President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in his recent interview, has revealed Ghana currently doesn't have any law that criminalizes the activities of LGBTQ+ persons.
The Proper Human
Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021 is currently before
Parliament.
The Bill
proposes jail terms for people who engage in same-sex activities and various
forms of support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Nana Addo answering a question asked at the Jubilee House on Monday, March 27, 2023, when US Vice President Kamala Harris called on him, confirmed that the bill is currently before Parliament and yet to be approved by the lawmakers.
He said:
"It hasn't been passed, so the statement that there is legislation in
Ghana to that effect is not accurate.
The anti-LGBTQ
bill, titled, "The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian
Family Values Bill 2021", was submitted to Parliament in June 2021.
The bill, among
others, seeks to make it a crime to be LGBTQ+ or to advocate LGBTQ+ rights.
Offenders could face jail terms.
Section 6 of the
LGBTQI+ bill, states that "a person commits an offence if the person holds
out as any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary
categories of male and female."
However, the
Bill in Section 6 (c), (f) (ii), and (g) (ii), exempts intersex people who
'agree' to undergo sexual reassignment to correct their 'abnormality'.
The submission
of the bill to Parliament elicited a major public debate over its
appropriateness.
Many religious
organizations and like-minded institutions and individuals have expressed their
full support for the bill to be passed into law while some civil society
organizations (CSOs) and other campaigners had opposed it with the explanation
that it would infringe on the human rights of LGBTQ+ people in the country, and
subject them to persecution and violence
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