Uganda – Humanist Blog

A Journey of Survival, Resilience, and Hope

For International Refugee Day

by Charity Austin

Ten years ago, I never imagined that one day I would become a refugee. Like many people, I believed that becoming a refugee was something that happened to others. I had never thought about fleeing my country, seeking asylum, or rebuilding my life in a foreign land.

That changed within a matter of months.

After surviving a violent mob attack because of who I am, remaining in my home country was no longer safe. The threats continued, and I faced a difficult choice: stay and risk my life, or leave everything behind in search of safety. I chose to flee. At the time, I did not fully understand what it meant to be a refugee. I only knew that I needed to survive.

A Refugee’s Life

Being a refugee means more than crossing a border. It means arriving in a place where you have no family, no support system, and often no clear information about what comes next. It means living with uncertainty while trying to rebuild your life from nothing. When you are struggling to find food, shelter, and safety, it is difficult to imagine your future.

My experience taught me that anyone can become a refugee. Refugees are not born refugees. They are ordinary people whose lives are disrupted by war, violence, persecution, and human rights abuses. For this reason, we must all advocate for peace, inclusion, and respect for human dignity in our communities.

International Refugee Day is important because it reminds us that refugees deserve to be seen, heard, and supported. To me, it represents love, solidarity, and hope. It is a day when the world recognizes the courage and resilience of millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes.

In 2021, I celebrated World Refugee Day for the first time in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. The theme focused on inclusion and belonging, and for many LGBTQ refugees, it was a rare opportunity to feel recognized and valued. It reminded us that despite the challenges we faced, our lives mattered.

Life as a refugee can be extremely difficult, especially for LGBTQ refugees. The hardships extend beyond displacement, hunger, and poverty. Many LGBTQ refugees face violence, discrimination, harassment, exclusion, and threats because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Sometimes, surviving one challenge only means facing another. If you survive hunger, you may still face violence. If you find shelter, you may still face discrimination.

In many countries of asylum, refugees face barriers to employment, education, healthcare, and social inclusion. LGBTQ refugees often experience additional discrimination, making it even harder to access opportunities that would allow them to live independently and with dignity. The inability to secure work and earn a livelihood leaves many vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, homelessness, and violence.

Trans Inclusion Group

In 2022, violence against transgender refugees in Kakuma increased significantly. We experienced transphobic attacks, arbitrary arrests, threats, and arson incidents that put our lives at risk. Many transgender refugees lived in fear, uncertain whether they would survive another day.

In response to these challenges, we came together and formed Trans Inclusion Group, a refugee-led organization created by and for transgender refugees. What began as a small support network grew into a platform for advocacy, protection, and community empowerment. Through Trans Inclusion Group, we documented human rights abuses, raised awareness about the realities faced by LGBTQ refugees, provided peer support, and advocated for safety, dignity, and inclusion.

When forced evictions, violence, and discrimination threatened our community, we spoke out and demanded that refugee protection include everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Our advocacy was not only about survival; it was about affirming that transgender refugees deserve the same rights, opportunities, and respect as every other human being.

The Personal Is Political

As I reflect on my own journey, I am reminded that my story is only one among thousands of LGBTQ refugee stories that remain untold. While I have had opportunities to speak about my experiences, many LGBTQ refugees continue to live in silence, afraid of violence, discrimination, or rejection. Sometimes, I feel that my voice is not heard enough, but I continue speaking because I know there are many others who can not.

World Refugee Day is more than a commemoration. It is a celebration of resilience, courage, hope, and belonging. It is an opportunity to recognize the strength of people who have survived unimaginable hardships and continue rebuilding their lives despite enormous obstacles.

Our shared goal should be to create welcoming communities where refugees and newcomers feel seen, valued, connected, and safe. No one should have to choose between hiding who they are and accessing protection. Every refugee deserves dignity, opportunity, and a chance to build a future.

Today, Trans Inclusion Group continues to amplify the voices of transgender refugees who are too often overlooked. In refugee camps and settlements, many LGBTQ refugees still struggle to access safety, employment, healthcare, and opportunities to rebuild their lives. By sharing our stories and standing together, we challenge discrimination and create hope for those who feel invisible.

World Refugee Day 2026

On this World Refugee Day, I call on governments, humanitarian organizations, community leaders, and individuals to listen to refugee voices, stand against discrimination, and support inclusion for all refugees, including LGBTQ refugees. Together, we can create a world where belonging is not a privilege for a few, but a right for everyone.

As we commemorate World Refugee Day 2026, Trans Inclusion Group joins refugee communities around the world in calling for a future where every person seeking safety is welcomed with dignity, protected from discrimination, and given the opportunity to thrive.

Our message to the world is simple: create more welcoming environments for refugees and newcomers. Let us build communities where refugees are not only protected but empowered to thrive. Let us choose peace over conflict, inclusion over exclusion, and hope over fear.

Because anyone can become a refugee, and everyone deserves the chance to live in safety, dignity, and belonging.

Author: Charity Austin. All rights to this article are returned to the author. This blog © 2026 Geoff Allshorn. I acknowledge the Wurundjeri‑Willam people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this work was prepared, and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride Month and a History Still Unresolved

“Take us out of nowhere Kakuma.” — Trinidad Jerry.

Pride Month takes its timing from the United States. The Stonewall uprising in June 1969 became the basis for an almost-global calendar. Although the cause spread quickly, the history did not. Many Commonwealth countries had already begun dismantling their inherited criminal laws before Stonewall, and others have moved further and faster since. The spread of Stonewall as the common narrative is itself a form of cultural dominance, mirroring how earlier British laws spread across the Commonwealth and still shape homophobia today.

Across the Commonwealth, the picture is old and uneven. The laws that still shape queer life in dozens of member states were written in London and exported outward as part of the administrative machinery of what was then a racist, sexist and homophobic empire. Their origins are detailed by the Human Dignity Trust and legal historians tracing the reach of the 1533 Buggery Act and the Indian Penal Code Section 377. Pride Month, seen from here, is not a celebration of a single uprising but a reminder of the afterlife of that empire: what was imposed, and what each country has chosen to keep.

Colonial Origins

The legal architecture that still shapes queer life across much of the Commonwealth did not originate in the countries that enforce it. It was built in Britain, refined through Victorian anxieties, and exported outward through empire. The 1860 code created the category of “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” a phrase that travelled across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. A further Victorian offence (“gross indecency”) was broad enough to criminalise letters, gestures, or implication.

The British Empire spread these statutes around the world. They were imposed on societies with their own histories of gender and intimacy. Pre‑colonial records across Africa and Asia show diverse understandings of gender and sexuality, documented by ILGA World. The downfall of the Empire and eventual independence of its colonies did not undo the damage. Many emerging nations kept the inherited codes because they were already embedded in courts, policing, and legal ethics.

Diverse Commonwealth Paths

United Kingdom. The UK exported the criminal codes that shaped the Commonwealth, then dismantled them at home: partial decriminalisation in 1967, followed by Scotland (1980) and Northern Ireland (1982).

Australia. Australia inherited British criminal law and enforced it harshly. Decriminalisation occurred state by state from 1975 to 1997, summarised by the Digital Classroom. Marriage equality arrived in 2017.

Uganda. Uganda shows how inherited colonial laws can be intensified rather than dismantled. The Victorian “unnatural offences” provisions became the platform for successive legislation, culminating in the far harsher 2023 Anti‑Homosexuality Act, encouraged by religious influences in the UK and the USA.

Some other Commonwealth members exhibit more hope. Botswana’s courts dismantled colonial statutes through constitutional reasoning in 2019 and 2021 (High Court; Court of Appeal), while Dominica’s High Court struck down its colonial‑era provisions in April 2024 (Dominica ruling).

Activism and the Tradition Defence

Trinidad Jerry, a young LGBTQ refugee killed in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, lived and died under a legal environment shaped by colonial statutes and contemporary hostility. Four years later, Emanuel Muhayimana was killed in the same camp, underscoring how little had changed.

Legal reform across the Commonwealth has been driven less by parliaments than by activists, lawyers, and community groups working through the courts. In India, the petitioners in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India argued that Section 377 violated Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution. In the Caribbean, cases were brought by citizens who lived under the laws.

The work has also been carried by individuals whose names rarely appear in political speeches but whose risks have reshaped the legal landscape. Caleb Orozco in Belize, Jason Jones in Trinidad and Tobago, and Rosanna Flamer‑Caldera in Sri Lanka challenged the laws in their own courts. In Uganda, David Kato’s advocacy — and his murder in 2011 — exposed the dangers faced by those who confront inherited statutes; Frank Mugisha continues that work under constant pressure. In the United Kingdom, Peter Tatchell’s long‑running campaigns helped expose the colonial origin of the laws Britain exported.

Courts in Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana, and Dominica have all stated explicitly that the criminal provisions were imposed by colonial authorities and do not reflect indigenous culture. Dominica’s 2024 ruling noted that the Sexual Offences Act provisions were “inherited from a colonial legal framework,” as highlighted by the Human Dignity Trust.

