Carlos Fernandes

Carlos Anderson Henriques Fernandes (October 12, 1983 – February 26, 2024) was a prominent Angolan LGBT activist as well as the director and a founder of Iris Angola Association, the country's first LGBT organization. His work helped lead to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Angola and improving the country's LGBTI rights. In 2013, Iris Angola Association was conceived "to contribute to a future in which sexual minorities have space, voice, participation and rights in Angolan society", as Fernandes and fellow Iris activist Paula Sebastião described it in their Dezanove interview.

Iris Angola, UNAIDS, and other groups pushed towards the revision of Angola's penal code to legalize homosexuality in the country and sought legal protections for sexual minorities, resulting in the adoption of a new penal code 2019. The new penal code legalized same sex sexual conduct and made discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal; it was signed by Angola's president in 2020 and came into effect in 2021.

Fernandes participated in a 2021 pride month celebration at the U.S. embassy in Luanda. The event, called "You Are Included", took place over Facebook live. It consisted of a discussion on LGBT+ issues with other Angolan activists including the transgender activist Immani da Silva, Liria de Castro from Arquivo de Identidade Angolano, and Michel Kouakou from the UNAIDS organization.

In 2022, Fernandes was interviewed on RTP Africa to talk about Iris Angola and LGBT issues in Angola. The same year, Fernandes served as an interlocutor for an oral history project made by GALA Queer Archive and the Arquivo de Identidade Angolano. The project focused on Angolan queer activism with the goal of creating an archive of queer life in the country. According to Caio Simões de Araújo, a leader of the project, he was aware that Fernandes was working on a documentary about LGBTQI+ activism before his death.

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Fernandes believed that healthcare discrimination and lack of access to education caused many LGBT people in Angola to be unemployed. He said, "In schools we have some problems and sometimes sexuality cannot be acknowledged because access to health and employment is difficult, because of this, a large part of them [the LGBT community] are not working."

Fernandes did not emphasize marriage equality, saying that "Marriage is not a part of our priorities." Instead, he said his organization was focused "towards protecting the rights of sexual minorities and for the continued development of the LGBTQI community."

Fernandes also expressed concerns about family abuse towards gay and transgender children. He said of transgender children that "Our [Iris Angola's] main concerns relate to families, as we continue to receive young people and adolescents who have suffered a lot of verbal and physical abuse at home, depriving them of their freedom." He also discussed how parents often refuse to pay for gay children's education and the stigma gay people face when looking for employment. Death Carlos Fernandes was found dead in his home on February 26, 2024. His death is a suspected homicide by asphyxiation. According to statements on Iris Angola's Facebook page, mourners attending his funeral at Benfica Cemetery were attacked. As of 2025, the investigation has not found conclusive answers about the circumstances of Fernandes' death.