Kakuma: Urgent Action Needed Now!
By Sally Jackson, FiLiA Trustee and volunteer
“How can you run a business when people won’t buy from you because of their lesbophobia? ”
On the 20th June, I had the privilege of chairing a webinar highlighting ‘Life as a Lesbian Refugee’, now available on our YouTube Channel. It caused me to reflect that at the beginning of July, we will have been working with our Sisters in Kakuma Refugee Camp for two years. I remember initially being horrified, not just at the trauma, abuse and discrimination they had faced that had caused them to flee their home country, but the continued abuse they faced within the so-called safety and protection of a UNHCR Refugee Camp.
Appallingly, two years later the position has deteriorated. The camp is due to close; no official date has been announced but the end of June was mentioned by the Kenyan government a while back. Services have been stripped back, and the camp has been renamed Kakuma Settlement Area. Essential services (provision of food, medicine and water) that were previously provided free are now restricted or only available at a cost. Refugees in the camp have been offered a small sum to start their own businesses and become citizens of Kenya. This is a positive solution for a lot of the refugees, but what about if you are lesbian (or gay, bisexual or transgender)? How can you run a business when people won’t buy from you because of their lesbophobia? When people will destroy your produce because they can’t abide your sexuality, where people will steal any profits because they don’t think you should be able to live your life?
This is not a solution that is safe for our lesbian sisters. If the (scant) protection the camp provides is ended they are at the mercy of a government, police force, health system and community that is institutionally lesbophobic and proud to be so. Their lives are in danger and there will be no-one to protect them. This is now an emergency situation.
UNHCR must ensure that all of the vulnerable LGB or T refugees have their status and are able to be relocated into a safe country. Countries that accept refugees must prioritise these refugees whose position is every bit as perilous as those in the Ukraine. Their lives, their homes, their children are all at risk. The Women we now call friends have been abandoned in Kakuma Refugee Camp, the time to act is now. Share the video with those in power and those with influence. We have to ensure they act now, before the murders. Once you are aware of this, you have a responsibility to act, and to act now.
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