Leaders in Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana often frame criminalisation as cultural defence and LGBTQ identities as foreign. This reverses the historical reality: the criminal laws were imported by Britain, while the constitutional rights used to dismantle them are home‑grown. A recent cross‑continental study on women’s rights in Africa found the same pattern: governments defending “traditional African values” while enforcing legal frameworks inherited from external colonial rule.

The Road Ahead

Next likely reformers. Sri Lanka has signalled willingness to amend Sections 365 and 365A. Mauritius has active litigation. Namibia — not a Commonwealth member but a parallel post‑colonial jurisdiction — struck down its sodomy laws in 2024.

High‑risk states. Uganda’s 2023 Act remains the most severe example. Ghana’s proposed “Family Values” bill threatens to expand criminalisation. Nigeria continues to enforce the 2014 Same‑Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act.

Courts will continue to lead. In most jurisdictions, the next major reforms will come through litigation rather than legislation.

Activism and visibility. Legal reform follows visibility, community organising, and sustained advocacy. These movements are local, not imported.

Geopolitics. Some states use decriminalisation to alignm with democratic partners; others use criminalisation to align with conservative blocs.

The work continues.

Across the Commonwealth, legal change has come from citizens who challenged the laws that governed their lives; people stepping up when politicians often fear to tread. Their cases, risks, and losses form the quiet impetus beneath every reform.

Their footsteps fall where Commonwealth leaders frequently fail.

Bibliography

Human Dignity Trust — Criminalisation Maps and Legal Histories

ILGA World — State-Sponsored Homophobia Reports

NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project — Stonewall Documentation

Digital Classroom — Australian Legal History

BBC — Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023

The Guardian — Colonial Legal Frameworks and Women’s Rights

©2026 Geoff Allshorn. I acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this blog was prepared, and show my respect for Elders past and present. Editorial and artistic assistance: Copilot AI.

LGBTQ+ Refugees Left Behind

The Human Cost of Foreign Aid Cuts

Published in the lead-up to commemorate Africa Day on 25 May
by Charity Austin

Charity is an activist, writer, and community leader, and the founder of Trans Inclusion Group (formerly Trans Initiative Gorom). Her work focuses on human rights, social justice, displacement, resilience, and amplifying marginalized voices through storytelling and advocacy. Through her writing and activism, she brings attention to the lived experiences, struggles, and resistance of LGBTQ+ communities in East Africa.

For many people living safely in wealthy countries, foreign aid may sound like a political debate or a government budget issue. But for refugees in Africa, especially LGBTQ+ refugees, foreign aid is often the difference between life and death.

Under the U.S. administration led by President Donald Trump, major changes to foreign aid and humanitarian funding have been introduced. One of the most significant shifts has been the restructuring and severe reduction of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which was formerly the world’s largest foreign aid agency. In 2025, USAID’s operations were significantly cut back, with many of its functions reduced or transferred into other government structures, including the U.S. State Department.

For refugee communities across Africa, these changes have had immediate and life-threatening consequences.

In already under-resourced refugee settlements, people are now facing even deeper shortages of food, clean water, shelter, and essential medical care. For transgender refugees and other LGBTQ+ people, who already experience discrimination and exclusion within these systems, the impact has been especially severe.

Reality on the Ground

According to Trans Inclusion Group (TIG), a trans-led initiative supporting LGBTQ+ refugees in displacement, reduced humanitarian funding has directly worsened the living conditions of transgender refugees who rely on aid programs for survival.

Many transgender refugees live with HIV/AIDS and depend entirely on donor-funded clinics and humanitarian health programs for antiretroviral medication. When funding is reduced or programs are disrupted, access to treatment becomes unstable. Missing medication is not a minor interruption—it is life-threatening.

The mental health impact has also been devastating. Many LGBTQ+ refugees fled persecution, violence, and arrest in their home countries, only to find themselves trapped in overcrowded and unsafe refugee settlements where protection is limited and stigma is widespread.

At the same time, reductions in refugee resettlement pathways to the United States have worsened the crisis. For many LGBTQ+ refugees facing ongoing threats, resettlement is not a privilege, it is often the only route to safety. When these pathways are slowed or suspended, people remain stuck in dangerous environments with no realistic exit.

Some transgender refugees previously escaped extreme violence in places such as Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, hoping for safety through resettlement programs. Instead, many now remain stranded in other settlements with shrinking international support and increasing vulnerability.

