The United Nations has called on the government of Uganda to review its recent sexual offences bill, saying that it would violate human rights standards and undermine public health.
According to VOA, The Sexual Offences Bill has been in development since 2015 and has, since then, undergone several significant changes. Although the law broadly seeks to protect victims during sexual offences trials; provide for extraterritorial application of the law; repeal some provisions of the Penal Code Act, Cap. 120; enhance punishment of sexual offenders, and enact a specific law on sexual offences for the effectual prevention of sexual violence, it has been criticized for LGBT+ people, sex workers and those living with HIV.
“I am deeply troubled by the Ugandan parliament’s adoption of portions of this bill that further criminalize and marginalize vulnerable groups of fellow citizens and deny them their human rights, including their right to health,” UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima said in a statement. “Targeting people living with HIV, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and sex workers increases stigma and discrimination and undermines the HIV response by preventing people from receiving the HIV treatment, prevention and care services that they so urgently need.”
“The wide-ranging law includes introducing a sex offenders registry and making it an offence to use date rape drugs or to release a tape or recording of a sex act without that person’s consent. Although, during committee scrutiny, a vital clause was scrapped that would have allowed the withdrawal of consent before or during sex acts. Other new measures include tougher safeguarding measures to protect children from sexual harassment in schools. Lawmakers also expanded a clause to not only consider sex work an offence but criminalises those who pay for sex as well,” PinkNews reports.
Although sexual relations between men are already illegal in Uganda, the Sexual Offences Bill further categorizes all same-sex acts as “unnatural offences” alongside bestiality.
The bill passed its third reading through parliament on May 3rd, and is now due to be signed by the president of Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, after which it now becomes law.
A spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner, Rupert Colville, notes that the bill’s punishment for consensual same-sex relations has been reduced to 10 years in jail instead of life imprisonment. He says, however, that the Sexual Offences Act raises serious human rights concern.
“The fact remains that such relations are still criminalized. This, in a country where stigma, discrimination, and violence against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity is widespread and often committed with impunity, given that victims are frequently too afraid to report any attack against them,” he told Voice of America.
“Such provisions not only violate Uganda’s human rights obligations and also risk undermining public health, leaving people afraid to come forward for essential testing and treatment, and so affecting critical HIV prevention and treatment efforts. They are also risking further fueling HIV in Uganda and sub-Saharan Africa,” he added.
UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, also added that it fears that driving people infected with HIV underground will undo much of the progress Uganda has made in reducing the impact of the disease. Since 2010, it says, AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 60% and new HIV infections have dropped by 43%.
“Although UNAIDS welcomes some aspects of the bill, such as the extension of protection from sexual harassment, violence and sexual exploitation to groups of people such as people in detention and migrant workers, it urges parliamentarians to reconsider the provisions that discriminate against some people,” the statement by UNAIDS added.
