President Ajay Banga
Dear President Banga:
As you know, on August 8 [2023], the World Bank stopped new lending in Uganda in response to implementation of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (the Act), one of the most draconian anti-LGBTQI+ laws in the world. We profoundly appreciated this action. Not only did it signal to governments around the world that the World Bank firmly believed in nondiscrimination as a key driver of economic development but it indicated that the World Bank was willing to make difficult decisions and expend its own political capital in defense of this belief.
We are writing to you from Uganda and around the world now because we are alarmed by the World Bank’s plan for mitigation measures in Uganda. The World Bank has announced that it will be testing the effectiveness of “mitigation measures” from July – September 2024 and that the World Bank will restart lending if they decide the measures are effective in protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.
A report from Ugandan human rights groups Convening for Equality and its Strategic Response Team highlight a “horrific breadth and depth of abuses” that have occurred as a result of the nation’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act. To read the report, click the image. (Image courtesy of Kuchu Times) As you likely know, there is ongoing troubling evidence of discrimination and violations of the human rights for LGBTQ+ people alongside the broader crackdowns on civil society in Uganda.To be clear, nothing has improved in Uganda regarding the protection of the rights of LGBTQ+ people or their ability to participate in the economy of Uganda since the bill was signed into law in 2023.
We are concerned that the World Bank’s mitigation measures are gravely flawed both in structure and substance and that implementing them will be a setback in the fight for non discrimination not only in Uganda but more generally around the world. For example:
The measures will be implemented by the Government of Uganda—which is incapable of mitigating harms from its own law which the parliament passed and the government signed. Discrimination against LGBTQI+ people is codified into Ugandan law so the government cannot be a partner in mitigating these harms. This structure is akin to putting the Taliban in charge of monitoring violations of women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan.
The World Bank has refused to describe any objective metric of what constitutes “effective,” signaling that the measures are arbitrary and that the results from testing will be open to manipulation by the Government of Uganda, who have a vested economic interest in assuring the World Bank that there are no pernicious impacts of this law, despite the ample evidence to the contrary.
LGBTQI+ people are not explicitly referenced as targets in the mitigation measures themselves, nor is other relevant terminology. The failure to explicitly reference LGBTQI+ individuals ignores the necessity and purpose of the mitigation measures themselves and enables the Government of Uganda to ignore its obligations to its LGBTQI+ citizens, furthering the reality of discrimination within the country.
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These mitigation measures as structured are a façade. They are unlikely to protect LGBTQI+ Ugandans from discrimination and they risk damaging the situation further by driving key issues underground. Furthermore, we understand that the World Bank plans to use this approach in response to other governments’ discriminatory laws and policies, providing an illusion of protection while sanctioning discriminatory governments. As such they are a massive setback to the fight for inclusive economic development.
As an inadequate package that will be impossible to measure and enforce, and will do nothing more than provide the mirage of protection for LGBTQI+ Ugandans, they should be withdrawn.
We are calling on you to show leadership now: do not restart lending to Uganda. Such decisive action is necessary given the policies mandated by the World Bank’s Board of Directors.
Restarting lending to a country that is flagrantly and continuously violating the rights of vulnerable people on the basis of this package of appallingly weak measures will go down in history as a green light for not only the discrimination of Ugandans, but also for enabling government embrace of discriminatory policies and laws globally.
Sincerely,
#Unify Movements
