How do you talk about democracy to someone who has stopped believing in it? That is the question eight LGBTI organisations from across Europe have spent the past year wrestling with — and now they have written the answer down. ILGA-Europe, the umbrella group for LGBTI people in Europe and Central Asia, has launched "We Need to Talk About Democracy: A Communications Guide for LGBTI Organisations," a practical toolkit born from real campaigns, honest failures, and a simple conviction: that Pride can be framed as a protest, elections can feel worth showing up for, and LGBTI rights connect to what everyone wants from their everyday life.
The guide grew out of the Democracy Lab, an ILGA-Europe programme that helps LGBTI groups take a leading role in wider pro-democracy movements. Eight partners from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia worked on the questions together. Their ideas were shaped at a convening in Brussels, through one-to-one interviews, and in an online focus group. What makes the guide different from most handbooks is that it is built from what these organisations actually tried — their campaigns, their experiments, and their honest reflections on what worked and what didn't.
At its heart, the guide offers a set of guiding principles for shifting LGBTI rights communications toward a democracy frame. It tackles a question many campaigners dodge: what to say instead of the word "democracy" for audiences who simply don't relate to it. And it shares concrete campaign and messaging examples that the partner organisations tested in the real world. The launch event, held online on 22 September, walked attendees through the guide and showed how any organisation can put it to work.
Behind the guide are two experienced communicators. Svetlana Zakharova, ILGA-Europe's Senior Programmes Officer, has spent years helping LGBTI movements across Europe and Central Asia build stronger, more strategic communications. Her recent focus has been on the intersections between LGBTI rights and the fight for democracy. AJ Venturini, an LGBTI communications expert, facilitator and coach with over a decade of leading creative social change projects, authored the guide. Their credits span ILGA-Europe, TGEU, Amnesty International and Outright International.
Why does this matter? Across Europe, democratic backsliding has hit LGBTI people hardest — when trust in democracy erodes, rights are often the first casualty. But this guide flips the script: instead of asking activists to defend democracy as an abstract ideal, it asks how to make democracy feel personal and worth fighting for. The result is a tool as much about hope as about messaging — proof that when LGBTI organisations speak up for democracy, they are speaking up for everyone's right to a fair, dignified everyday life.