now puts to governments. The moment to act is overdue.
By LCN Newsroom | Published: May 2026 | Georgetown, Guyana
Sources: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression (SRFOE); Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) Guyana; Red Thread Women's Development Organisation; Stabroek News; News Room Guyana; Human Rights Watch; CIVICUS; 76crimes.com; Caribbean Beat Magazine; Equality Fund; Wikipedia.
The IACHR's Special Rapporteurship on Freedom of Expression published its 2025 Annual Report this week, adding another chapter to the hemisphere's most authoritative ongoing audit of how governments protect, restrict or ignore the right to speak, organise and be heard. The report arrives at a moment when Guyana is navigating one of the most consequential periods in its civil society history, and two organisations based in Georgetown have been doing the foundational work that international bodies depend on.
The timing carries weight beyond the calendar. Guyana's Stabroek News printed its final edition in March 2026 after 39 years in print, with owners citing mounting financial pressures and outstanding government debt as the reasons for closure. The paper was considered Guyana's most trusted independent newspaper, its letters page described by lawyer Christopher Ram as perhaps the most open and democratic public forum in Guyana, an informal national meeting place where academics, trade unionists, political figures and ordinary citizens debated matters of public importance as equals. Its closure, alongside Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday, which stopped publishing in January 2026, represents a tangible narrowing of the media ecosystem across the Caribbean at the precise moment an inter-American report is assessing expression freedoms in the region. Caribbean Beat Magazine + 2
This is the landscape into which the IACHR's report lands.
What is the IACHR's Freedom of Expression Annual Report and why does it matter for Guyana?
The IACHR Special Rapporteurship on Freedom of Expression 2025 Annual Report, published May 4 2026, tracks how governments across the Americas protect or undermine the right to speak, organise and advocate. For Guyana, it arrives as the country's independent press contracts and civil society pushes for long-delayed legal reforms.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. Its Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression is the dedicated mechanism for tracking threats to speech, press, assembly and the rights of groups whose expression is most frequently suppressed. The Office of the Special Rapporteur is mandated to prepare an annual report which reflects the activities of the previous year, systematises best practices and details the greatest challenges faced in each state of the Americas, and makes a series of recommendations to states. CreconlineGuyana Chronicle
The IACHR's 2025 report covers five main areas: democratic institutions, human rights, access to justice, citizen security, and equality and non-discrimination, with the Special Rapporteurship's findings appended as an annex covering freedom of expression across the hemisphere. When that annex references the right to organise, to advocate openly about sexual orientation and gender identity, and the conditions facing civil society defenders, it is describing precisely the terrain on which Guyana's grassroots organisations have been working, sometimes under direct threat, for decades. YouTube
What does SASOD Guyana do and what has it achieved?
SASOD, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination, is Guyana's leading LGBTQ+ human rights organisation, founded in 2003. Its most significant legal victory came in 2018 at the Caribbean Court of Justice, where it successfully challenged a colonial-era cross-dressing law. It continues to advocate for repeal of anti-gay criminalisation laws.
SASOD was formed in 2003 by students of the University of Guyana as Students Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination, to advocate during Guyana's constitutional reform process for the inclusion of sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for discrimination in the Constitution. More than two decades later, that constitutional inclusion has not materialised. OEA
What SASOD has achieved in spite of that gap is significant. The organisation played a critical role demolishing a colonial-era law that criminalised cross-dressing and disproportionately penalised transgender and gender non-conforming persons, with the Caribbean Court of Justice ruling in the case of Quincy McEwan, Seon Clarke, Joseph Fraser, Seyon Persaud and SASOD v the Attorney General of Guyana that the provision was unconstitutional. OEA
SASOD's work operates across three programmes: Human Rights, Homophobia Education, and Human Services. The organisation lobbies government to change laws and policies which discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, and utilises the United Nations and inter-American human rights systems to pressure and hold the state accountable for its human rights obligations to LGBTQ+ people. OEA
Ahead of Guyana's September 2025 General and Regional Elections, SASOD published its LGBTQIA+ Manifesto 2025. In a rare display of cross-party alignment, five political parties contesting the elections committed to incorporating SASOD's manifesto in their plans, with discussions at a town hall at the Herdmanston Lodge revealing a common thread: legislative changes are seen as necessary, but insufficient on their own. The outcome was promising. Following the September 1 election, SASOD stated it looks forward to working with the PPP/C administration to fulfil its manifesto commitment to enact and enforce legislation for the prevention of discrimination, including discrimination faced on the basis of sexual orientation. CpdcngoLos Angeles Business Journal
The manifesto's measures include repeal of sections 351 to 353 of the Criminal Law (Offences) Act, which criminalise sexual relations between consenting adult men, by 2026, and inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in the Prevention of Discrimination Act by 2027. These are not aspirational goals. They are documented international obligations, reinforced annually by the very report the IACHR published this week. Excel Guyana Inc.
