Africa Human Rights Coalition: http://www.africanhrc.org/about
Melanie Graham is the Executive Director of Africa Human Rights Coalition. The organisation works with the LGBT community to provide ad-hoc advocacy and humanitarian services to those who are affected by Africa’s criminalising laws and are seeking safety.
Graham is a country conditions expert on homophobia and she provides expert testimony in global courts for LGBT asylum seekers.
Over a phone-call interview, we discussed the hardships faced by the LGBT community in repressive regimes, seeking asylum and the work of the Africa Human Rights Coalition.
The hardships faced by the LGBT Community:
“A lot of Ugandans fled to different parts of Africa when they became a part of the UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] refugee system. Most of the Ugandans fled to Kenya so there is a very large LGBT refugee community in Kenya right now and there are a lot of problems.
“Kenya is a really hostile host for the long term. You find that refugees are supposed to have protection in their host country but because of Kenya’s very own criminalising laws, it is very hard for LGBT refugees to be in that country.
“UNHCR has been doing a really good job, although there will always be detractors who speak against that. Given the nature of the odds, they are doing a good job of trying to mitigate between the Kenyan government and the LGBT community.
“There is a lot of stuff that has happened and will continue to happen as long as you have sexuality and gender identity criminalised. If it gets decriminalised, you still have 80-90% of the population that approved of the law. You have a long road ahead to get rid of the homophobia.
“I just did a country conditions report for an asylum seeker from Uganda and we really had to reflect on the fact that homophobia will persist regardless of the prospect of criminalisation.
“The specific hardships faced by the LGBT community are pretty much uniform throughout the continent, whether it is Uganda or elsewhere.”
The work of the African Human Rights Coalition:
“The African Human Rights Coalition is kind of unique. We operate in a very unusual way. We are on-the-ground in the sense that we have ambassadors.
“We provide humanitarian support. For example, if a young person has been outed as gay whether it is by the press, through a family member or has been caught in an uncompromising situation, they can contact us and provide us with their situation.
“We will try to find them an immediate safe shelter and then we will explore the exile options and see whether it is necessary to exile or not. It will all depend on the extent of their danger. We will provide medical assistance for as long as we can get the funds.
“Our funds are ad-hoc so what we have going in, goes back out. We run mostly on individual donations as we have no current grants available to us. We are all volunteers and we do not get paid a salary but we do have NGO status [Non-Governmental Organisation]. We have no operational funding. I spend 30-40 hours a week doing this work and the way that I support it is through my other law and mediation work so AHRC is always desperate for money. Just about all of the funds goes towards humanitarian efforts.”
“The second thing that AHRC does is advocacy work. We are advocating in Canada and the United States and we influence advocacy in other regions of the world to accept LGBT refugees and for people to gain a better understanding of asylum seekers, their needs and what their cases entail. We work closely with UNHCR to ensure the protection of the LGBT programme.
Seeking asylum in the UK:
“A lot of Ugandans also actually fled to Europe, the UK and America. One of the things that I do is provide country conditions reporting as an expert witness in the UK, European and American courts so I am pretty well versed with what goes on.
“There is a host of stories that came out of the UK where there was a lesbian who was deported back to Uganda who actually died as a result of that deportation.
“What I find to be a pitfall for LGBT people arriving in a country like the UK or the United States from a country that oppresses gay rights, their trust mechanisms are completely destroyed. How do you trust a person in uniform in an airport when they ask you a question and you have never been able to be out about your sexuality? Suddenly, you are expected to be open about your sexuality but if you are not properly out, it gets held against you. That is an impediment.
“You have officers and immigration officials asking very personal questions that are not okay to ask someone. They are asking people who have been hiding their entire life because of their sexual orientation that does not know how to answer. They are not getting proper legal representation straightaway. That is a problem that is also prejudicing them so there is a host of things and impediments that get in the way.”
LGBT Rights in Africa:
“You can imagine that if Uganda has that many LGBT people then every country is going to have that many LGBT people. It is the countries that have clamped down so hard that you do not hear from them and they really do need to be represented in terms of what we put out there.
“People are having the same kind of persecution in countries like Niger, Burundi, Ethiopia etc. but it is just not being reported. All of these countries are having as many people impacted in their lives as you will find in Uganda. Uganda has had the most publicity and airplay in the UK since 2014, and especially during the period of President Yoweri Museveni signing the "Kill the Gays" bill which was known as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. There is quite a lot out there and a lot of publicity. The Guardian reported on it quite a bit.”
Comments