Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera (also known as Jacqueline Kasha) is a Ugandan LGBT rights activist. She is the founder and executive director of an LGBT rights organization called Freedom & Roam Uganda (FARUG). and 2011 recipient of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.

Known as the 'founding mother' of the Ugandan LGBT civil rights movement at just the age of 19yrs in 1999, she has publicly campaigned for an end to homophobia in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal. In 2010, Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stone published the photographs and names of people it claimed to be gay, under the headline "Hang Them". The names and photographs included those of Nabagesera and her colleague David Kato. The pair eventually sued the tabloid, and in doing so set a benchmark for human rights in Uganda. Nabagesera explains the precedence as an attempt to protect “privacy and the safety we all have against incitements to violence.”

Kato was later killed following the legal battle with the publication. Nabagasera has continued the fight for gay rights in Uganda. Under the auspice of FARUG, she has fought to decriminalize homosexuality in Uganda by circumventing the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill; a bill which mandates stiff sentences ranging from prison sentences to the death penalty. Furthermore, the bill mandates that citizens who do not expose gay and lesbians to the authorities, face up to 3 years in jail.

In 2010, Nabagesera opened the only Ugandan bar for LGBT people; named Sappho Islands, the bar was situated in a suburb of Kampala. It closed in 2011. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera was born on 12 April 1980. She is an important Ugandan Gender activist and human rights defender who has a passion for LGBT issues.

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera was born in Kampala, Uganda, to Prince Albert Walugembe Musoke, who was an economist and officer of the Bank of Uganda and who later served as a Bank Vice President, and her mother, Julie Viola Katantazi Musoke was an among the first computer programmers in Uganda and also worked at Bank of Uganda where she trained other Banking personnel throughout the country. She has one younger brother.

Kasha attended a number of schools, often being expelled because of her sexual orientation, or because she wrote love letters to other girls. She attended Gayaza Junior School, Maryhill High School, Mariam High School, and Namasagali College. Following High School, she enrolled at Nkumba University where she obtained an Accounting degree and her bachelor's degree in Business Administration. She then followed that with Diploma in Information Technology and a Certificate in Marketing from the New Vision Group in Kampala in 2004. In 2005 she enrolled at Human Rights Education Associates, a global human rights education and training centre based in Massachusetts for distance learners. She obtained a certificate in 2006 from the Johannesburg Media School for Journalism so that she could learn how to deal with media in a hostile work environment. She later trained activists at this school for activism from many African countries including Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda and others. In 2008 she became a trainer of trainees, obtaining a certificate from Frontline Human Rights Defenders in Dublin, Ireland.

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