The closure of an Accra safe space, and what replaced it

In February 2021 police stormed and locked down the newly opened office of LGBT+ Rights Ghana in Ashongman, Accra. Amnesty International condemned the closure of what had been a rare safe space in the capital.

What the closure removed was not a political headquarters. It was a place to charge a phone, meet a counsellor, sleep for a night after being thrown out of home, and speak to someone without lowering your voice.

Since then support has moved into informal, dispersed networks: a spare room here, a sympathetic clinician there. That dispersal keeps people alive but makes abuses much harder to count — one reason we built a public reporting channel.