What is Red Thread and what does it stand for in Guyana?
Red Thread is a multiracial, politically independent women's development organisation founded in Georgetown in 1986. It works at the grassroots level on violence against women, income equality, and the political visibility of poor and marginalised women, crossing race and class lines that other organisations often do not.
Red Thread is a multiracial independent organisation, not affiliated to any political party, that has a strong and uncompromising voice in Guyana. Founded in 1986, it aims to organise with women beginning at the grassroots, crossing race and other divides, enabling them to transform their living conditions across three areas: work against violence, including domestic and sexual violence against women and children and racial violence; work for a living income and affordable access to goods and services; and work to strengthen the political visibility, voice, and influence of grassroots women. OEA
The organisation was co-founded by Andaiye, born Sandra Williams, a Guyanese social, political and gender rights activist described as a transformative figure in the region's political struggle, and an early member of the executive of the Working People's Alliance alongside Walter Rodney. Andaiye died in 2019. All proceeds from her posthumously published collection of writings are donated to Red Thread. OEA
The bedrock of Red Thread's work has been reducing violence against women and children, winning a living income and affordable access to goods and services for grassroots women and their families, and strengthening the political visibility, voice and influence of grassroots women. The organisation operates a community centre it describes as the first in Guyana owned by grassroots women, who raised the funding both locally and internationally. It has lobbied successfully for legislative change including a Sexual Offences Act. OEA
Red Thread does not confine its advocacy to gender in the narrow sense. The organisation has been in the forefront of advocacy for Amerindian teenagers and children, including those affected by the Mahdia school fire and cases of alleged abuse by state officials, elevating global awareness of the plight of Amerindians and neglected teenage girls facing poverty and patriarchy. That combination of gender justice, racial justice, and economic justice is what distinguishes Red Thread in the Guyanese landscape and what makes its work relevant to the IACHR's framework on freedom of expression, which explicitly covers the right of civil society defenders to operate without harassment or retaliation. OEA
Red Thread has received threatening emails and death threats in response to its advocacy, which members reported to the police. Caribbean women's organisations issued solidarity statements noting that Red Thread's struggle to defend women, indigenous people and the environment is a Caribbean struggle, not just a national one. OEA
What is the broader Caribbean context for freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights?
Across the Caribbean, the legal landscape is shifting but unevenly. Saint Lucia decriminalised same-sex conduct in July 2025. Trinidad and Tobago, which decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, saw that ruling overturned by its Court of Appeal in April 2025, effectively recriminalising same-sex intimacy. Guyana remains the only country in South America with such laws still on the books.
Saint Lucia's July 2025 ruling affirmed that criminalising same-sex conduct is incompatible with constitutional protections including equality, non-discrimination, privacy, security and freedom of expression. However, five Caribbean countries, including Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago, still maintain versions of these laws. Facebook
Trinidad and Tobago decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, but in April 2025 its Court of Appeal overturned that ruling, effectively recriminalising same-sex intimacy, a reversal that shocked regional advocates and illustrated how fragile legal progress can be without corresponding constitutional protections. OEA
The criminalisation of consensual sexual activity between same-sex adults in the English-speaking Caribbean dates back to the British colonial era. While custodial sentences have rarely been imposed for many years, these laws continue to stigmatise LGBTQ+ people, legitimise prejudice, discrimination, hate speech and violence against them, and deny them the full protection of the law. Erasing 76 Crimes
The freedom of expression framework that the IACHR monitors extends beyond the press. It covers the right of civil society organisations to operate without harassment, the right of marginalised communities to organise and advocate, and the right of individuals to speak openly about their identity without fear of prosecution. In that context, the work of SASOD and Red Thread in Georgetown is not peripheral to the IACHR's 2025 report. It is precisely the kind of civil society activity the report is designed to protect and support.
What should Guyana do next?
Guyana has a documented set of commitments. President Ali's post-election promise to work with SASOD on decriminalisation is on the record. The LGBTQIA+ Manifesto 2025 timelines are concrete and public. The IACHR's annual report provides the inter-American legal framework that makes those timelines more than aspirational.
Guyana's oil wealth creates both the opportunity and the risk. The opportunity is that a well-resourced state could move decisively on legal reforms that civil society has requested for more than two decades. The risk is that rapid economic change, rising inequality, and the political pressures of an oil economy create conditions in which the voices of grassroots women and LGBTQ+ communities become easier to defer.
The closure of Stabroek News in March 2026 removed the Caribbean's most consistently independent forum for those voices from print. The IACHR's annual report is not a substitute for independent journalism, a functioning press, or a government that acts on its commitments. But it is a public record. And in the absence of Stabroek News, that record matters more, not less.