Fannyann had the courage and the strength to fight for our rights and in doing so, made the ultimate sacrifice

I first met Fanny Ann in Johannesburg last February. She boldly walked into my hotel room and introduced herself. We were attending the All African Symposium on Human rights and HIV/AIDS. I was captivated by her funny, endearing and fiery personality and I couldn’t help but like this firebrand who had defied all odds to do what she has been so successfully doing in her home country, fighting for the rights of the LGBT community in Sierra Leone. In Geneva at the UNCHR sessions last April she spoke passionately about the situation in her country and campaigned tirelessly for the Resolution on Human Rights and Sexual Orientation. I had the privilege of catching up with her in Geneva as well, and thank God for the little time we did manage to spend during that hectic period. Her death drives home the urgency and the need for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to adopt the resolution that will ultimately give all of us the protection and freedom to be who we are.

Fanny Ann had the courage and the strength to fight for our rights and in doing so, made the ultimate sacrifice. She will be missed, not only by her grieving family, but all of us who had the good fortune to have known her, however briefly.

Let Fanny Ann's light live on in all of us. Let us all rally around and work together to attain that which we have set out to attain and do so in a manor that is respectful of the memory of all the Fanny Anns in the world that have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Rosanna Flamer-Caldera
Co-Secretary General
ILGA