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02-06-2026
ACCRA: The parliament in Ghana has approved a new bill criminalizing homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ activities.
Identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender or queer can be punished by up to three years’ imprisonment. The bill also introduces a “duty to report” prohibited acts to police.
Religious leaders have pressured President John Dramani Mahama, who still needs to ratify the legislation, to strengthen anti-gay laws since he came to power last year.
The ban has been sharply criticized by international organizations, including Human Rights Watch, which said it placed LGBTQ+ peoples’ lives at risk while also “encouraging citizens to surveil and denounce one another”.
Same-sex relationships have been banned in Ghana under laws dating from the British colonial era.
In an address to Parliament, the bill’s sponsor Reverend John Ntim Fordjour said the bill protected Ghanaian family and cultural values.
He said the new bans would make existing laws “more robust, more encompassing, and more stringent in dealing with the practices of LGBTQI”.
Anyone who identifies as an “ally”, a general term for a supporter of LGBTQ+ people, could also face a prison sentence.
Exemptions were included for legal, media and healthcare professionals who report on LGBTQ+ issues or provide medical treatment or other services for gay people.
Human Rights Watch recommended the bill be abandoned, in a formal submission to the constitutional and legal affairs committee scrutinizing the legislation in the capital Accra.
Ghana passed a similar bill in 2024 but it did not become law after former president Akufo-Addo failed to sign it amid legal challenges.
President Mahama has indicated he would support the bill’s passage, saying shortly after he took office that “I believe in the principles and values that only two genders exist, man and woman and that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Several African countries have cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights in recent years.
Senegal’s parliament approved similar legislation in March which prescribes a maximum prison term of 10 years for sexual acts by same-sex couples and criminalizing the ‘”promotion’” of homosexuality.
Uganda introduced a death penalty for certain same-sex acts in 2023.
In 2024, Homophobia is not uncommon in Ghana, where gay sex is already against the law and carries a three-year prison sentence but now the LGBTQ+ community is feeling terrorized. A new bill, passed by MPs last week, will impose a jail term of up to three years for simply identifying as LGBTQ+ and five years for promoting their activities.
“A relative told me if this bill is passed, any chance he gets, he is going to poison me because I am an abomination to the family,” Mensah, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, tells media.
Dressed in an all-black outfit, the young man in his late teens looks visibly terrified: “I am very worried anyone can snitch on me, even in my own neighborhood. It’s going to be very hard to live here.”
He has been living for some time with sympathetic friends in Ghana’s capital, Accra, since falling out with his family.
It is not clear how large the LGBTQ+ community is in Ghana, a religious and traditionally conservative nation but they tend to help each other out when one of them faces life as an outcast. Mensah says when his mother discovered several years ago that he was attracted to boys, she started taking him to churches for prayers with the hope he would change. (Int’l News Desk)
