Ugandan LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation Convening for Equality (CFE) released a report on Monday documenting human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people following the passage of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) 2023, which introduced severe penalties for same-sex intercourse, including life imprisonment and the death penalty for “aggravated” offences. The organization reviewed over a thousand cases of human rights violations and says that arrests, torture and forced evictions against LGBTQ+ people have followed the act’s passage.
The report says that, after the AHA’s passage, the state has failed to protect the human rights of LGBTQ+ persons. According to CFE, cases of rights violations have increased from 306 in the January to August 2023 period to 1253 cases between September 2023 and April 2024. Abuse against LGBT has been manifested through “correctional” rapes, reproductive coercion, denial of housing rights and mob attacks. The largest share of affected persons is gay men followed by transgender women and lesbians. The report states that the Uganda Police, landlords, local councils (LCs) and family members have been reported as top violators of LGBT rights.
Though Article 21 of Uganda’s Constitution provides for equality of persons before the law in “all spheres of political, economic, social, and cultural life,” Uganda’s Constitutional Court decided not to strike down the AHA, only revoking parts of it. The Constitutional Court nullified section 9 of the AHA, which criminalizes the usage of a person’s premises for homosexual acts, and section 14, which made it mandatory for every person to report cases of homosexuality even if they were based on suspicion. However, the report documents that the nullification had little to no impact on the general public, which has taken the law into its own hands on many instances to search through premises, which violates the right to privacy Article 27 of the Uganda Constitution.
After the AHA’s predecessor, the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2014 was struck down that year, Uganda’s government took measures to outlaw homosexual relations, including the Sexual Offenses Bill of 2021, which criminalized anal sex between people of any gender and any “sexual act between persons of the same gender.” Following this, the AHA 2023 received assent from the president in May 2023. The law attracted criticism from international organizations, including the EU, over equality and human rights concerns.
