Same-sex intercourse is already illegal in the West African nation, and is punishable by up to three years in jail.
The Ghanaian parliament has been debating the Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values bill for two years, with most MPs in favour of it.
It would criminalise same-sex relations, being transgender and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights (which alone is punishable by up to 10 yeas in jail under the bill), Reuters reported.
A legal challenge, filed by academic researcher Amanda Odoi, said the proposed legislation would affect donor aid and other financial support for the country, according to the news agency.
However, the Supreme Court ruled last week that her arguments were not convincing enough to grant an injunction, meaning Ghana’s parliament has a clear path to getting the bill through its final stages and signed into law.
Shortly after the bill had its first reading in August 2021, a group of 13 United Nations experts called for it to be rejected, branding it “a textbook example of discrimination” and a “recipe for conflict and violence”.
Earlier this year, United States vice-president Kamala Harris, standing next to Ghana president Nana Akufo-Addo during a press conference, said she felt “very strongly” about supporting the development of LGBTQ+ rights in Africa.
It was something she considered “a human rights issue and that will not change,” she added.
Other African countries are also clamping down on queer rights.
Uganda has already passed a strict anti-homosexuality bill into law. It introduces a death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality”, which is defined as sex with a person under the age of 18 and having sex while HIV positive, among other categories.
Kenya is also considering an anti-homosexuality bill. The Family Protection Act would see a complete ban on activities that “promote homosexuality”, including openly identifying as LGBTQ+ or wearing Pride emblems.
It heavily reflects the law in Uganda, with a similar “aggravated homosexuality” clause that could also result in the execution of offenders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that bans transgender individuals from receiving gender-affirming care, changing their gender in official documents and public records, fostering or adopting children, and having a legal marriage. Marriages involving at least one trans person will be annulled.
Legislators who promoted the new law said it is necessary to protect Russia’s “traditional values” against “Western anti-family ideology,” including the “pure satanism” of transitioning, The Guardian reported. Similar rhetoric has been used to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a deadly ongoing attack now entering its 516th day.
“There will be suicides in the trans community, no doubt because [the law] will make some people feel really hopeless and trapped,” one trans Russian told the BBC. The law may also create a dangerous black market for hormones that are unregulated by medical authorities, an expert told the Bangkok Post.
Between 2016 and 2022, 2,990 Russians legally changed gender, the Post reports. Russia also granted gender marker updates on ID starting in 1997. But anti-LGBTQ+ authoritarianism has grown in the country since Putin rose to power in 1999.
ILGA-Europe, a continental LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, said that the new law “flagrantly violates fundamental human rights standards and principles.”
“The trans and gender diverse community in Russia [and their] rights and wellbeing are under attack,” the group added. “Everyone has the right to self-determination, privacy, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
The group also noted that denying trans people healthcare will worsen their mental health. Furthermore, denying trans people the rights to correct gender markers on documents, to marriage, and to raise children will place them “in legal” limbo, ILGA-Europe noted, reinforcing negative stereotypes about trans people harming children and creating “unnecessary burdens on trans people, forcing them to disclose their private and medical history and exposing them to discrimination, harassment, and violence.”
Yan Dvorkin — a 32-year-old psychologist who works with the non-governmental trans advocacy organization Russian Centre T — called the law “fascist” and said it will be “difficult for people to hear that the state thinks of them as ‘enemies of the people,’ takes away their rights… and puts them beyond the law.”
The law is just part of Russia’s ongoing and years-long crackdown against LGBTQ+ individuals. Putin first signed a law banning so-called “gay propaganda” in Russia in June 2013. The law ostensibly sought to “protect children” from any “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships,” as stated in the law’s text.
The law has mostly been used to silence LGBTQ+ activist organizations, events, websites, and media, as well as to break up families and harass teachers. It has also been roundly condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as civil rights activists around the world.
