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Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, which supports the LGBT community in Uganda has received the 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

He is one of a few people who are openly gay in the country, and spoke out on Scott Mills’ documentary The World’s Worst Place to be Gay about how he feared for his personal safety.

Upon receiving the award Mr Mugisha said: “For me, it is about standing out and speaking in an environment where you are not sure if you will survive the next day.”

“The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award gives me the courage and hope that my work, which may not be accepted and recognized in my own country, is making a change with this international visibility.”

The award judge Dean Makau Mutua described Frank’s work in an environment filled with homophobia as “a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit.”

The president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Kerry Kennedy said: “He has become a leading advocate for sexual minorities in a country where they are persecuted, jailed, and their lives destroyed.”

She added that he has “fought courageously in support of the rights of sexual minorites in Uganda, despite death threats and even exile.”

The awards were set up in 1984 to honour “courageous and innovative individuals striving for social justice throughout the world.”

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