Hello everyone, my name is Ricky. I am a queer refugee in South sudan, I'm in deep fear, and I don't know if I should you this, if you will feel ok about it. But anyway I would like to tell you because it's a bit traumatizing.

I'm an ugandan by nationality, and I fled my country because of persecution from both my family and the community members who wanted to kill me after finding me with my partner James. It's a very long story to tell. When I try to remember about the incident that happened to me in 2020, I feel depressed and traumatized. Oh no, my partner didn't escape and she was killed .

When I managed to escape from them I ran to Kenya where I went to UNHCR offices in Nairobi and they took me to their refugee camp called kakuma refugee camp, with alot of excitement hoping that there would be safe. Sadly it was more horrible than ever experienced. In kakuma where I found 500 lgbtq fellow people who had experienced the situations I passed in different countries, we used to be attacked by the homophobic every day and then.

In kakuma, we lost 8 fellow queers in attacks, and the organization, the government in concern, didn't take any responsibility to protect us. So, we decided to request for the dialog between we, UNHCR, and the government of Kenya in December 2023. Disappointingly, the government of Kenya told us that they didn't have any room for we lgbtq in their country.

This left us heartbroken, and we started to be divided. Many went to unknow places, and me, I decided to go to another nearby country, and that was South Sudan.

Right now, I'm living in South Sudan in Gorom refugee settlement camp, where I found many other queer peoplefrom kakuma and other place I don't know.

This place is also not safe for us because we are living daily starvation life, brutal attacks, discriminations, etc. Even recently me and my community were attacked, my shelter and others were destroyed and the little food we had was stolen when we ran for our lives. This is what me and my comunity are going through, so I'm here requesting your support to survive this situation