These policy decisions are not abstract. They directly determine whether a person receives HIV medication, whether someone eats that day, or whether a refugee survives another attack.

For many refugees in Africa, daily life is already a struggle for survival. Reducing humanitarian funding and restructuring key aid institutions like USAID only deepens that crisis.

Trans Inclusion Group (TIG) continues to highlight these realities and calls for urgent international attention, renewed funding, and stronger protection mechanisms for LGBTQ+ refugees who are being left behind in global policy shifts.

LGBTQ+ refugees deserve dignity, healthcare, protection, and the chance to live safely. Their lives should never be treated as collateral damage in political decisions about foreign aid.

“I was thirsty”

In Kakuma refugee camp (Kenya), water has become a daily struggle for many refugees following cuts to humanitarian support. These photos capture people digging into dry ground in search of water, filling jerrycans by hand because formal water systems are under severe strain. With reduced USAID funding affecting essential services, families are forced to spend hours searching for unsafe and scarce water sources just to survive. Access to clean water is not a privilege, it is a basic human right.

Searching for water in Kakuma (photos supplied)

I can personally testify that this crisis is real because I experienced it myself together with other transgender refugees before being resettled. In Kakuma refugee camp, there were days when my friends and I would wake up very early and spend hours searching for water because the normal supply points had run dry or were overcrowded. Sometimes we had no choice but to dig shallow holes in the ground and wait for dirty water to collect so we could fill our jerrycans. The water was often unsafe, but when people are desperate, they use whatever they can find. For transgender refugees who already faced discrimination, violence, and exclusion inside the camp, the struggle for clean water became even more dangerous and exhausting.

This situation is not only happening in Kakuma. Many transgender refugees in Gorom refugee settlement in South Sudan are also facing severe water shortages and humanitarian neglect. People walk long distances under extreme heat just to access a small amount of water for drinking, cooking, and bathing. In some cases, refugees are forced to rely on unsafe water sources – even from swamps – that expose them to disease and other health risks. These experiences show that the humanitarian crisis affecting transgender refugees is not abstract — it is happening to real people every day, across different refugee settlements, where survival itself has become a daily struggle.

Human Stories, Not Statistics

For many transgender refugees, the impact of aid cuts is not just political, it is deeply personal and life-threatening

One transgender woman living in the refugee camp had been relying on antiretroviral medication (ARVs) to manage HIV and stay healthy. But when she recently went to the clinic for her routine refill, she was told that the medication was no longer available. With humanitarian health services under strain and supplies running low, she returned home without the treatment she depends on to survive. She now lives in fear, uncertain when or if she will be able to access the medicine again.

I also have a friend who stopped taking the ARVs he had before the aid was cut, because he wasn’t sure that he would get another dose of medication.

Trans Inclusion Group advocates for queer refugee safety

Such stories reflect the reality facing many vulnerable refugees whose lives depend on consistent medical care. For transgender refugees, accessing healthcare is already difficult because of stigma, discrimination, and insecurity inside refugee settlements. Now, with funding cuts affecting clinics and humanitarian programs, many are being pushed into even more dangerous situations. These are not just statistics or policy discussions — they are real people losing access to food, clean water, and lifesaving medication every single day.

Looking the Other Way

What makes this situation so painful is that these decisions were made by political leaders and administrations who chose to cut foreign aid despite knowing that millions of vulnerable people depend on that support to survive. The reduction of humanitarian assistance under the Trump administration has had devastating consequences for refugees already living in desperate conditions. Today, people are struggling to access food, clean water, shelter, and lifesaving medication, and many feel abandoned by the very countries and leaders that had the power to help.

I have painful news for those who made these decisions: people are now dying because of these cuts. Refugees who were already vulnerable are being pushed beyond their limits, with some unable to access medicine, food, or safe water. For refugees, this is not a political argument — it is about survival. The suffering taking place in refugee communities is real, and the world should not look away from the human consequences of these decisions.

Refugee Rights

Read other human rights contributions from Charity:

Protection Briefing
Published: 20 December 2025
Protection Challenges and Advocacy Engagement for LGBTQ Refugees in Gorom Refugee Settlement, South Sudan

Kakuma Pride 2023
Published: 11 July 2023
A report from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, possibly the only refugee camp in the world to ever have a Pride March, brutally shut down by homophobic Kenya Police.

This blog ©2026 Geoff Allshorn. All rights are hereby returned to the author, who can be contacted via this blog. I acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this blog was prepared, and show my respect for Elders past and present.

