For this inquiry, we had the opportunity to meet Tobias Pellicciari, Director of International Support – Human Rights “Migration and Asylum Program in Europe”. Tobias has worked for many years in the field of migrants’ and refugees’ reception in Europe, with a special focus on sexual minorities. Thanks to his experience and the interviews that the team of LMPride carried on with some of the victims, in this article we can offer a complete picture of the conditions in which LGBTQ+ migrants are forced to live in Kenya. In particular, the attention will be on the Kakuma refugee camp, managed by the High Commissioner for Refugees – also known as UNHCR.
Large Movements team has already reported on how homophobia in Kenya an issue in every stratum and aspect of society and civilisation is still, and how the Kenyan LGBTQ+ community is highly stigmatised and marginalised. In this interview, however, we want to shed light on the conditions of migrants and asylum seekers who, having fled their country of origin, mostly from Uganda, are discriminated because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Picture of the area
Kakuma is situated in north-western Kenya, specifically in Turkana County in the Rift Valley. The refugee camp was founded in 1992 to accommodate 16,000 women and men fleeing the war in Sudan. Today hosts more than 200,000 people, making it one of the largest refugee camps in the world.
The area in which the camp is located is predominantly dry and highly sensitive to the climate change effects. These factors have made almost impossible to cultivate the land, more and more threatened by the advancing desert.
The Kakuma refugee camp has been built on an isolated area, outside the city centre. According to the Kenyan government indeed, this would guarantee safety of both the local population and the hosts of the camp.
As a result, accessing to essential services (hospital, employment, etc.) is quite difficult for refugees and asylum seekers in Kakuma. Moreover, the living conditions in the camp are almost below any minimum standards of human dignity: insect infestations, scarcity of food and absence of health support.
The already difficult living conditions of the people living in Kakuma become even more complicated for the members of the LGBTQ+ community. Most of them reside in separate sectors (known as ‘blocks’), to better ensure the general safety – according to UNHCR staff.
What it means living in Kakuma for an LGBTQ+ person
According to our interviewees, the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community in Kakuma has worsened the living conditions of this vulnerable group of refugees and asylum seekers. The separation of most of them from the rest of the hosts of the camp indeed, makes them more visible and vulnerable to aggressions.
Most of the LGBTQ+ asylum seekers come from the same Countries of origin as the queer applicants – mainly Uganda and Somalia – so they are likely to engage in the same homophobic behaviour, violence and harassment that drove Kakuma’s guests to leave their homeland. By making them more visible – by confining them all to the same area – therefore, UNHCR would have effectively increased the risk for LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers of experiencing persecution and violence. Violent and brutal acts are committed on a daily basis within the Kakuma camp and all the victims we spoke to complain that they have not received proper protection from UNHCR . Indeed, UNHCR very often does not respond to refugees’ and asylum seekers’ requests for help and/or protection.
The situation is not much better for the LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers who do not reside in the separated blocks.
They are identified by the other guests as queer people and they are subject to the same attacks and violence.
Many LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in Kakuma preferred to live outside the barracks, sleeping in the open to protect each other. Those who fear the most because they constantly receive death threats from the hosts of the camp, often sleep as homeless in the streets of Nairobi. They say to feel safer than sleeping in their allocated accommodation in the camp. Very often among them, there are lesbian women with their children – also subjected to the same violence that their mothers have to suffer.
The decision to sleep outside came after a series of fires set by other residents at the lodgings of the queer refugees and asylum seekers during the night.
Emblematic of how out of control the situation is within the camp and of the serious failures of UNHCR staff to protect this vulnerable category of refugees and asylum seekers, is the case of the 15th March 2021 fire: two homosexual men were burnt alive by other Kakuma’s residents. After two long days, UNHCR did not even provide proper health care to the fire victims, who remained in the camp without even having access to appropriate medical care.
After intense pressure from International Support – Human Rights, UNHCR transferred the two victims with an ambulance to a hospital 125km far from Kakuma, despite the fact that the ambulance staffs themselves and the local community had indicated the Nairobi hospital as the only one equipped with the right medical machines and treatments for those kinds of injuries.
Only on the 18th March, UNHCR – under pressure from the European Commission, alerted by Tobias – transported the victims to the Nairobi hospital by helicopter.
