Outright Welcomes its 2023 UN Rights and Religion Fellows

Oabona Sepora is a researcher, scholar, and social worker who currently serves as the executive director of Friends of Diversity. He is also a public health lecturer at the Institute of Development Management Botswana. An alumnus of the Young African Leaders Initiative, Oabona has over eight years of experience in the human rights movement in Botswana and internationally, with a particular focus on the rights of minority and underprivileged groups in the sub-Saharan Africa diaspora. Oabona has worked with a number of non-governmental organizations in Botswana including DITSHWANELO—The Botswana Centre for Human Rights, SRHR Africa Trust, and Young African Leadership and Development in Africa, among others. He currently leads #Reform53, a campaign organized by the Commonwealth Youth Gender and Equality Network, which calls on Commonwealth governments to address existing laws discriminating against women and LGBTI people. He is also affiliated with international organizations such as the International Aids Society, CIVICUS, the Aids and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, and the U.S. Alumni Exchange Programme. In 2014, he was hosted by the Center for Human Rights and Rehabilitation in Lilongwe, Malawi. In 2013, Oabona was one of twenty litigants who successfully compelled the Government of Botswana to register an LGBTI organization, Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals of Botswana. He has also presented abstracts on sexual and reproductive health rights research in Nairobi and in other African countries. He holds a master’s in human rights and democratization in Africa from the University of Pretoria, following an undergraduate degree in social work from the University of Botswana.