UN officials repeat calls for global decriminalisation of homosexuality
July 25, 2024The U.N. human rights chief and the executive director of UNAIDS have reiterated their calls for countries to decriminalise consensual same-sex sexual relations, ‘Washington Blade’ reports.
“Laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ people must be consigned to history,” stated Volker Türk and Winnie Byanyima in a statement released on July 19.
The 25th International AIDS Conference commenced in Munich on Monday.
The statement highlights that in the past decade, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Botswana, the Cook Islands, Dominica, Gabon, India, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, Seychelles, Singapore, and Trinidad and Tobago have all repealed laws that criminalised consensual same-sex sexual relations.
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On June 21, the Namibian High Court struck down the country’s Apartheid-era sodomy laws.
In April, Dominica’s High Court of Justice ruled that provisions of the country’s Sexual Offenses Act, which criminalised anal sex and “gross indecency,” were unconstitutional. Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence stated in the decision that “the laws commonly known as buggery and gross indecency laws, contravene the constitution of the Commonwealth of Dominica, namely the right to liberty, freedom of expression, and protection of personal privacy.”
Earlier this month, Burkina Faso’s military government announced plans to criminalise consensual same-sex sexual relations. Meanwhile, Ugandan activists continue to challenge their country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Activists assert that criminalisation laws harm people with HIV/AIDS, among other groups. Türk and Byanyima noted in their statement that these statutes “harm public health.”
“Criminalization of LGBTQ+ people generates justified fear amongst people who need access to health services, and amongst the frontline workers who provide those services,” they remarked.
“In criminalizing countries, there is decreased provision and uptake of HIV prevention services, and decreased uptake of HIV care and treatment services,” Türk and Byanyima added.
They concluded that the “decriminalization of LGBTQ+ people is vital for protecting everyone’s human rights and everyone’s health.”
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