Ghana’s Parliament on Wednesday handed a invoice that additional clamps down on L.G.B.T.Q. rights by imposing jail phrases on those that establish as homosexual or kind L.G.B.T.Q. teams, measures that Amnesty Worldwide known as among the many most stringent laws on the African continent.
The laws, if signed into regulation by President Nana Akufo-Addo, would imply that individuals convicted of figuring out as homosexual might be sentenced to a few years in jail, these deemed “promoters” of L.G.B.T.Q. points may get 5 years, and those that interact in homosexual intercourse would obtain 5 years as an alternative of the three years underneath earlier laws.
The invoice is the most recent in a wave of anti-gay laws handed in Africa: Tanzania, Niger and Namibia have tightened such legal guidelines in recent times, whereas Uganda has adopted an anti-gay regulation that features the dying penalty.
Thirty-one nations on the continent criminalize consensual same-sex sexual exercise, based on Amnesty. Many have skilled a surge in homophobic attitudes, behaviors and rhetoric in recent times, the rights group mentioned in a report final yr.
“There are nonetheless so many nations in Africa the place being L.G.B.T.Q. is taken into account evil or un-African,” mentioned Linda Nduri, a Kenya-based marketing campaign supervisor for Africa at All Out, a nonprofit group.
Each main political events in Ghana help the invoice, however in current days, its passage had been slowed by adjustments instructed by a member of the governing New Patriotic Social gathering, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, to make it much less harsh.
He mentioned earlier this month that Parliament ought to determine whether or not folks convicted underneath the anti-gay regulation needs to be given counseling and made to carry out neighborhood service as an alternative of being jailed. However a few of his colleagues in Parliament shouted him down, saying that jail phrases needs to be imposed.