IDAHOBIT Day 2026

(Remembering LGBT+ refugees whose voice is often silenced)

Why May 17th?

Today’s date is not arbitrary. On 17 May 1990, the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), formally ending its designation as a mental disorder. It was a landmark moment: a recognition that queer people are not sick, not deviant, not in need of cure or correction. Yet thirty-six years later, that hard-won ground is being eroded. Conversion practices remain legal in many countries and are experiencing a quiet resurgence, including the USA which currently has many anti-LGBTIQ bills and anti-trans bills in progress. Transgender identities are increasingly framed in political and legal discourse as a pathology requiring intervention. IDAHOBIT Day exists to mark how far we have come, and to remind us that the battle the WHO helped settle in 1990 is not lost.

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, or IDAHOBIT. It is a day to mark, to remember, and to refuse to look away.

Across the world, being queer can still cost you your home, your safety, your life.

In more than 60 countries, homosexuality remains criminalised. In some, it carries the death penalty. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act has driven thousands of people from their homes, their families, their communities, fleeing not just prejudice but imprisonment, torture, and murder. It is the same in Tanzania, Rwanda, and many other nations across Africa and the Middle East and the Commonwealth. People run for their lives, often with nothing, heading for the nearest border and whatever uncertain safety lies beyond it.

This is not only an African story. Across Asia, the Middle East and beyond, 64 countries criminalise same-sex relations, with the death penalty legally prescribed in at least twelve of them.

None of this happened by accident. The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, and laws like it across Africa, did not emerge fully formed from local politics. US evangelical activists — among them Scott Lively, who travelled to Kampala in 2009 to meet with politicians, pastors and community leaders — helped provide the ideological framework and the legislative language. Organisations like Family Watch International have spent years and significant funding exporting their culture war to countries where the consequences are not protests or political setbacks, but imprisonment, torture, and flight. The people in Kakuma are not only victims of African homophobia. Some of them are there because of US politics pursued abroad.

Nor is this only a story about distant governments. In April 2025, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that the word “woman” in the Equality Act refers to biological sex — a ruling with immediate practical consequences for trans people’s access to services, shelters, and legal protections. Many of the countries that criminalise homosexuality are Commonwealth nations, shaped by British colonial law. The line between the countries that imprison queer people and the countries that legislate them out of public life is less clear than it is comfortable to believe.

Some of them end up in Kakuma, or in Gorom.

Kenya Police tear gas LGBT+ refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp.

Kakuma is a refugee camp in the remote north-west of Kenya. Gorom is a refugee settlement in South Sudan. Both are harsh, remote, under-resourced places at the edges of the world, the kind of places that exist precisely because the rest of the world has decided it doesn’t need to look too closely.

Both are home to LGBTQI+ refugees who fled persecution in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and beyond, people who ran for their lives because of who they are, and arrived hoping for safety. What many found was more of the same.

In Kakuma, LGBTQI+ refugees face homophobic and transphobic attacks from other refugees and from locals. They are beaten, stabbed, burned out of their shelters. They are denied medical care. They cannot work. Their food rations from the World Food Programme — already meagre — now last less than a week, because the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid have gutted the humanitarian system that kept them alive.

They wait for resettlement that may never come. They await a world that will acknowledge they exist.

IDAHOBIT exists because the world keeps forgetting.

It needs reminding that homophobia and transphobia are not distant abstractions; they are policies, laws, and fists. They are people sleeping in shifts, taking turns to stand guard through the night against attack. They are mothers separated from children. They are people surviving on hot water and grass soup.

They are human beings who asked for nothing more than to live honestly and safely, and were told that was too much to ask.

IDAHOBIT is not a celebration of what has been won, but a reminder of what remains unfinished.

Days like this matter only if they change something for the people who cannot wait for the world to catch up. If you want to make that change real, support the organisations that keep them alive.

If you would like to support LGBTQI+ refugees in Kakuma, Gorom and beyond:

MAREPA — emergency shelter for LGBTQI+ refugees in Nairobi, Kenya

Rainbow Railroad — helping LGBTQI+ people escape persecution worldwide

Queer Pride Africa — GoFundMe — refugee-led sustainable projects in Kakuma

Kakuma Refugee Camp — Food, Medication & Security — GoFundMe — direct support for LGBTQI+ refugees in the camp

Amnesty International Australia — advocacy for refugee and human rights protection

I am also happy to advise people on how to assist individuals or extended families and communities across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and other African problem areas.

©2026 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared. Some editorial/artistic assistance supplied by Claude AI.

For International Refugee Day by Charity Austin