Unfortunately, one of the two men died as the result of the very serious burns he suffered and, more importantly, the lack of timely and adequate medical treatments.
The only statement issued by UNHCR following this tragedy was almost a month later and consisted in a generic request to the Kenyan authorities to investigate. The investigations, even though haven’t brought to a formal recognition of the attacker yet, have led to some fundamental clues which – together with the eye-witness testimonies – could provide at least enough benefit of the doubt to isolate the person, if not to completely deny him access to the camp. The alleged attacker is still now at the camp, able to freely walk around with any sort of supervision from the UNHCR staff. Indeed, he continues to threaten the men who survived the fire, who was forced to go living in a safe house outside Kakuma because the UNHCR staff has not granted him protection.
Unfortunately, the failure of judicial authorities in this matter is not surprising since Kenya is a strongly homophobic country, where a series of colonial-style ‘anti-homosexual laws’ are still in force. However, impunity after such crimes must not be conceived. Particularly, when one of the UN Agencies is actively present on the ground.
Unfortunately, the failure of judicial authorities in this matter is not surprising since Kenya is a strongly homophobic Country, as we have seen. However, impunity after such crimes must not be conceived. Particularly, when one of the UN Agencies is actively present on the ground.
This homophobic culture makes possible for homophobic behaviour still be prevalent throughout Kenya and its institutions. This means that LBGTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers do not receive protection from the local authorities, theoretically in charge, along with the UNHCR, of their safety. On the contrary, many reports of arbitrary arrests have been published, accusing the Kenyan police of violence, rapes and even torture of LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers.
Since homophobia permeates every sector of the Kenyan society, it is virtually impossible for this vulnerable group of refugees and asylum seekers to find employment. As soon as employers realise that they are in front of an LGBTQ+ person, they either do not hire them or dismiss them. This lack of access to the labour market has meant that nowadays prostitution is the main source of survival for many of these people.
In general, many of the LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers living in Kakuma only survive thanks to UNHCR’s own food programmes – which, however, have been affected by a drastic reduction in fundings – and the support of local associations, not only composed by LGBTQ+ activists.
Proposals for addressing the emergency and improving the living conditions of LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in the Kakuma camp
As Tobias explains in the full interview (which you will find at the end of this paragraph) the UNHCR has very limited power to act and influence the Kenyan government. As a direct interlocutor of the government, indeed, while enjoying a certain degree of autonomy of action, UNHCR must still respect and apply the policies adopted by that country.
An event of 2018 provides a meaningful example of the limits that the High Commissioner for Refugees have to face when operating in Kenya. On the 19th of December 2018, UNHCR sent a letter to all the LGBTQ+ people who lived at Kakuma at the time, acknowledging the excessive risk for their safety represented by the other hosts of the camp and informing them that they would relocate them to safe accommodation in Nairobi.
This resettlement took place in a timely manner but, on the very same day the relocations were completed, the police informed – with a brief notice posted inside the camp – that they would no longer assist LGBTQ+ migrants who were victims of attacks – both inside and outside the camp – and that from then on, these people would have to turn exclusively to UNHCR for protection.
Nonetheless, a few months after this relocation took place the Kenyan government ordered UNHCR to return all LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers to the camp, arguing that this would better ensure their safety.
At that point the UNHCR – despite having formally acknowledged, only a few months earlier, that the conditions inside the camp were constantly endangering the safety of LGBTQ+ hosts – had no choice but to bring everyone back inside the camp. They are still there today, waiting to be resettled again, as promised to them several times by the UNHCR itself.
Precisely because of this limitation of the UNHCR’s action, as Tobias tells us, the European Commission is the most suitable entity to mediate with the Kenyan government, as a fair government counterpart.
In this regard, we note that on September 19th 2021, the Parliament issued a Motion for a Resolution to increase the pressure on: (i) the Kenyan government to conduct serious investigations and provide effective protection to LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers; (ii) the UNHCR and the international community in general to improve the living conditions inside the camp on one hand but, above all, to create legal and safe pathways for this vulnerable category of refugees to leave the earthly hell in which they are currently forced to live.
It is precisely on this last point that we focused our interview with Tobias. With him, we discuss possible concrete solutions to effectively resolve the situation in a stable and lasting way.
