West Africa pushes tally of nations with anti-gay laws to 65
Burkina Faso’s new anti-gay law provides up to 5 years in prison for homosexuality
The number of countries with anti-gay laws has crept back up to 65 with passage of a law against “homosexuality and similar practices” in the West African nation of Burkina Faso.
Adoption of the anti-gay law, which calls for prison terms of two to five years, comes amid a wave of anti-homosexuality legislation and proposed legislation in West Africa and beyond, including anti-gay military regimes in Mali and Niger, ongoing agitation for a stricter anti-LGBTQ law in Ghana and the 2023 enactment of a law in Uganda that calls for the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”.
Burkina Faso’s anti-law was unanimously passed on Monday by 71 unelected members of the country’s transitional government. That regime has been in place since the military seized power under the leadership of the now President Ibrahim Traore, after two coups in 2022.
Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala announced the anti-gay law on national television and said convictions would result in unspecified fines along with prison time.
“If a person is a perpetrator of homosexual or similar practices, all the bizarre behavior, they will go before the judge,” he said, adding that foreign nationals would be deported under the law.
LGBTQ rights journalist Rob Salerno, an editor for Erasing 76 Crimes, described the background of the new anti-gay law today in his LGBTQ Global newsletter. (Click here to read and subscribe to it.)
“Along with Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso is part of a trio of West African states that had coups in the last few years, and which have been working together toward some form of political union designed to counter Western (and in particular French) influence in the region. All three announced they would be criminalizing homosexuality last year, although so far Mali was the only one that had formally done so until now,” Salerno reported.
“The minister appears to say that the law was kept intentionally vague so that it can be used to harass pretty much anyone the government doesn’t like, which sounds ominous, even for a country living under a military junta,” he added.
Burkina Faso has been added to the full Erasing 76 Crimes list of nations with anti-gay laws.