By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila
ACCRA (Reuters) – Ghanaian lawmakers have reintroduced a bill that would become one of Africa’s most restrictive pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, three sponsors told Reuters, after an earlier attempt to enact it fell short because of legal challenges.
Same-sex sexual acts are currently punishable by up to three years in prison in Ghana. The bill would increase the maximum penalty to five years and also impose jail time for the “wilful promotion, sponsorship, or support of LGBTQ+ activities”.
Ghana’s parliament approved the bill in February 2024 but then-President Nana Akufo-Addo did not sign it before his term ended and John Dramani Mahama took office in January.
Any bill passed by parliament must go to the president to be signed into law.
Ruling party lawmakers Samuel Nartey George and Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah and opposition lawmaker John Ntim Fordjour told Reuters the same bill had been reintroduced in parliament on February 25, sponsored by 10 lawmakers in total.
The bill intensifies a crackdown on the rights of LGBTQ people and those accused of “promotion” of sexual and gender minority rights.
Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, a Ghanaian trans woman and LGBTQ activist, told Reuters the bill’s reintroduction was “disheartening and hard to process” but that pro-LGBTQ activism would continue.
The fate of the legislation is unclear. Mahama has said he’d prefer a government-sponsored law rather than one sponsored by parliamentarians.
Last year Ghana’s finance ministry warned that the bill, if signed into law, could jeopardise $3.8 billion in World Bank financing and derail a $3 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund.
Past polling has shown a lack of tolerance for LGBTQ people in Ghana and Fordjour said the country no longer needed to fear economic sanctions.
“The global political climate is favourable for conservative values as demonstrated in the bold conservative pronouncements of (U.S.) President Donald Trump,” he said.
(Editing by Portia Crowe, Robbie Corey-Boulet and Ros Russell)
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