Last December, Putin signed a law expanding the country’s prohibition on LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” The newly signed law effectively outlaws any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in Russia by banning “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising,” Reuters reported.
Critics say the updated law will further endanger the lives of Russia’s LGBTQ+ population, which has already suffered increased harassment, violence, and hostility in recent years. It has been used to prosecute a 40-year-old German teacher for sexually propositioning another adult man and also to prosecute a same-sex couple for sharing their relationship on social media.
Anti-LGBTQ+ religious leaders and right-wing political figures in the U.S. have praised Putin for his law. Indeed, Republican legislators, so-called “parents’ rights groups,” and right-wing pundits have increasingly moved to ban American kids from accessing any LGBTQ+ content, gender-affirming healthcare, or drag shows over untrue claims that these “sexualize” and “groom” children.
In 2013, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) President Austin Ruse said Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws were a “good thing” that “most of the people in the United States” would support. In 2014, anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham also defended the law.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgment-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
The rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have taken center stage ahead of Spain’s July 23 national election.
Opinion polls predict Alberto Nunez Feijoo’s conservative People’s Party (PP) will win the election after four years of coalition government by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists and the leftist Unidas Podemos.
But Feijoo would likely need the support of the far-right Vox party to form a government. Vox has strongly opposed LGBTQ rights.
Here is what you need to know.
Why are LGBTQ+ advocates worried?
Local elections in May paved the way for PP-Vox coalitions in several Spanish municipalities.
Vox made headlines in May by hanging a sign from a Madrid building showing a hand dropping cards with symbols representing feminism, communism, the LGBTQ community and Catalan independence into a rubbish bin.
A new Vox-led authority in the small eastern town of Naquera last month said it would no longer display the rainbow-colored flag on public buildings.
In Valdemorillo, a small town near Madrid, the new PP-Vox council cancelled a performance of a theatre adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando,” in which the protagonist changes gender.
What do right-wing parties advocate?
Both Vox and the PP have promised to take action against some pro-LGBTQ measures passed by the left-wing government.
They have both pledged to change a self-determination law that came into force in March, allowing trans people over 16 to change their legal gender simply by informing the official registry, rather than undergoing two years of hormone treatment.
The law also allows children over 14 to change their legal gender with parental approval.
The PP and Vox, as well as some women’s rights groups, argue the legislation puts women in single-sex spaces at risk and have accused the left of forcing children to medically transition.
“Changing your sex is easier than getting a driver’s license,” Feijoo said. Vox party leader Santiago Abascal said “the ‘trans law’ discriminates against women.”
But the parties have not clarified which parts of the law they would revoke. The legislation also banned so-called conversion therapy, which aims to change someone’s sexual orientation and gender identity, and unnecessary surgery on intersex babies, who are born neither exclusively male nor female.
Both the PP and Vox declined to answer requests for comment.
Vox has also proposed allowing parents to take their children out of sex education classes and lessons covering sexual and gender diversity.
What do LGBTQ activists say?
Spain is fourth in the ranking of European countries’ LGBTQ rights by advocacy group ILGA-Europe, but LGBTQ activists said a PP-Vox government would roll back their rights.
Several international surveys rank Spain amongst the most LGBTQ-friendly societies in the world, although hate crimes against the community rose by 68% between 2019 and 2021, Interior Ministry data showed.
A right-wing government could also target LGBTQ rights by failing to implement existing laws, said Uge Sangil, head of LGBTQ umbrella group, FELGTB.
“We could go back 40 years,” Sangil said.
For some, a PP-Vox coalition could also delay long-awaited measures such as including a nonbinary option on identity documents.
“It would not only mean bring a setback in rights — we would also have practically no chances of moving forward,” said Darko Decimavilla, a nonbinary activist.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in Cameroon are all too aware of homophobic rhetoric and violent attacks against them. This has been highlighted once again in the outpouring of vitriol before a scheduled visit by Jean-Marc Berthon, the French ambassador for the Rights of LGBT+ Persons.
