To gain asylum, some Ugandans falsely claim LGBTQ+ status

KAMPALA — In July 2015, Uganda didn’t feel safe for Ariana Mutomi. It was just over a year after President Yoweri Museveni signed an anti-homosexuality law into law. Although Uganda’s Constitutional Court later annulled the law on procedural grounds, anti-homosexual sentiment in the country grew. Frightened, Mutomi moved to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, hoping for a safer life and a chance to seek asylum in Canada. She was 16 at the time, practicing her assigned male sexuality and going by a different name.

Mutomi, now a transgender woman, says her friends told her that in the Kakuma refugee camp, with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “it would be easy to get asylum as a sexual minority.”

Like her, many sexual and gender minorities face violence, stigma and discrimination due to Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws, leading them to seek asylum. Rainbow Railroad, a nonprofit that helps LGBTQ+ people obtain asylum, reported that shortly after the government reinstated the anti-homosexuality law in 2023, the number of people fleeing the country to seek asylum increased.

But the asylum process is fraught with challenges, including fraud and corruption. Sources in Uganda who spoke to Global Press Journal, and investigations by Dutch immigration authorities, say some Ugandans lie about their sexuality to exploit these opportunities in search of greener pastures. The situation has led to sexual and gender minorities in need of protection losing trust in the system. Some are missing out on asylum opportunities, putting them at risk of persecution. Other experts fear that such false claims could lead to immigration decisions based on stereotypes, further complicating the process for those who genuinely need it.

Mutomi says that during the year she spent in Kakuma refugee camp, she witnessed manipulation of the asylum process by other Ugandan asylum seekers. According to her, these asylum seekers openly admitted to posing as gender and sexual minorities in order to gain asylum.

“They told us straight to our faces that they would leave us in Kakuma,” she says.

A crisis of false claims

The Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service began suspecting possible abuse of visa and asylum procedures in 2018, according to a 2020 report provided to Global Press Journal by spokesperson Cilya van der Kooij. The Dutch agency found that there had been an increase in the number of people entering the Netherlands on short-stay visas and subsequently filing asylum claims on the grounds of gender and sexual minorities.

After further investigation, the department says it has discovered organized networks that specifically train Ugandan applicants to fabricate stories about their sexuality so they can successfully navigate the asylum application process, and others who sell “ready-made package visa application documents” from Uganda for around €2,500.

ZZ, a Ugandan who has been living in the Netherlands for five years, says she lied about her sexuality to gain asylum. ZZ is heterosexual. She applied for a three-month tourist visa at the Dutch embassy in Uganda to visit a friend, while her other plan was already underway. After three weeks, her visa was ready. Upon arrival in the Netherlands, she says she applied for refugee status as a lesbian. “I cut my hair short and wore (baggy) men’s clothing,” she says. This, she believed, would prove she was a lesbian.

ZZ asked to use her initials for this story for fear of jeopardizing her asylum application, which is still pending. She believes that lying about her sexuality is the only guarantee of staying in the Netherlands.

“I got a house, health insurance and a monthly allowance of about 1.5 million Ugandan shillings (about 410 euros) from the Dutch government — things I would never have gotten if I had told them I was straight. In my entire life as an educated woman with a master’s degree in business administration, I have never received such large amounts of money per month,” she says. If she brings her two daughters to the Netherlands from Uganda after successfully applying for asylum, she adds, she will receive about 1,230 euros per month to take care of her household.

I cut my hair short and wore (loose) men’s clothes.

According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles’ asylum information database, asylum seekers receive a monthly allowance of 280.08 euros from the Dutch government to cover food, clothing and personal expenses. In addition to the financial allowance, they receive, among other things, accommodation, free transport tickets to visit their lawyers, health insurance and civil liability insurance.

The Dutch immigration authorities have yet to approve ZZ’s application. She has been invited for three interviews so far. “It’s been almost five years since I submitted my applications, but every time I hear from my lawyer, he says that the (immigration) people don’t think my story is credible,” she says. She fears that they might not approve her application.

Exploiting opportunities for LGBTQ+ people doesn’t bother her that much. “I have to look after myself and my kids; and when an opportunity comes along, I take it,” she says.

The costs for LGBTQ+ people

According to sources who spoke to Global Press Journal, these false claims come at a cost to LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum abroad.

“They are taking advantage of our welcoming community,” said Monalisa Ankintole, a transgender woman and program manager at Transgender Equality Uganda, a nonprofit that advocates for transgender women and transgender sex workers. Ankintole said she is aware of cases involving sexual and gender minorities whose asylum claims were denied because officials lost confidence in LGBTQ+ applicants from Uganda. “They are stuck here in Uganda and Kenya because they have no other safe place to go,” she said.

In response to false applications, the Dutch government took a stricter stance toward asylum seekers from Uganda than from other countries, according to a 2023 report by the Center for Culture and Leisure, a Dutch LGBTQ+ rights group. “In 2015, the acceptance rate of Ugandan asylum applications in the Netherlands was around 50%, compared to only 29% in 2018. The impression was given that Ugandans were applying for asylum en masse in the Netherlands on the basis of a (false) visa,” the report said.

The group says it spoke to asylum lawyers and organizations working with refugees who said that sexual and gender minorities in Uganda were subject to stricter scrutiny and that applications were wrongly rejected. “The conclusion that there is discrimination against Ugandan LGBTI people seems justified. In the current study, 10 Ugandan cases were examined and only one was granted status,” the report says.

Sabine Jansen is a researcher at the human rights group that wrote the report. “I don’t find the report (from the Dutch immigration service) very impressive and their assessments seem to be based on stereotypes,” she tells Global Press Journal via email. In 2022, two Ugandan men lost a court case against a decision by the Dutch immigration service to revoke their status because their homosexual orientation was not believed, she says.

Van der Kooij, the spokesperson, tells Global Press Journal via email that there is no difference in how the Dutch assess applications from Uganda and other countries. He adds that the research has helped the immigration service to be more alert to fraud.

I don’t find the report (from the Dutch immigration service) that impressive and their assessments seem to be based on stereotypes.

The asylum process is complicated enough for LGBTQ+ people. A June 2022 report from the Williams Institute — a think tank on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law — found that officials require LGBTQ+ asylum applicants to prove their sexuality or gender. Decisions to reject applications as false are often based on biased or stereotypical ideas about how LGBTQ+ people live, the report said. The report also found that the asylum application process can have harmful effects on LGBTQ+ people, including mental and physical health outcomes and uncertainty as they “wait in a precarious state of limbo.”

Corruption and exploitation further complicate the situation. Genesis, who prefers to use his first name for fear of prosecution, says a lawyer once asked him for US$3,000 to help him with his asylum application, a price he could not afford.

Mutomi also says that an official working with UNHCR asked for $4,000 to expedite her asylum process. “Uganda (was) not safe for me, but Kakuma was not safe,” she says. There was no reason to stay. “The next month I came back to Uganda,” she says.

UNHCR Kenya takes allegations of corruption by its staff very seriously, said Charity Kamene Nzomo, a spokesperson. Each report is assessed and, if substantiated, disciplinary action is taken, including dismissal from the organization, she said.

Meanwhile, Moses Makumbi, a commissioner at Uganda’s Ministry of Ethics and Integrity, says people who abuse the law and immigration procedures by distorting their sexuality are also undermining the country’s credibility.

Nicholas Opio, a human rights lawyer, sees a bigger problem for his country. People who are struggling economically are so eager to leave that they will lie about it. But in the process, everyone gets stuck, he says. “People feel unsafe in this country and want to go to places that are safe.”