the supreme court validates an anti-LGBT law

This Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Ghana rejected two appeals opposing an anti-LGBT+ law, drastically restricting the rights of this community. The text was adopted by the deputies at the end of February. “There is no act that the Supreme Court can annul by virtue of its jurisdiction”declared Avril Lovelace-Johnson, president of the panel of seven judges of the Supreme Court. The law, which will come into force after its ratification by President Nana Akufo-Addo, provides for up to three years’ imprisonment for a person engaging in LGBT+ activities and a prison sentence of five to ten years for those involved in the «promotion» of homosexuality.

In Ghana, a very religious conservative country with a Christian majority, same-sex relations are prohibited by a law dating from the colonial era, but there have so far been no cases of prosecution on these grounds. This bill, strongly criticized in the West, can come into force after its ratification by President Nana Akufo-Addo. A few weeks after the adoption of the text by Parliament, he declared that he would first wait for the Supreme Court to rule on its constitutionality before deciding whether or not to promulgate the text.

A large economic deficit

In March, Ghana’s Finance Ministry warned that the country stood to lose nearly $3.8 billion in World Bank funding due to the law, which has been heavily criticized by the international community. The country is trying to emerge from one of its worst economic crises in decades and which benefits from a $3 billion loan program from the International Monetary Fund (IMF),

The Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, was seized on the subject by the Ghanaian journalist Richard Dela-Sky, who challenged the constitutionality of the law and by the university researcher Amanda Odoi. The latter sought a restraining order to prevent the Speaker of Parliament, the Attorney General and the Clerk of Parliament from sending the bill to President Akufo-Addo for approval. This text was tabled in Parliament in 2021 but its vote had always been postponed.