Reuters
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Burkina Faso’s transitional parliament handed laws outlawing conduct deemed to advertise LGBTQ practices, introducing fines, jail sentences and sanctions for individuals convicted, its justice minister stated.
The Persons and Family Code law, making Burkina Faso the newest in a sequence of African international locations to criminalize lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender exercise, additionally tightens guidelines on nationality and stateless folks.
The army that took over Burkina Faso in a 2022 coup has grown more and more illiberal of dissent amid worsening Islamist militant violence within the West African nation.
The laws was handed unanimously by the unelected, 71-member transitional parliament on Monday and is awaiting the signature of army junta chief Ibrahim Traore.
“The law provides for a prison sentence ranging from two to five years and a fine,” Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala stated on state tv on Monday evening.
“A person who (engages in) homosexual practices … will appear before a judge and, in the event of a repeat offence, be deported if you are not a Burkinabe national,” he stated.
The authorities has framed the law as an effort to modernize household law and make clear nationality guidelines, however rights advocates are more likely to name out the restrictions on LGBTQ practices and limits imposed on authorized recourse in nationality instances.
Anti-gay legal guidelines are in place in varied conservative African international locations together with Senegal, Uganda and Malawi, although some others, together with South Africa, Botswana and Angola, have decriminalized LGBTQ practices or enacted protecting measures.