Berthon was due to visit Cameroon later last month for an event on gender and sexuality hosted by the French Institute in Yaoundé, the capital. Cameroon’s government officially registered its objection to the visit, and Foreign Minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella said in the media that the visit would contravene Cameroonian law, which forbids consensual same-sex relations.
The visit was then cancelled.
Since the visit was announced, many people have called for mob justice and violence against LGBT persons on social media. Some government and political officials, as well as public figures, referred to LGBT people as “against nature,” “an anomaly,” “vampire citizens,” “destructive of the family,” “destructive of the state,” or as using “satanic and demonic practices.” In addition to this online hatred, people perceived as LGBT live with constant threats of harassment and physical violence every day.
Tamu (not their real name), an LGBT activist living in Yaoundé, told me, “The situation is very tense. People are scared. Everywhere you go you hear: ‘We have to burn them all.’ … There are young [LGBT] people calling me from everywhere. They don’t know what to do.”
The foreign minister claimed that there are no LGBT people in Cameroon, which is patently false. LGBT groups exist in Cameroon and several even manage to work with the government on initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS. But Cameroon has a dismal track record on upholding the rights of LGBT people. Security forces have failed to protect LGBT people from violence and in some instances have been responsible for acts of violence, or complicit in them. The Cameroonian government should unequivocally condemn violence and incitement to violence against LGBT people, investigate such crimes against LGBT persons, and bring those responsible to justice.
In June, the Japanese Diet, the national legislature of Japan, passed its first-ever law on sexual orientation and gender identity. It seeks to “promote understanding” and avoid “unfair discrimination.” The law states that “all citizens, irrespective of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, are to be respected as individuals with inherent and inviolable fundamental human rights.” While a good start, the measure falls short of the comprehensive nondiscrimination legislation called for by a number of Japanese rights groups.
The legislation obligates the national government to draw up a basic implementation plan to promote understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and to protect them from “unfair discrimination.” It also stipulates that government entities, businesses, and schools “need to strive” to take similar action.
A first draft of the bill had to be shelved following opposition from conservative members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which included prejudiced statements and political posturing. But in early 2023, LGBT rights groups united to revive the bill, launching a new Group of Seven (G7) engagement group, Pride7, to establish a dialogue between civic groups and G7 governments about LGBT-related policies. With encouragement from peer G7 nations, the LDP submitted a revised bill to the Diet on May 18, a day before the G7 summit began in Hiroshima. But again, facing opposition from lawmakers, the bill was subject to delays and revisions.
The long journey for equality for Japan’s LGBT community is not over. This new law, while advancing the rights of LGBT people, falls well short of ensuring them equal protection from discrimination.
In an address to Russia’s Duma last month, Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy summed up his government’s rationale for a recent onslaught of discriminatory legislation and government action targeting the LGBTQ+ community in the country.
The occasion was the introduction of a bill to outlaw gender-affirming care and surgery and gender ID changes in the country.
“This is another step in protecting national interests,” Tolstoy told the Duma on June 14.
Referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine starting in February last year, Tolstoy said, “We are implementing this because Russia has changed since the beginning of the special military operation. And those guys who today defend our country with weapons in their hands, they must return to another country, not to the one that was before.”
For Vladimir Putin and his rubber-stamp parliament, the war in Ukraine is an effort not only to remake Russia geographically but an opportunity to transform the country into a Greater Russia free of the “moral decay” and “pure Satanism” they say has infected the country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“We are preserving Russia for posterity, with its cultural and family values, traditional foundations, and putting up a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology,” Tolstoy said during the bill’s first reading in June.
The new law is the latest in a slew of government actions aimed at erasing LGBTQ+ identity in Russia.
In December, Putin signed legislation banning “LGBT propaganda,” which includes any public reference to “non-traditional lifestyles,” along with a crackdown on the conflated sins of “pedophilia and gender reassignment.”
