By: Barigye Ambrose

In every struggle, a new life blood added onto the already existing force creates a strong and unified movement hard to bring down. This is the same as we talk currently regarding the growth of a transgender movement in Uganda. With the inspiration from one of Uganda’s renowned advocate for the rights of transgender women Beyonce Karungi, Amanda and Javan have been motivated to come out and join the fight to liberate a Ugandan transgender woman from unjust treatment by the general public.  Transgender women in Uganda continue to live in fear due to many life challenges such as rejection from families and friends,unlawful house evictions due to persistent media outings, job terminations, bullying from fellow students and expulsion  from schools, arbitrary arrests by law enforcement agents especially the police coupled  with  detention  in cells with inmates of different  gender,  mob attacks,  Increased  cases of HIV/AIDS and other STD’s  plus many more related challenges. They highlight the need to fight stigma amongst their fellow peers has been the key igniting factor for them to join the movement, relating to their  very best own examples, they say living and coming out as a transgender persons right from their families to the general public has not been all that easy. While talking to Kuchu Times during world AIDS day event, Javan and Amanda advised fellow trans-women to keep safe in order to avoid acquiring the deadly HIV virus and advised those already infected with the AIDS pandemic to keep adhering to treatment from the health facilities they receive ART from.