Ghana’s parliament “has approved a new bill criminalizing homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ activities,” the BBC reports.
It proposes that identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer be punished by up to three years’ imprisonment. The bill also introduces a “duty to report” prohibited acts to police….international organizations, including Human Rights Watch…said it placed LGBTQ+ peoples’ lives at risk while also “encouraging citizens to surveil and denounce one another”.
Same-sex relationships have been banned in Ghana under laws dating from the British colonial era.
In an address to parliament, the bill’s sponsor Reverend John Ntim Fordjour said it would protect Ghanaian family and cultural values.
He said the new bans would make existing laws “more robust, more encompassing and more stringent in dealing with the practices of LGBTQI”.
Anyone who identifies as an “ally”, a general term for a supporter of LGBTQ+ people, could also face a prison sentence.
In 2024, Burkina Faso’s military government issued a law criminalizing homosexuality. “Henceforth homosexuality and associated practices will be punished by the law,” said Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayalawas. As CBS News noted, this made “the West African nation the latest of the continent’s 54 countries to follow a trend in banning same-sex relations. There are now only 21 African nations that do not explicitly prohibit same-sex relations. Uganda imposed the continent’s most severe laws in May.”
On the other hand, the high court in Namibia, a country in southwest Africa, recently struck down laws against gay sex. Gay sex was legalized in several African countries in recent years, such as Angola in 2021, Gabon in 2020, and in Mozambique and the Seychelles. In 2019, Botswana’s High Court struck down the criminalization of gay sex.