Bookshops have been forced to remove LGBTQ+ content from shelves, while gaming and streaming platforms have pulled down content, including same-sex pornography. Google was fined in May for refusing to remove LGBTQ+ videos from YouTube in Russia.
The same law has been used to target consensual sex among LGBTQ+ people in the country. In May, a 40-year-old German teacher was convicted of violating the law for inviting a 25-year-old man to his hotel room for sex. In March, a same-sex couple was prosecuted for going public with their relationship on TikTok.
Earlier legislation, including a law passed in 2013 that placed a limit on LGBTQ+-affirmative content disseminated to minors, has been used to shut down Pride marches, detain activists, and lay the foundation of the culture of fear overwhelming the LGBTQ+ community in Russia today.
The latest legislation would ban gender-affirming care for trans people of any age in the country and overturn the ability of trans individuals to change gender on official documents.
Richard Volkov, a 26-year-old trans musician from Moscow, told Reuters trans men he knows in Russia are scrambling to change IDs and start hormone treatment.
“This is the worst thing my country could do,” he said from Sagarejo in Georgia, where he fled after the war began. “It seems that if I simply tell myself that I exist, I am already violating the law.”
36-year-old Elle Solomina, another trans political refugee in Georgia, calls the pending legislation a purely “fascist law.”
“I have not found any explanation for it,” she said in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, “except that in a totalitarian system, the population must live in fear.”
Russia has granted gender ID changes since 1997, four years after it decriminalized homosexuality in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup.
But the tide has turned since those liberalizing policies accompanied Russia’s brief opening to the West.
Now Vladimir Putin is invoking the bad old days of the Soviet Union in a call to form a new institute to study LGBTQ+ behavior at the state-run Serbsky Psychiatric Center, notorious in mid-20th century Soviet Russia for its mental and physical torture of dissidents.
Georgia’s annual LGBT+ Pride event was evacuated by the police on Saturday after hundreds of counter-protesters stormed the site. In a statement, organisers of the festival in the capital of Tbilisi announced that they had been forced to shut down the annual festivities after the authorities failed to maintain the perimeter.
“Today’s developments indicate that today’s planned events were pre-coordinated and agreed upon between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the violent group Alt-Info,” Tbilisi Pride said.
Smoke rose above the site, a field just outside the city, as LGBT+ rainbow flags were burned and right-wing activists danced to traditional Georgian folk music. Attendees had been told to board buses for safety moments before.
A court in the Kurdistan region of Iraq dealt independent civil society a blow on May 31, 2023, by ordering the closure of Rasan Organization over “its activities in the field of homosexuality,” Human Rights Watch said today. Rasan is the only human rights organization willing to vocally support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), in addition to its work on women’s rights and domestic violence.
“Shuttering Rasan is not only an attack on civil society in Kurdistan but is also a direct threat to the lives and wellbeing of the vulnerable people they support,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “By closing Rasan, the government has sent a clear message that it does not respect freedom of association.”
Tanya Kamal Darwish, CEO of Rasan Organization, told Human Rights Watch that the purported reason for closing the group down was not because of its activities, but because the judge took issue with its logo, which contains the colors of the rainbow. The court order states that “the expert committee confirmed that the logo of the organization is a complete expression of its activities in the field of homosexuality.”
Rasan has appealed but is unable to continue operating while the appeal is pending.
The closure of Rasan is part of a broader pattern of oppression and targeting of LGBT people and activists by local Kurdish authorities in recent years. Human Rights Watch has previously documented the targeting of LGBT people online and violence against LGBT people by armed groups in Iraq, including the regional government.
The closure is the result of a lawsuit filed against Rasan in February 2021 by Omar Kolbi, a member of the Kurdistan Parliament, who accused Rasan of “promoting homosexuality,” and “engaging in activities that defy social norms, traditions, and public morality.” Kolbi also submitted a complaint to Barzan Akram Mantiq, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Department of Non-Governmental Organizations, an official body responsible for registering, organizing, and monitoring all nongovernmental organizations in the region.
