Human rights experts from the United Nations have urged Ghana’s government to reject an anti-LGBTQI draft law now being considered by Parliament’s Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs committee.
The law, according to the 13-member experts, aims to create state-sponsored discrimination and violence against LGBTQI persons.
According to the experts, “the proposed law claims that anybody who deviates from an arbitrary norm of sexual orientation or gender identity is instantly to be deemed hazardous, ill, or anti-social.”
“The proposed law promotes deeply harmful practices that amount to ill-treatment and are conducive to torture, such as so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ as well as other heinous violations like unnecessary medical procedures on intersex children and so-called corrective rape for women,” they continued.
An study of the draft law by a team of specialists has been presented to the government, according to a posting on the OHCHR website.
According to the experts, every element of the law is problematic, therefore maintaining it in its current form or any portion of it would be a breach of human rights norms.
The group of specialists expressed worry, among other things, that the law proposes to criminalize protecting LGBTQI persons and discussing the topic.
“The discussion of this law is profoundly puzzling in a nation that has long been recognized as Africa’s champion of democracy, with an excellent track record of reaching specific Millennium Development Goals by 2015,” they added.
“The proposed law seems to be the product of a profound hatred for LGBTQI people. It will not only criminalize LGBTQI individuals, but also anybody who supports, sympathizes with, or is even slightly connected with them… Given the prevalence of LGBTQI individuals in every family and society, it is easy to see how, if passed, this law may lead to conflict and violence.”
