MEPs Strongly Condemn Anti-LGBTIQ Bill in Uganda
Members of the European Parliament have expressed their strong condemnation of a bill outlawing identification as LGBTIQ which is due to be either vetoed or passed by Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
MEPs have issued a statement expressing their concern at The Anti Homosexuality Bill 2023 passed in March by the country’s law makers. According to the statement EU-Uganda relations are at stake should President Museveni sign the Bill into law.
Same-sex relationships are illegal in Uganda with life imprisonment set as the maximum punishment for engaging in a same sex relationship.
MEPs also took the opportunity to express their worries about current global anti-rights, anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ movements and rhetoric that claims LGBTIQ people are an ideology rather than human beings which the statement says is also used by governments in the EU.
Denouncing Uganda’s anti-LGBTIQ Bill, MEPs are calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity.
The EU Parliament highlights that the Bill, which proposes the death penalty, life imprisonment or up to 20 years in prison for the offences of ‘homosexuality’ or its ‘promotion’, violates the Ugandan Constitution, Uganda’s obligations to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, and international law.
MEPs are expressing their concerns over the possible impact of the Bill in the African region, given the growing trend of criminalising LGBTIQ people in some parts of Africa, such as Ghana, Niger and Kenya. The resolution deplores President Museveni’s contribution to the hateful rhetoric about LGBTIQ persons, adding that EU-Uganda relations will be at stake should the President sign the Bill.
MEPs are calling on the EU Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) to use all necessary diplomatic, legal and financial means to convince the President to not sign the law and establish an EU strategy for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity.
MEPs are worried about the current global anti-rights, anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ movements, which are fuelled by some political and religious leaders around the world, including within the EU, saying that these movements dramatically hinder efforts to achieve the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity.
They say that such movements legitimise the rhetoric that claims LGBTIQ people are an ideology rather than human beings. MEPs strongly condemn the spreading of such rhetoric by some influential political leaders and governments in the EU, such as in Hungary, Poland and Italy.
Image by Stockcatalog/Via Openverse/CC BY 2.0