After the suit was filed, local police issued arrest warrants for 11 LGBT rights activists who were either current or former employees at Rasan based on article 401 of the penal code, which criminalizes “public indecency.”
“The Department of Non-Governmental Organizations is supporting MP Kolbi’s complaint against us, but that is backward,” Darwish said. “The department should have been supporting us, not standing against us.”
Darwish said that the trial, which took place last year, focused on the activities of Rasan and never mentioned any issues with the group’s logo. “They were asking about our activities, and we told them what we do,” Darwish said. “We focus on human rights. Anyone who comes to us with a problem we help without any discrimination.”
Rasan found out about the issue with the logo only when the court decision was published. “We weren’t expecting them to take any action against us, since we weren’t doing anything illegal. They used the logo as an excuse because they couldn’t find anything illegal in our activities,” Darwish said.
Rasan, which has operated in Sulaimaniya, a city in the Kurdistan region, for nearly two decades, has faced increasing threats and official retaliation for its activism and work. The group provides legal, psychological, and social support for women and LGBT clients, raises awareness of LGBT and women’s rights, and collects and compiles data relevant to LGBT people and gender-based violence.
In September 2022, members of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament introduced the “Bill on the Prohibition of Promoting Homosexuality,” which would punish any individual or group that advocates for the rights of LGBT people. Under the bill, the vague provision against “promoting homosexuality” would be a crime punishable by imprisonment for up to one year and a fine of up to five million dinars (US$3,430). The bill would also suspend, for up to one month, the licenses of media companies and civil society organizations that “promote homosexuality.”
Momentum for adopting the bill appears to have stalled, but in the context of repeated targeting of LGBT people, local LGBT rights activists fear it could be quickly revived and passed at the whim of local authorities.
“By going after Rasan, authorities are effectively scapegoating activists working to protect among the most vulnerable members of society, who should not fear reprisals for speaking up about abuses,” Coogle said. “The Kurdistan Regional Government should take immediate steps to ensure that organizations like Rasan are permitted to operate freely and cease harassment and targeting of LGBT advocates.”
As the UK government fights to save its Rwanda asylum plan in the Supreme Court, a gay man from the country reports on the dangers facing the community there.
On Thursday (29 June), the Court of Appeal ruled that the government’s much-criticised plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Prime minister Rishi Sunak and home secretary Suella Braverman have indicated that they intend to challenge the ruling.
On the same day, the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which backs up the Rwanda plan, suffered heavy defeats in the House of Lords.
Innocent Uwimana – whose name has been changed to protect his identity – is a gay man from Rwanda who migrated to the UK about 20 years ago.
He knows first-hand what life is like for LGBTQ+ people in Rwanda, and it’s for this reason that he is so disturbed by the UK’s proposal.
As debate rages on about the bill, Innocent set about finding out what life is like right now for queer people in Rwanda. Here, he reports on conversations during which he found that stigma and abuse are still a part of every-day life for LGBTQ+ people in the East African country.
‘We don’t understand how the UK government would send LGBTQ+ people here’
However, same-sex marriage is prohibited and LGBTQ+ people are not protected from discrimination by any specific legislation.
LGBTQ+ people face stigmatisation and abuse there every day and there are many other factors that fuel hatred against them, especially religious and cultural factors.
I’ve had a chance to speak to a group of Rwandan LGBTQ+ people who currently live in the country, and who have faced discrimination their entire lives because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
“We don’t understand how the UK government would send LGBTQ+ people here knowing that they will face discrimination. Although the country’s recent human rights advances have been ‘enormous’, not all Rwandans are able to enjoy them equally,” one person told me.
The people in the group explained the tactics used to discriminate anyone perceived to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Religion and culture are used as arguments to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people
The UK government has to understand that Rwandans’ conceptions of the world are substantially shaped by their religious beliefs, that religious ideas heavily shape their attitudes and behaviours.
