LGBTQ+ refugees languish as Kenyan government blocks Canadians from resettling them

NAIROBI — In a low-income neighbourhood on the outskirts of Nairobi, seven people gather in an air-conditioned home around a dinner table for a Ugandan stew of matoke bananas with peanut sauce.

Like many locals, most of them wear beaded bracelets with the flag of Kenya, or of their native Uganda. But Anne, who requested their real name not be published to protect their safety, is wearing a bracelet with the flag of Canada.

Anne, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, has been trying to reach Canada for more than six years. A private sponsorship group in Vancouver is prepared to help resettle Anne and their two children, but since 2018 Kenya has refused to grant the interview required for them to receive refugee status.

The Canadian Press travelled to Kenya as part of an investigative series looking into a global backslide in LGBTQ+ rights and the consequences for Canada, including the mounting difficulties Canadians face in resettling refugees.

This week, that reporting revealed that the Kenyan government has nearly halted approvals of exit permits and refugee status for people claiming the need for asylum on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Kenyan government does not consider those legitimate grounds for seeking refugee status.

“It’s stressful, when you don’t know how long you’ll be waiting,” Anne told The Canadian Press.

Anne left Uganda years ago, and they now run Rainbow Family Support and Advocacy-Africa, an organization that helps LGBTQ+ refugee parents in Nairobi.

Its headquarters is a home that includes an office and workshop space, but also a playroom and bedrooms with bunk beds for families who have been evicted for being LGBTQ+. Drawings of same-sex couples with children adorn the walls, and the staircase is painted with a rainbow flag.

The group provides workshops to help its clients navigate bureaucracy, and the questions their children face at school.

Anne’s children are often asked by Kenyan schoolmates why they left Uganda, a country that is not at war. Many Kenyans assume the only reason Ugandans would move to Kenya is because they are gay.

“They would ask intimate questions to the kids, like ‘Do you see your mom with a man or with a woman? Because you are Ugandan,’” said Anne.

“It was terrible,” they said. “But we’ve survived.”

Canadian officials say they’re advocating through delicate diplomacy to try and resolve claims like Anne’s, along with thousands of other LGBTQ+ people, who are living in limbo in Kenyan refugee camps and safe houses.

Ibrahim Kazibwe, who runs a different safe house on the other end of Nairobi, says it’s creating a desperate situation in the Kenyan capital as well as in far-flung refugee camps.

Kazibwe fled his native Uganda a decade ago. He first lived for four years in the UN’s sprawling Kakuma refugee camp, an arid expanse that houses nearly 300,000 people from across East Africa.

Kazibwe said LGBTQ+ people were regularly beaten in the camp’s small shops or while walking around at night, including by locals. A local organization hired him as a teacher, but fired him after a student asked if he was gay.

The camp sits in the territory of the Turkana tribe, and Kazibwe was among six refugees who said they were told by locals that having homosexuals in their region has caused droughts.

Kazibwe recalls police breaking up a party for LGBTQ+ people that the camp had authorized, and arresting a handful of organizers. One officer questioned Kazibwe as to whether his parents were ashamed of him, and proceeded to beat him with a baton.

Things got so dangerous that Kazibwe was among 214 LGBTQ+ refugees whom the UNHCR confirmed evacuating to Nairobi for safety in 2018.

In the city, Kazibwe founded the Community Empowerment and Self-Support Organization, a safe house and resource centre supporting LGBTQ+ refugees like himself.

The stucco house has a high fence, large fruit trees and painted symbols that have no relation to LGBTQ+ issues. It’s an oasis of calm on a dirt road not far from a bustling shopping street. It has eight beds, though others sleep on couches when the house is overcapacity.

During an interview, a transgender woman wearing a long, flowing dress with wisps of facial hair walked over to the kitchen. Kazibwe has tried in vain to teach her how to dress, walk and talk in a way that most people will not identify her as being LGBTQ+.

He has a policy that nobody can walk out of the safe house if they look androgynous or visibly queer. The few times someone has done so, neighbours have confronted him.

“I have to make sure they should not go out,” he said, pointing to the small, enclosed yard. “Just try to imagine someone’s life, kept inside the confines of this gate to a time unknown.”

Kazibwe also identifies as a trans woman, but he has maintained a male appearance and pronouns in order to move about safely.

“You carry a burden of finding every day how to camouflage so that you can walk, and the community may not identify you differently,” he said, pointing to his stubble.

Kazibwe originally opened his safe house in Ongata Rongai, a town where numerous LGBTQ+ groups, clinics and churches were based. That’s until locals caught wind, and started beating gay people on the streets.

He moved the safe house to its current site in 2020, on the other side of Nairobi.

Meanwhile, Kazibwe’s contacts in the Kakuma camp are reporting assaults almost every month. He’s expecting officials will make another mass evacuation of LGBTQ+ people to Nairobi, similar to his 2018 journey.

Officials scatter gender and sexual minorities throughout the camp to avoid attracting unwanted attention, though a group called Free Block 13 has clustered dozens in one area, arguing they can try to ensure mutual safety.

The group regularly posts photos on social media of what it says is homophobic violence in the camp, such as structures being set ablaze and people with wounds.

The Kenyan government denied a request by The Canadian Press to visit the Kakuma camp while in Kenya in July, citing “the security situation in the camp and the country.”

At the time, Kenya was rocked by wide-scale protests against a government finance bill, and unrelated ethnic unrest inside the Kakuma camp.

The UNHCR says it trains security staff on how to protect LGBTQ+ refugees, and says it relocates people within the camp if they are unsafe in one area.

“In response to reports of security incidents involving (LGBTQ+) refugees in Kakuma, police patrols and the presence of community volunteers have been increased where needed to help mitigate risks, including in the area of the camp where a number of these refugees are living,” the agency wrote in a statement.

“UNHCR provides individual counselling to (LGBTQ+) refugees on the legal framework in Kenya and the overall socio-cultural context in the camps and other refugee-hosting areas, to help mitigate the risk of security incidents.”

Still, refugees across Kenya say they are targeted across the country.

“There’s nowhere safe here,” said one refugee who is going by the name Paul because he did not want his name published out of safety concerns. “It’s somehow worse here than what I saw in an actual war.”

Paul is among a trio of gay men from the Democratic Republic of Congo who left the country after civil war rendered them as internally displaced people.

In the camps within Congo they were scrutinized by their fellow citizens for not having girlfriends and for acting effeminate.

Paul’s friend Stéphane, who also asked that his real name not be published due to safety concerns, was badly beaten when people in the camp learned of the time he was caught kissing another boy in the forest, years before violence occurred in his village.

The three now share an apartment on the outskirts of Nairobi, largely reliant on Paul’s earnings from a translation job he does off his laptop. They rarely go out, with each experiencing vision issues that they blame on sparse exposure to the sun.

The three are early into the process of possibly being resettled to Ottawa, a place they might thrive as bilingual 20-somethings.

It’s unclear where that process stands, with Ottawa announcing last week it has halted accepting new applications for private sponsorship. But the three each know the Kenyan government might stop them from getting out, regardless.

“All we want is to work hard, live in safety and not bother anyone,” Stéphane said.

“Why do they hate us so much?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 7, 2024.

This is the sixth story of an eight-part series investigating a backsliding of LGBTQ+ rights in Africa and the consequences for Canada as a country with a feminist foreign policy, which prioritizes gender equality and human dignity. The reporting in Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya was written with financial support from the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press