First, we ask the European Parliament not to drop its Motion for a Resolution and we highlight the need to open a negotiating table with the United Nations and UNHCR to understand the issues that prevent the High Commissioner for Refugees from guaranteeing effective protection within the Kakuma camp (and beyond) to a vulnerable category of migrants such as LGBTQ+ people.
Resettlements – halted since September 2019, also because of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak – must be unblocked, to address the need for immediate protection of those who have been harassed for years within the camp and to whom it had been guaranteed that they would be resettled soon.
Indeed, resettlements, as Tobias notes, are a very useful tool to ensure the protection of LGBTQ+ refugees who are forced to live in Kakuma in the long term.
As he also explained during his speech at the European Parliament on the World Day Against Homo-transphobia which was celebrated this year, Tobias proposes to allocate the quarterly resettlement quotas for the construction of a regular and automatic resettlement mechanism built on the needs of LGBTQ+ people staying in Kakuma. To date, in fact, only unallocated quotas are used for the resettlement of LGBTQ+ refugees in Kakuma, which are far too low in numbers to have constant resettlement.
“Unallocated quotas” are the number of places that States “set aside” each year for global resettlement. These quotas can be used whenever there are cases in need of urgent or emergency resettlement, regardless of their country of origin or asylum.
Another solution on which we ask the EU to insist at the negotiating table with the UN and UNHCR is to admit LGBTQ+ migrants into the UNICORE project aimed at ensuring university corridors.
University corridors are very similar to humanitarian corridors but differ from the latter in their main objective, which is to ensure the right to study for vulnerable people.
This could be a further solution to guarantee the possibility to effectively start a new life, both for the children of homosexuals within Kakuma– who cannot access education because they are discriminated by other children – and for LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers themselves – who cannot continue their studies within the camp because they are harassed by other students..
Finally, Tobias notes how Kenya – along with Ethiopia and Sudan – is one of the main recipients of the EU funds, including those from the European Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF). The objectives that the EU set out to achieve by allocating a large part of these funds to these countries were: (i) to strengthen the resilience of local communities; (ii) to increase access to basic services for the population; (iii) to promote capacity building and, consequently, to improve access to the labour market for the most vulnerable categories of the population.
These funds are concretely allocated through a series of development cooperation programmes, which are implemented on the ground through the adoption of a series of projects – each aimed at achieving the objectives set by the EUTF.
During our interview, Tobias suggests that the amounts allocated for Kenya should also be discussed when reviewing European funds, since:
- the Kenyan authorities have shown themselves to be incapable of administering the funds allocated for the migration management. To date, this sector appears to be totally chaotic and highly disorganised. Moreover, corruption continues to be rampant, so that a very small percentage of these funds is allocated to the actual support of migrants;
- despite all the complaints made by local associations and NGOs about the condition of vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers – including LGBTQ+ – a totally derisory amount of these funds is allocated for the support of this specific category of people;
- funds earmarked to finance programmes which provide food support (one of the main objectives of the EUTF) have been almost entirely cut for no real reason;
- resettlement funds that are allocated annually are not used to resettle LGBTQ+ refugees residing in Kenyan refugee camps. These refugees, as we have highlighted in this investigation, are the ones who should be able to access this mechanism as a priority, due to the very nature of the mechanism of the resettlement.
What we ask to the international community and what we will do
We at Large Movements, together with International Support – Human Rights and Il Grande Colibrì, will continue to monitor the situation and lobby the European community for these demands to be met.
We will continue to produce material denouncing the conditions inside the camp and the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community living there, as well as follow developments at the negotiating table between the European Parliament and the UN.
Due to the content of some of the images, we will not publish all the material in our possession on our public channels, but we are ready to share it with any associations, activists, journalists and/or migration experts who would like to join us in advocating for hundreds of men and women who continue to suffer unprecedented violence – and even die – just to be free to love and express themselves.
Keep following our pages to stay updated on the results of our investigation.
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One Response
I was friend with one of the people who died because of the fire. I thought her name was Jerry, because of her facebook page name. But then after she died I learned that her name is actually Chriton. Very recently I learned that Chriton wasn’t a gay man, she was a straight trans woman. A friend of hers told me about it. It’s something not many people know about, and I think it is something you should know about. Because it is the truth.