Alice Nkom

Who is Alice Nkom?

Alice N'kom is a Cameroonian lawyer, well known for her advocacy towards decriminalization of homosexuality in Cameroon. She studied law in Toulouse and has been a lawyer in Douala since 1969. At the age of 24, she was the first black woman called to the bar in Cameroon.

Her work involved the defence in a variety of situations, including young victims of police violence, but she became best known for her defence of people accused of homosexuality. In 2003 she founded ADEFHO: the Association for the Defence of Homosexuality, and she became more and more the shining example of a "ally to the LGBT cause".

In January 2011, she was threatened with arrest by a representative of Cameroon's Ministry of Communication after ADEFHO was awarded a €300,000 grant by the European Union. Later that year, she represented Jean-Claude Roger Mbede, a man imprisoned for three years for "homosexuality and attempted homosexuality" following a series of SMS messages to a male acquaintance, and who was named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

In 2006 and 2013, she was a keynote speaker at the Human Rights conferences that took place in conjunction with the OutGames, in Montréal Canada and Antwerp Belgium. In March 2014, Alice Nkom was awarded with the "7. Menschenrechtspreis" by the german section of Amnesty International.