A gay man who fled Uganda's anti-gay law in February 2015 awaits his initial interview with the UNHCR to determine whether or not he qualifies as a refugee.
A street scene from the Eastleigh neighborhood of Nairobi. A number of LGBT Ugandans made the dangerous trip to Kenya's capital after the passage of the Anti-homosexuality Act.
Ketifa's uncle kept her tied up until the morning. After he finally released her, he ordered her to do housework. She was cleaning when she saw them coming: the same members of the community council who had murdered Sharon. Ketifa ran out the back gate and fled by bus straight for Uganda's border with Kenya, believing nowhere in the country would be safe. At the border crossing at Malaba, she learned that to get to Nairobi, Kenya's large capital city, would be expensive, and to live there even more so. Ketifa recalled how, as a child, a Kenyan classmate of hers had mentioned that Kenya accepts people who are chased out of other countries, letting them live in large camps. Along the side of the road, she spotted a food vendor; she lied and told him that she was on her way to visit a friend in one of these camps. Could he direct her?In March 2014, a group of 23 LGBT Ugandans showed up outside a UN office in Nairobi, Kenya, seeking refugee status. They had come to a country that remains deeply homophobic and still punishes same-sex activity with up to 14 years in prison.
A lesbian refugee from Uganda poses in one of the LGBT compounds at Kakuma Refugee Camp
A gay refugee from Uganda poses for a portrait in the apartment he shared with his boyfriend in Nairobi. Six months earlier, seven men wielding machetes had broken into their home and nearly killed him.
Records of people in the Kakuma refugee camp line the walls of UNHCR's processing office. There are 182,000 refugees in the camp, and most will never be resettled.
As De Langhe and her team worked through the asylum claims of Uganda's LGBT refugees, she expected that their arrival was just a brief anomaly in her refugeeheavy corner of the world. But soon, more LGBT refugees arrived—one or two each month at first, then at least a dozen at a time, fleeing not only Uganda's anti-gay legislation but also homophobia in Burundi, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in East Africa. By last spring, more than 200 LGBT refugees had ended up at the UN's doorstep, all demanding swift asylum. Speaking to a researcher with the Global Philanthropy Project, one new arrival said, "I expect to be in Kenya for three months and be resettled to the West."Suddenly, De Langhe found her staff overwhelmed by LGBT refugees, and she worried that her own decision to prioritize these LGBT refugees over others was partly to blame. By giving LGBT refugees expedited processing and small cash stipends, the UNHCR and its partners may have created a pull factor that enticed even more people to flee to Kenya.Some people also sought the advice of Western allies as to how to seek refugee status in Kenya. One was Isaac, a 25-year-old gay man living in Kampala. In April 2015, a local paper outed Isaac for "sodomizing" another man—his boyfriend, Patrick. Afterward, unsure of what to do, he sought advice online. He came across some articles on a human rights blog written by Melanie Nathan, a South African lawyer and activist who moved to the United States in 1985 to open a clinic that advocated for the rights of LGBT immigrants. Nathan had been following the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act and the wave of homophobia that ensued, and by 2014, she was in touch with numerous LGBT Ugandans. She began blogging about their plight. Sometimes Nathan would advise Ugandans who had decided to flee for their own safety. When Isaac emailed Nathan, she responded immediately. Later that month, he and Patrick left for Kakuma.This article appeared in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.
In contrast to refugees from South Sudan or Somalia, most of whom are extremely poor, the Ugandan refugees came from a variety of financial circumstances. Many came from Kampala. Some worked jobs at restaurants, while others held university degrees. There were students, and some of the youngest ones hadn't even completed high school.There are 24,000 people in Kakuma and 8,000 in Nairobi on the waiting list for an appointment to determine whether or not they even qualify for refugee status—a six-month backlog. And sitting around for your turn is just the first step in a process that normally takes several years.
Fearing for the safety of the LGBT refugees in Kakuma's general population, the UNHCR built them a compound near a police station where they could all live together.
A gay, HIV-positive refugee from Uganda poses outside his house near Nairobi. As a refugee, he receives a small stipend each month from the NGO HIAS, but he often can't afford enough food to take with his antiretrovirals.
Still, the idea that some people might fake being gay to get assistance or to get resettled abroad spread fear inside the UNHCR last February, when more than 76 people claiming to be LGBT refugees showed up at the Nairobi office on a single day. The mass arrival conjured worries of an organized trafficking ring. De Langhe said she received a tip from the Ugandan priest who had ushered the first group of refugees to be careful about the newcomers. "When you have 70 people at your door in one day, something is happening," De Langhe told me.This newfound anxiety about imposters made the UNHCR's work even more challenging. De Langhe delayed the processing while her staff sorted the legitimate LGBT refugees from the posers. "These 76—there may be genuine cases among this group, but their cases may be jeopardized because of the false cases among them," she said.If there are fakers among the hundreds of people applying for refugee status and claiming to be LGBT, De Langhe said she wouldn't entirely blame them for trying. "Why do we have fraudulent cases? Because we have a pull factor. We have to admit that," she said. "If you are a poor single man living in Uganda in difficult conditions, and you hear about LGBT cases from your country going quickly to North America, you could take your chances and represent yourself as an LGBT. I think that's normal.""What you are doing is not good," said an LGBT activist from Kenya's Turkana region. "You give them a gated compound, and you give them water inside this compound. All these are good things. But what do you expect to happen when these other communities begin asking questions?"
Natah, a Burundian lesbian refugee, and her Kenyan girlfriend share an apartment building with other refugees in Nairobi, Kenya.
The LGBT refugees in Nairobi are perennially being chased out of their homes. One sunny Saturday in February 2015, a group of LGBT refugees gathered at a house in a densely packed neighborhood for a celebration. One of them was leaving. Francis, a gay man from Uganda, had been granted resettlement in Sweden less than a year after he arrived in Kenya. His good fortune gave hope to the rest."Sometimes I would go say hi to him, and I would find him in a skirt, a dress, makeup. I'd say, 'You're in Nairobi, remember? They are homophobic here.'"
A gay refugee gestures toward one of the huts that are standard issue in the Kakuma camp. A hole in the wall, one of many in this particular building, is partially covered by a UNHCR tarp.
A man overlooks a street in the Nairobi neighborhood of Eastleigh, where many LGBT refugees have settled temporarily.