Tom Twongyeirwe’s address to the Human Rights Subcommittee at the European Union Parliament Sakharov Fellowship – June 2026.
Chair Satouri, Honourable Members, Sakharov Fellows,
Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences with you today.
When people hear that I use faith as a tool to advance inclusion for LGBTQ+ people in Uganda, they usually assume I am about to complain about the problem.
No. I am talking about the solution.
My name is Tom Twongyeirwe. I’m a Ugandan lawyer and human rights defender. And here’s what I’ve learned over the last 8 years of advocacy work: in a country where over 95% of people identify with a faith tradition, if I only fight against faith, I will lose. And more importantly, so will my community.. Because faith shapes how families understand love, how communities define belonging, shapes policy and culture. Yet faith have often been used to justify the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people.
So I asked a different question: what if faith isn’t just the problem? What if it can also be a tool?
That question informs two major approaches we use.
First, evidence before action. I learned this the hard way. Early in my work, I would walk into a room with a faith leader and tell him he was wrong. Guess how that ended. He stopped listening. I left angry. Nothing changed. So we changed. We invested in real research. Nationwide. Talking to ordinary Ugandans. And here is what we found: when a pastor says “our culture rejects LGBTQ+ people,” he is often quoting a sermon, not his grandfather. What sounds like culture is often faith in disguise. That evidence changed how I show up. Now I do not argue with a man’s Bible. I ask him: where did you learn that? The answer is usually not from home. It is from a pulpit. That is a different conversation entirely.
Second, faith-informed dialogues with faith leaders, government leaders and media practitioners. That is a fancy way of saying: we sit down and listen. I remember one pastor in northern Uganda. He came to our dialogue ready to fight. He brought his Bible. He brought his anger. I said nothing for the first hour. I just let him speak. Then I asked: “What kind of society do you want for your grandchildren?” He paused. He had never been asked that. By the end of the day, he did not agree with me. But he shook my hand. Six months later, he quietly referred a young gay man to us for support. That is how change happens. Not with a bang. With a handshake that turns into trust.
From these experiences, I would like to leave one approach I believe works better in today’s world.
Investing in evidence-based economic empowerment programs for the marginalized communities. LGBTQ+ young people, for example, at an early age, are often pushed out of schools and families due to exclusion. From experience, we have learned that emergency support may help people survive, but Economic power, on the other hand, positions them to shape their own future. I know this from personal experiences; forced to drop out of college due to getting outted, rejoined after six years, and last year graduated with a First Class Law degree from the United Kingdom.
In conclusion, our experience has taught us that the institutions often seen as barriers can also become part of the solution, and that inclusion requires both advocacy and access to opportunity. Because in the end, human rights are about protecting people and creating a conducive environment for all people to thrive.
And that is the work we are trying to do in Uganda.
Thank you all for listening to me and for caring enough to sit in the room.