Thank you, honourable Chair. Thank you, members of the subcommittee. To all the people in the room, I bring you warm greetings from warm Kampala.
I am Hassan Shire, executive director of DefendDefenders, as the chair has said.
Only a few weeks back, in Kampala, DefendDefenders celebrated 20 years of presence and work in this subregion, providing protection for the lives of human rights defenders across the African continent.
In Uganda, as my brother Nicholas Opiyo said, there's a current law, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023, that criminalizes LGBTIQ+ rights. Petitions were filed—I was part of the people who filed it—in the Constitutional Court of Uganda challenging the law on grounds including violation of equality and privacy, among others. The Constitutional Court upheld most provisions of the act, and an appeal was lodged again in the Supreme Court of Uganda, seeking to declare the law null and void. The appeal is pending in the Supreme Court. A similar law passed in 2014 was nullified by the Constitutional Court of Uganda on procedural grounds.
In August 2023, the director general of health services in Uganda issued a statement to all health workers, asserting that access to health services is a fundamental right for all people in Uganda, without discrimination. In September, the director of public prosecutions [Technical difficulty—Editor] files related to the Anti-Homosexuality Act be sent to DPP headquarters for guidance before charges are formally laid.
A recent report by the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, a local NGO in Kampala, indicates that there have been a total 926 cases of LGBTIQ+ motivated violations reported from June 2023 to October 2025, which affected 1,240 people.
Lately, homophobia and transphobia have become widespread, with violations against the LGBTIQ+ community in Uganda mostly emanating from non-state actors, particularly communities they live in, rather than from government-sanctioned actors. Many of these violations remain unreported. The risks faced by LGBTIQ+ persons include eviction, physical assault, blackmail, legal persecution, discrimination, exclusion and online harassment. There have been cases of LGBTIQ+ persons found murdered, with the reasons for the killing not yet revealed by the police. The killing is believed to be happening because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
The situation has further exposed members of the LGBTIQ+ community to a vulnerable social and economic life. Many are unemployed because of discrimination and persecution at workplaces. Many have been forced into exile and to seek asylum in other countries, including Canada. It's important to note that the majority are still in Uganda and in the subregion, and remain vulnerable.
The anti-gender policies globally announced and the freezing of international aid by the current U.S. administration appear to have emboldened the anti-rights sentiment and crippled community organizations in Uganda. A case in point is the Uganda Key Populations Consortium, UKPC, a Ugandan government partner organization that was engaging in the delivery of health services with LGBTIQ+ community persons across Uganda, which has experienced 70% of their programs impacted by the cut of the USAID money.
Delivery and access to health services by LGBTIQ+ persons in Uganda post-U.S. funding cuts were impacted. The current UN reform agenda, which envisages that UNAIDS will be dismantled totally next year, will have a severe impact on LGBTIQ+ persons in Uganda.