Parliament is expected to consider the report on the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights, and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, also known as the anti-LGBTQ+ bill.
This was made known by the Ranking Member of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, who indicated that the committee will present the report on the bill to the plenary for consideration later today, Friday, March 24, 2024.
According to him, the committee has considered the various inputs from Ghanaians and other stakeholders after they received over 200 memoranda on the bill.
“…We are at a stage that the committee’s report and the recommended amendments on the LGBTQ+ bill are ready, so it is likely [today] we will lay the report on the LGBTQ+ bill by which it has now moved from the committee to the plenary for consideration.”
“So, it will be for a second reading, then after the second reading when the bill passes through, it moves to the consideration stage, the third reading then it is passed. [After it is passed], it will be referred to the president for accent in line with the constitutional imperatives,” he told the media on Thursday, March 23, 2023.
In July 2021, eight MPs introduced a new bill that, in its current form, would criminalize not only same-sex relationships and marriages but also identifying as LGBTQI+, supporting and funding LGBTQI+ organizations, and engaging in public discourse or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The bill drew sharp local and international criticism. Soon after it came before Ghana’s parliament, UN human rights experts called it “a recipe for conflict and violence” that would mandate “deeply harmful practices that amount to ill-treatment and are conducive to torture”, including “corrective rape” for women.
In an earlier interview with one of the main sponsors of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, Samuel Nartey George, hinted that the bill will be presented before the house adjourns for recess in March 2023.
“I can see that we now have a light at the end of the tunnel. We have reached the end of the tunnel. And we’ll be bringing that report hopefully before the end of March or before this house rises and laying it before the house for debates on the floor. And so watch this space. We are in a good place. And we’ll be looking forward to you giving us all the support to pass this landmark bill, which will be the first of its kind. Yesterday the Attorney General made that point the first of its kind on the African continent. Nigeria has a bill banning same-sex marriages. That’s all. It doesn’t have all the other things our bill has. And so we’re excited about this,” Sam George added.