On tope of that, homophobia has evolved into a rallying cry that mobilises the masses by urging them to guard themselves against westernisation. Political and religious leaders, as well as social media influencers, justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ people on the grounds of culture.
They claim that homosexuality and non-heteronormative gender identities are not part of African culture and that they were brought to Africa by Western countries (especially the US and European nations) as a way to impose their beliefs on the continent.
Some also claim that Western countries intend to wipe out the African population by promoting homosexuality and preventing people being in heterosexual relationships in which they can have children.
However, there is historical evidence of same-sex relationships and gender expression versatility as they are well-documented in many places in Africa, including Rwanda.
For example, in Rwanda, cyabakobwa (men behaving and crossdressing as women) and ibishebago (women behaving and dressing as men) were tolerated and they lived in peace in the communities in pre-colonial times.
But, unfortunately, this is no longer the case, and LGBTQ+ individuals have to hide or are forced to flee to other countries.
The controversial cases of a Rwandan fashion star and a social media influencer
The people I spoke with noted recent, well-documented cases of violence against LGBTQ+ people and people simply perceived to be part of the community.
One example is that of a famous DJ and social media influencer who has been accused of being a lesbian. Despite her denial, she has been attacked in the media by religious leaders and other social media influencers, demanding she be arrested or beaten up.
‘We hope the UK government will hear our voice’
Rwanda is clearly a country from which most LGBTQ+ people want to get out, to live in a place where they can be free and themselves. So why would the UK government think it is safe to send queer people there?
The people I chatted to were surprised that a country like the UK, previously known for pushing the human rights agenda, was now deliberately planning to send people to a place where it is known that they will face stigmatisation and discrimination.
When I asked the group what they sought to achieve, they said: “We hope the UK government will hear our voice and don’t put other people in a situation many others want to get out of.“
Ivan Miadini said it was like a scene out of the Old Testament.
He and his husband were walking their dog a week ago Saturday night in Drogheda, north of the Irish capital in Dublin, when a gang of teenage boys starting verbally abusing them, calling them “f****t bastards”, “queers” and “pedophiles.”
“They threatened to kill us, rape our dog and told us to go back to our own countries,” Miadini told the Independent. “They were going to chase us off the island.”
The incident escalated as the teenagers started hurling stones at the couple and their dog and then physically attacked them. Both men were punched in the head and face. One man suffered a broken nose.
The attack lasted over a minute.
Despite the violence, Miadini managed to record most of the incident — he said the boys knocked his phone from his hands twice — and he posted it online in hopes local residents would come forward with information about the attackers’ identities.
Remarkably, the couple hasn’t contacted cops.
Referring to the state police in Ireland, Miadini told a local radio station, “I didn’t film with the intention of sharing it with the Garda. I think there is another way to go here.”
“I am sharing this with various outlets, with people I know to share it among themselves so we can find out who these people are and see what their situation is.”
“I really want to know before taking this further down the line.”
A local Garda source told the Irish Mirror police are aware of the video online and that it was a “shocking” attack. He hopes the couple comes forward.
“These teenage gangs should not get away with this,” he said. “There is no excuse for such vile homophobic and racist abuse.”
Imelda Munster, a member of the Irish Parliament representing Drogheda, said she’s spoken to the victims and condemned the attack.
“These are two law-abiding citizens going out for a walk with their dog when they are attacked in broad daylight because of who they are.
“Under no circumstances should these thugs get away with this. It was a frightening incident and everyone in Drogheda is shocked and angry.”
For their part, the couple, who recently relocated from Dublin, think their attackers should avoid jail time and be directed on a path to community service.
“I don’t think the solution here is just to throw the book at them with a criminal prosecution,” Miadini said.
“If these young people aren’t educated, they will grow up to carry out worse assaults.”
“Hopefully it doesn’t take root,” said Miadini, “because that kind of hate can only grow.”