Caribbean IRN

The Caribbean Region of the International Resource Network (IRN) is a resource for people and organizations inside and outside the region whose work focuses on issues related to diverse genders and sexualities in the Caribbean. We provide a forum for people interested in approaching sexual rights and human rights from the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer studies or in surveying the research and activism on particular lesbian, gay, bisexual, all-sexual, and transgender issues.

The Caribbean IRN strives to connect academic and community-based researchers, artists, and activists around the Caribbean and in the diaspora in areas related to diverse sexualities and genders. As more scholarship and activism – inside and outside the region – focus on issues related to sexual minorities in the Caribbean, there is an increasing need for a clearinghouse to connect individuals from around the region and the world. The Caribbean IRN aims to be such a resource for people and organizations inside and outside the region. Furthermore, the Caribbean IRN highlights and promotes activism and creative work, as well as different kinds of engaged scholarship which seek to question, provoke and illuminate various ways of thinking around same sex desire and sexual minorities. The Caribbean IRN supports and encourages regional projects, organizations, and collaborations.

The Caribbean Regional Board comprises: Natalie Bennett, Rosamond S. King, Angelique V. Nixon, and Colin Robison, and the Co-ordination consultant is Vidyaratha Kissoon.
The first meeting of the Caribbean IRN was held in Kingston Jamaica in 2009. The second meeting was held in Barbados in 2010.

The countries which we are covering as part of the Caribbean region are Montserrat, Aruba, St. Maarten/St. Martin, Curacao,  Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States of America Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Saba, Statia and Bonaire.

A few of our priorities include building our web presence, sharing information, establishing institutional links with organizations in the region, and collecting materials to share among researchers, activists, writers, and artists. We have also provided a list of organisations in the Caribbean working on LGBT rights.

A critical partnership is with the Digital Library of the Caribbean where we have started the Caribbean IRN collection.  We have also launched the archive of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica.

Feel free to send us materials at caribbeanirn (at) gmail (dot) com.