Burkina Faso junta takes a step toward criminalizing homosexuality
Military tribunal approves draft measure to prohibit same-sex intimacy
The military government of Burkina Faso in West Africa has adopted a measure to ban homosexuality, if the country’s transitional parliament approves.
A record of that decision was seen today by Agence France-Presse.
The measure was approved in a weekly council of ministers meeting overseen by interim military leader Ibrahim Traore. Reuters reported.
No penalty was specified in the junta’s decree, which declared a new Code of Persons and Family (CPF) to “enshrine the prohibition of homosexuality” in the country, the junta said in a statement.
Reuters described the action as approving “the draft of an amended family code that criminalises homosexuality.”
Even before the measure is approved by the current parliament (the Transitional Legislative Assembly), Minister of Justice Edasso Rodrigue Bayala claimed that “homosexuality and similar practices are henceforth prohibited and punishable by law.”
Burkina Faso has not had a law against same-sex intimacy, but the government’s High Council of Communication, which regulates the media, last August issued a “ban the broadcasting of television channels promoting homosexuality”.
The country has been under military rule since two coups in 2022. It has joined a confederation with juntas in neighbouring Mali and Niger.
As of mid-June, 30 of Africa’s 54 countries had anti-homosexuality law and 24 did not. A series of African nations has decriminalized homosexuality including Gabon, Mauritius, Angola, Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Botswana, and Mozambique all decriminalizing since 2012. Namibia’s High Court struck down that nation’s anti-sodomy law on June 21.
However, parliaments in Ghana and Uganda, where gay sex was already illegal, approved tougher laws against homosexuality in 2023 and 2024.
