UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. (Screen capture via Kellogg Institute YouTube)
The U.N. human rights chief and UNAIDS’s executive director have reiterated their calls for countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations.
“Laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ people must be consigned to history,” said Volker Türk and Winnie Byanyima in a statement they released on July 19.
The 25th International AIDS Conference began in Munich on July 22.
The statement notes Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Botswana, the Cook Islands, Dominica, Gabon, India, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, Seychelles, Singapore, and Trinidad and Tobago over the last decade have repealed laws that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Namibian High Court on June 21 struck down the country’s Apartheid-era sodomy laws.
Dominica’s High Court of Justice in April ruled provisions of the country’s Sexual Offenses Act that criminalized anal sex and “gross indecency” were unconstitutional. Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence in the decision said “the laws commonly known as buggery and gross indecency laws, contravenes the constitution of the Commonwealth of Dominica, namely the right to liberty, freedom of expression, and protection of personal privacy.”
Burkina Faso’s military government earlier this month said it plans to criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations in the country. Ugandan activists continue to challenge their country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Activists maintain criminalization laws harm people with HIV/AIDS, among other groups. Türk and Byanyima in their statement say these statutes “harm public health.”
“Criminalization of LGBTQ+ people generates justified fear amongst people who need access to health services, and amongst the frontline workers who provide those services,” they said.
“In criminalizing countries, there is decreased provision and uptake of HIV prevention services, and decreased uptake of HIV care and treatment services,” added Türk and Byanyima.
They conclude the “decriminalization of LGBTQ+ people is vital for protecting everyone’s human rights and everyone’s health.”
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