Queer diffabilities in Uganda: Experiences of intersectional complexity and the urban climate crisis

Citation

McQuaid K & Crawford N (2025) Queer diffabilities in Uganda: Experiences of intersectional complexity and the urban climate crisis. In: Crawford NJW, Nanduddu S, McQuaid K & Nyukuri E (eds.) Intersectional Climate Justice in Eastern Africa. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 231-249. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350516465.ch-14

Abstract
First paragraph: ‘Double stigma, trouble and phobia comes with being a person with disabilities and then being queer’, Kira tells us. They lead a small civil society organization supporting queer people living with diffabilities in Uganda. We adopt the term ‘diffability’ here to recognize – and normalize – the diversity of abilities among people.[1] One of the initiatives Kira tells us most passionately about is a project designed to mitigate the high levels of food insecurity many in this community experience. Incomplete schooling, inaccessible and discriminatory employers, lack of social support networks, poor quality and congested housing in dense underserviced urban neighbourhoods and high levels of sociopolitical stigma all collide to sustain both queer and diffabled communities in high levels of social, economic and environmental precarity. Working to mitigate the impacts of these overlapping inequalities is a vibrant civil society. In the initiative above, Kira’s organization keeps a modest urban garden, and uses their fast-growing nutrient-rich produce to bolster purchases of goods from the local market in a series of food parcels that they deliver to the homes of people who are both queer and diffabled.