United Nations rights chief urges Uganda’s president to block anti-LGBTQ bill

The United Nations rights chief is urging Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to block an anti-LGBTQ bill that prescribes harsh penalties for some homosexual offenses, including death and life imprisonment.

“The passing of this discriminatory bill – probably among the worst of its kind in the world – is a deeply troubling development,” Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement Wednesday.

Uganda’s legislature passed the bill late Tuesday in a protracted plenary session during which last-minute changes were made to the legislation that originally included penalties of up to 10 years in jail for homosexual offenses.

In the version passed by lawmakers the offense of “aggravated homosexuality” now carries the death penalty. Aggravated homosexuality applies in cases of sex relations involving those infected with HIV as well as minors and other categories of vulnerable people.

According to the bill, a suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be jailed for 14 years, and the offense of “attempted homosexuality” is punishable by up to 10 years.

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The offense of “homosexuality” is punishable by life imprisonment, the same punishment prescribed in a colonial-era penal code criminalizing sex acts “against the order of nature.”

The bill was introduced last month by an opposition lawmaker who said his goal was to punish “promotion, recruitment and funding” related to LGBTQ activities in this East African country where homosexuals are widely disparaged.

A Ugandan man is seen during the third annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride celebrations in Uganda, on Aug. 9, 2014. Ugandan lawmakers passed a bill on March 21, 2023, prescribing jail terms for offenses related to same-sex relations. (AP Photo/Rebecca Vassie, File)

The bill now goes to Museveni, who can veto or sign it into law. He suggested in a recent speech that he supports the legislation, accusing unnamed Western nations of “trying to impose their practices on other people.”

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“If signed into law by the president, it will render lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Uganda criminals simply for existing, for being who they are,” Turk, the U.N. rights chief, said in the statement. “It could provide carte blanche for the systematic violation of nearly all of their human rights and serve to incite people against each other.”

Anti-gay sentiment in Uganda has grown in recent weeks amid alleged reports of sodomy in boarding schools, including a prestigious one for boys where a parent accused a teacher of abusing her son. Authorities are investigating that case.

The recent decision of the Church of England to bless civil marriages of same-sex couples also has inflamed many, including some who see homosexuality as imported from abroad.

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Uganda’s LGBTQ community in recent years has faced growing pressure from civilian authorities who wanted a tough new law punishing same-sex activities.

The Ugandan agency overseeing the work of non-governmental organizations last year stopped the operations of Sexual Minorities Uganda, the most prominent LGBTQ organization in the country, accusing it of failing to register legally. But the group’s leader stated that his organization had been rejected by the registrar of companies as undesirable.

Homosexuality is criminalized in more than 30 of Africa’s 54 countries.