Young LGBTQ+ people in Eswatini are describing a daily balancing act, finding friendship, education and self-belief alongside stigma, exclusion and fear. A new qualitative study of 18 people aged 16 to 24 explores how identity, belonging and well-being are shaped by family life, schools, community expectations and the legal climate.

Essential Takeaways

  • Recognition remains uncertain: Participants described hiding their identities or feeling unseen at home, in public and in education.
  • Support makes a real difference: Friends, chosen family, community groups and personal ambitions offered vital emotional protection.
  • Law affects perceived safety: Participants linked criminalisation and official rhetoric with fear, limited trust and difficulty seeking help.
  • Culture is part of the picture: Young people were negotiating ideas about tradition, morality, authenticity and belonging, not simply rejecting culture.
  • The study is exploratory: Its 18-person sample offers depth and lived experience, but it doesn't measure how common these experiences are across Eswatini.

Young people describe belonging as conditional

The sharpest message from the research is how exhausting it can be to feel visible only on other people's terms. Participants spoke about being overlooked, judged or forced to conceal parts of themselves, creating a quiet pressure that follows them through family life, school and social spaces.

The study, published in Social Sciences, used narrative interviews and focus groups with LGBTQ+ participants aged 16 to 24 in Eswatini. According to the researchers, the aim was to understand how young people interpreted identity, rejection, support and resilience in their own words, rather than reduce those experiences to statistics.

That distinction matters. A small qualitative study can't tell us how widespread school exclusion or family rejection is, but it can show what those experiences feel like when they happen. The accounts point to belonging as something participants often had to negotiate, rather than something they could safely assume.

Supportive friendships become a lifeline

Against that backdrop, resilience emerged as active and deeply relational. Participants described learning to accept themselves, drawing strength from friends and building a sense of family outside biological relationships when home life felt unsafe or unsupportive.

This is more than a feel-good story about individual toughness. Research indexed by PubMed has linked supportive relationships and identity affirmation with better well-being among LGBTQ+ young people, while community connection can offer practical information as well as comfort. In everyday terms, a trusted friend may be the person who listens, shares a useful contact or simply makes someone feel less alone.

Writing, storytelling and education also gave some participants a sense of direction. Focusing on future ambitions can provide breathing space when the present feels hostile, although it shouldn't be mistaken for a substitute for protection. Resilience can help someone navigate a difficult environment, but it doesn't make that environment fair.

Schools can either protect or deepen exclusion

Education sits at an important crossroads in these accounts. Participants referred to discrimination and exclusion in institutional settings, suggesting that schools may be places where young people feel especially exposed, particularly when staff lack confidence or clear procedures for responding to prejudice.

Research on gender and vulnerable children in Eswatini schools also highlights why researcher reflexivity and local context matter when sensitive experiences are discussed. Adults working with young people need to avoid assuming that every LGBTQ+ student has the same family support, financial security, religious background or freedom to speak openly.

Practical safeguards don't need to be complicated. Confidential routes to counselling, clear anti-discrimination policies, staff training and reliable referral networks can make a school feel less risky. The key is consistency: support that's visible but not intrusive, and confidential without becoming secretive or impossible to access.

Legal and cultural pressures overlap

Participants didn't describe law and culture as separate issues. They experienced them as overlapping forces that shaped whether they expected recognition, protection or justice. Criminalisation, public comments and hostile rhetoric were understood as signals about who belongs and whose safety matters.

Legal scholarship and public-health research have repeatedly connected the surrounding legal environment with LGBTQ+ people's access to services, institutional trust and well-being. But this study is careful about what its evidence can establish. It reports how participants experienced the legal and political climate; it doesn't independently verify every perception or predict when reform might happen.

Culture, meanwhile, was presented as contested terrain. Some participants felt traditions were used to label them as wrong, while others challenged the idea that LGBTQ+ identities are somehow foreign to African life. That tension is important because culturally responsive support can't simply dismiss tradition. It has to make room for conversations about family, faith, identity and belonging without treating a young person's existence as a debate.

What the findings mean for families and services

The researchers argue for action across several layers, from schools and counsellors to community groups, families and policymakers. Support should consider the whole setting around a young person, including household relationships, education, social networks and the fear of being identified.

For families, a simple but meaningful starting point is listening without demanding an explanation or immediate certainty. For organisations, outreach matters because young people connected to LGBTQ+ groups are more likely to find support than those who are isolated. The study's recruitment through community organisations and referrals may have missed people who had no such connections, which is a useful warning for future services.

The wider lesson is quietly powerful. Young people shouldn't have to become exceptionally resilient just to access ordinary safety, education and affection. Strong friendships and community groups can help, but lasting change also depends on institutions becoming less threatening in the first place.

It's a small study with a large human question: what would it take for LGBTQ+ young people in Eswatini to feel recognised without having to hide?

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