September 2007 — Historic Claiming of Space for Trans People Within the African LGBT Movement: The Nairobi Trans Declaration, Kenya
Before Victor Mukasa sought asylum in the USA, in fear for his life, he was flown to Nairobi, Kenya, by fellow activists so that he could be safe, and also take part in the first Changing Spaces, Changing Faces conference held in Nairobi in September 2007. It was at this conference that the Nairobi Trans Declaration, drafted by trans people the night before the conference, was presented.
“Changing Faces, Changing Spaces is a Pan African Conference that brings together human rights activists and organizations, health and legal professionals, allies and donor partners from across Africa and beyond, undertaking and supporting African sex worker and LGBTIGNC activism. We deliberate, strategize and share the experiences that impact our movements. It is unique in the sense that it is a conference conceptualized and planned by a task force comprised by activists from the LGBTI and sex worker movements in Africa.”
From the Conference report: Changing Faces, Changing Spaces: Speaking Out for Sexual Minorities in East Africa
“In September 2007 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activists from across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda and Burundi came together to meet with East African human rights organisations, HIV service providers and 16 donor representatives, many based in the global North, to discuss the history and trajectory of funding and support for LGBTI rights in the region.
The ‘Changing Faces, Changing Spaces’ conference, hosted by the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Gay & Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, brought together a diverse group of individuals; transgender activists from Uganda; representatives from US-based donors; gay and lesbian human rights defenders from Tanzania; male sex workers from Kenya; and lesbian activists from South Africa. The conference provided a forum for debate and discourse with individuals from the regions’ women’s and human rights movements, HIV organisations and donors based in East Africa, with the aim of providing a platform for dialogue between these key stakeholders. This pioneering conference was successful in creating enhanced transparency and in fostering a framework of mutual understanding in which LGBTI funding and activism can be strengthened and expanded.”
In our Archival Talk Show interview with Victor on the 6th of June 2025, he speaks about how the Nairobi Trans Declaration came about. The reason he had to flee Uganda, apart from the court case he had initiated against the Ugandan government after his house was unlawfully raided and he was illegally detained, he was approached by Bombastic Magazine, which wanted to do a feature on him. But they insisted that they would not publish the article without a picture of him with his chest bound, or him binding his chest (this was before Victor had had top surgery). Victor refused, feeling that he was being objectified, and that the picture would have nothing to do with the important story he had to tell.
Here Victor speaks about the night he arrived in Nairobi (this is a transcription of the video clip below):
“And I said, I want to meet trans people tonight in Nairobi. And they called the trans women. They called each other. And before I knew it, I was surrounded by so many trans people. Probably about 15. So many means 15. 15 then was a big number. They were surrounding me at this. And we were drinking all night.
But I told them the story and I told them how angry I am, and everybody was telling their stories of how angry some people in the LGBTQ community have met the feel how they have felt like killing themselves even for what family has made them fail. Like these are trans people, gender non-conforming people telling the stories of the plight they have faced within the community.
And so anger that night was filled with anger from trans people. An idea came, I don’t remember how it came up, because we saw the program of the conference and we see, you see even in the conference, they have all these workshops taking place. They have all these panels taking place and still on the panels, there’s no representation of transgender people.* Changing Spaces is one of the products of the engagements with the donors. At the end of the engagements, we had a meeting in Nairobi, a meeting that now the, the Changing Faces, Changing Spaces comes from, which became a meeting that would happen almost, I think every year or every two years. So the next, the first changing phase, Changing Spaces is where this happened.
But we have been invited to Nairobi to witness and, you know, every activist was bringing out ideas. And then they decide, let’s draft a document. We are going to take over this conference at an opportune moment. And maybe it is in one of those sessions, we will all rise up and go and protest what the organisers have done here to exclude us from the real work at the conference.
So we drafted a document in that night. We called it the Nairobi Trans Declaration because we were going to make a declaration. And in that conference, indeed, at some point, in fact, we waited for the closure. We took over the mic and we took over the program for the event.
And we stood up there on the stage and read out our declaration. And that was a very, very big step and a very big move, and a historical moment for the trans movement in East Africa when we took up space and claimed a, a space where we were just on the menu and claimed it as our space. And it encouraged organising within the region so much.”
* (If you read the Conference report, you will see the lack of trans representation. The reading of the Trans Declaration is also omitted from the Report).
Watch the video clip that the above transcription is based on:
Watch the full interview with Victor from the 6th of June 2025:
