Born: 14 January 1945, Cameroon
Died: NA
Country most active: Cameroon
Also known as: NA
Alice Nkom is a Cameroonian lawyer, well known for her advocacy in decriminalising homosexuality in Cameroon. She has been a lawyer in Douala (Cameroon’s largest city) since 1969 when, at age 24, she became the first black French-speaking woman called to the bar in Cameroon.
Her defence work included young victims of police violence, but she became best known for her defence of people accused of homosexuality (a criminal offense in Cameroon). In 2003 she founded ADEFHO, the Association for the Defence of Homosexuality, working in the fight against an “anti-gay crackdown”.
Nkom’s most famous case came in in 2005 when she defended a group of men who were arrested during a raid of a gay bar in Yaoundé, the Cameroon capital city. The men were in prison for a year and in 2006 the UN’s working group on Arbitrary Detention reviewed the case and criticized Cameroon for arresting the men because of their sexuality. The UN also labeled the anti-sexuality offenses in Cameroon’s Penal Code to be a violation of international human rights laws.
In January 2011, a representative of Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication threatened her with arrest after ADEFHO was awarded a €300,000 grant by the European Union. That same year, she represented Jean-Claude Roger Mbede, a man imprisoned for three years for “homosexuality and attempted homosexuality” based on a series of SMS messages to a male acquaintance; Mbede was named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
Alice was also a keynote speaker at the Human Rights conferences that took place in conjunction with the OutGames, in Montréal, Canada (2006) and Antwerp, Belgium (2013). In March 2014, Alice Nkom was awarded the “7. Menschenrechtspreis” (7th human rights award) by Amnesty International.