the Constitutional Court confirms an “anti-homosexuality” law denounced by associations and the UN

Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday (April 3) rejected an appeal seeking the annulment of a repressive anti-LGBT+ law in the East African country, a decision that outraged human rights organizations. Baptized “anti-homosexuality law 2023”the text provides for heavy penalties for people having homosexual relations and committing “promotion” of homosexuality. A crime of“aggravated homosexuality” is punishable by the death penalty, a sentence which has, however, not been applied for years in Uganda.

The announcement of the vote for this law in March 2023 had aroused serious concern from several Western countries, international institutions (UN, World Bank) and human rights organizations who had called for its repeal. The United States had imposed sanctions against the country. Sharing his “consternation”the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in a statement once again urged the Ugandan government to “repeal in its entirety” the text, which he described last year as “probably the worst in the world of its kind”.

Refusal to overturn the law

Ugandan human rights activists, two law professors from a university in the capital Kampala and two parliamentarians from the ruling party (National Resistance Movement, MNR) had approached the Constitutional Court to block this text which they considered illegal. . “Having ruled, … we refuse to overturn the anti-homosexuality law in its entirety nor will we grant a permanent injunction against its enforcement”. The five judges, however, removed several provisions that they considered incompatible with international conventions, such as penalizing the failure to denounce homosexual acts.