Ghana

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Ghana’s parliament on Friday ‌approved a new bill that criminalizes the so-called promotion of LGBTQ activity, part of a broader crackdown on sexual minorities in West Africa.

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, passed by a voice vote after the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee unanimously recommended its adoption, first deputy speaker Bernard Ahiafor said.

The ⁠bill was introduced last year shortly after President John Dramani Mahama took office. Lawmakers from Mahama’s political party, the National Democratic Congress, had been urged by religious leaders and other supporters of the bill to vote on it, and Mahama will now face pressure to sign it.

Lawmakers passed an earlier version of the bill in 2024, under Mahama’s predecessor, President Nana Akufo-Addo, but it faced legal challenges and Akufo-Addo never signed it into law.

The bill approved on Friday maintains the existing penalty of up to three ‌years ⁠in prison for same-sex sexual acts. It also bans “funding, sponsorship or promotion” of LGBTQ acts, with prison terms ranging from three to five years. And it introduces a “duty to report” prohibited LGBTQ acts to a police officer or other authorities, with violators facing up to three ⁠years behind bars.

The bill further amends Ghana’s Extradition Act of 1960 to make offences under the new law extraditable offences.

West Africa has seen a raft of anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent months.

Senegalese President ⁠Bassirou Diomaye Faye in March signed a bill doubling the maximum prison term for same-sex sexual acts to 10 years and criminalizing any efforts to promote homosexuality.

In September last ⁠year, lawmakers in Burkina Faso voted to criminalize same-sex sexual acts for the first time and to criminalize “behaviour likely to promote homosexual practices and similar practices.”

*This was reported by Reuters.

ACCRA, March 3 (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 “willful 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 favorable for conservative values as demonstrated in the bold conservative pronouncements of (U.S.) President Donald Trump,” he said.

Tag: Ghana

Ghana lawmakers approve bill criminalizing LGBTQ ‘promotion’

Ghana lawmakers reintroduce anti-LGBTQ legislation