Ghana's Supreme Court paves way for anti-LGBTQ law

Ghana's Supreme Court on Wednesday paved the way for a contested bill severely curtailing LGBTQ rights to become law after rejecting two bids to overturn it.

Lawmakers approved the Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill in February, drawing international condemnation despite gaining wide public support in the conservative West African country.

The proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation is considered among the most stringent in Africa, stipulating jail terms of up to three years for engaging in same-sex relations and up to five years for promoting or sponsoring LGBTQ activities.

The bill will only become law after being ratified by the outgoing president Nana Akufo-Addo or his successor John Mahama.

Akufo-Addo, who officially stepped down on January 7 after two terms in office, has not yet announced his decision.

He had said he would first await the Supreme Court's ruling on the bill's constitutionality.

Opposition leader, Mahama, who won the December 7 elections, voiced support for the anti-LGBTQ bill during the electoral campaign.

Gay sex is already illegal in the religious, mostly Christian nation, but while discrimination against LGBTQ people is common, no one has ever been prosecuted under the colonial-era law.

- Fears for finances -

"It will be premature for this court to exercise its interpretive and enforcement jurisdiction to intervene. Consequently, the action fails," Judge Avril Lovelace-Johnson, head of the court's seven-member panel said, reading its judgement.

"Until there is presidential assent to the bill, there is no act of which the Supreme Court will use its supervisory jurisdiction to overturn," she added.

The court's ruling followed cases filed by Ghanaian broadcaster Richard Dela-Sky, who challenged the constitutionality of the bill, and university researcher Amanda Odoi.

Odoi had sought to block the sending of the bill to the president for ratification.

The bill was initially introduced into parliament in 2021 but the vote faced delays.

It sparked criticism from the United Nations and several countries, including the United States, as well as concern from Ghana's finance ministry, which warned of a risk of losing billions of dollars in World Bank funding.

Ghana fears it could face the same fate as Uganda, which last year passed one of the harshest anti-gay laws in the world.

The World Bank froze lending to Uganda in the wake of the law, which imposes penalties of up to life in prison for consensual same-sex relations and contains provisions that make "aggravated homosexuality" an offence punishable by death.

Ghana is emerging from its worst economic crisis in decades and is also under a $3-billion loan programme from the International Monetary Fund.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk condemned the passing of the bill in February, saying that consensual same-sex conduct should never be criminalised.

Around 60 countries in the world ban same-sex relations, about half of them are in Africa, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).