Ghana accused of rubber-stamping anti-gay laws

Ghana, despite its more solid reputation for democracy and respect for human rights than authoritarian Uganda, is joining it in more stringently criminalising homosexuality. Gay sex was already illegal in strongly religious, conservative Ghana before 2021 when lawmakers tabled the ‘Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill’ to criminalise even LGBTQI+ advocacy and impose harsher jail terms for same-sex relations. In a Daily Maverick analysis, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) notes that the Bill resembles a similar, more notorious one in Uganda, and both countries’ legislation have been following a rather convoluted legislative and political passage. Uganda’s Parliament first passed the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2013. This criminalised consensual same-sex conduct, with penalties of up to life imprisonment, and the death penalty for those convicted of ‘aggravated homosexuality’, which could include just repeated consensual same-sex acts. As the institute pointed out last year, homosexuality is already a crime punishable by at least imprisonment in 33 of 55 African countries. The Constitutional Court annulled the law because it wasn’t passed according to correct parliamentary procedure, but the basic Bill was eventually passed in May 2023. In March, the Constitutional Court overrode most human rights challenges and upheld the essence of the law. It did strike down sections that restricted healthcare access for LGBTQI+ people, criminalised renting premises to LGBTQI+ people, and created an obligation to report alleged acts of homosexuality.

‘The decision to scrap only two sections of the law is nothing but window dressing,’ said Nate Brown and Julia Ehrt, executive Directors of Pan Africa ILGA and ILGA World. They noted that the ‘brutally discriminatory’ Act still, for example, contained the death penalty for some consensual same-sex sexual acts. The ISS notes that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has created ambiguity about his attitude towards the legislation, including calling on parliament to revise the original draft before it was passed in May last year. He had also indicated ambivalence about the earlier 2013 version of the Bill. DM notes that his critics believe this is posturing to placate Western donors who have strongly condemned the legislation. Ghana’s President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo appears to be doing a similar dance around his country’s similar legislation, and probably for similar reasons.

Full analysis on the Daily Maverick site