What Fate for the Human Rights of the Homosexual Community in Africa Today? A Comparative Study from a Legal Standpoint of Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana
Abstract
Many African countries in recent times have tightened measures on issues of the visibility of same-sex union-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer. Laws have been adopted with severe sanctions, the most death penalties, refusal to grant legalization or authorization to associations who are formed to protect homosexual rights, police arrest, detention, and torture of suspects, just to name but these. With all these, the objective of this paper therefore is to present the fate of the homosexual community in Africa today with a comparative study of Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana. The main question that guides this paper is whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer has a place in the legal environment of Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana? Is there a future for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals in Africa? If ‘we’ say yes, do national governments need to step up protection for ‘them’? Should countries that do not protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights be required to incorporate these protections into their domestic laws? The means of data collection for this study are principally primary and secondary, though observation of the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in other African countries has been of great assistance. With primary data, the laws are exploited, field studies to examine the destiny of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Cameroon, and authors’ works and radio and television broadcasting reports on a daily basis present secondary data on what is happening in other case countries. Findings show that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people’s freedom of expression and association is denied, they fear being arrested and detained with torture by the police. Findings also demonstrate that the punishment for those suspects is too severe. The result of this study shows that the destiny of lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Africa still has a long way for their recognition and acceptance and the laws of many African countries do not give them any exposure for it is considered devilish and immoral.
References
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And in August, lawmakers proposed a bill (still under review) so extreme that simply saying you are gay or lesbian could land you in mandatory conversion therapy or prison for up to 10 years. Same-sex conduct is not illegal in Rwanda, but authorities there rounded up and arbitrarily detained people regarded as socially undesirable, including over a dozen gay and transgender people, sex workers, street children, and others in the months before a planned June 2021 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
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