Ghana lawmakers approve bill criminalizing LGBTQ ‘promotion’, official says

ACCRA, May 29 (Reuters) – Ghana’s parliament on Friday approved a new bill that criminalizes the so-called promotion of LGBTQ activity, part of a broader crackdown on sexual minorities in West Africa.

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, passed by a voice vote after the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee unanimously recommended its adoption, first deputy speaker Bernard Ahiafor said.

The bill was introduced last year shortly after President John Dramani Mahama took office. Lawmakers from Mahama’s political party, the National Democratic Congress, had been urged by religious leaders and other supporters of the bill to vote on it, and Mahama will now face pressure to sign it.

Lawmakers passed an earlier version of the bill in 2024, under Mahama’s predecessor, President Nana Akufo-Addo, but it faced legal challenges and Akufo-Addo never signed it into law.

The bill approved on Friday maintains the existing penalty of up to three years in prison for same-sex sexual acts. It also bans “funding, sponsorship or promotion” of LGBTQ acts, with prison terms ranging from three to five years. And it introduces a “duty to report” prohibited LGBTQ acts to a police officer or other authorities, with violators facing up to three years behind bars.

The bill further amends Ghana’s Extradition Act of 1960 to make offences under the new law extraditable offences.

West Africa has seen a raft of anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent months. 

Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in March signed a bill doubling the maximum prison term for same-sex sexual acts to 10 years and criminalizing any ​efforts to promote homosexuality. 

In September last year, lawmakers in Burkina Faso voted to criminalize same-sex sexual acts for the first time and to criminalize “behaviour likely to promote homosexual practices and similar practices.”

(Reporting by Emmanuel Bruce and Christian Akorlie; Writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)