Junta-led Burkina Faso has adopted a plan to ban homosexuality, becoming the latest African nation to do so despite international condemnation.
A cabinet meeting on Wednesday approved the plan that “bans homosexuality,” the presidency said in a statement.
“Henceforth homosexuality and associated practices will be punished by the law,” Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said, without spelling out what the punishments would be.
It will become law once approved by deputies in a transitional parliament in place since two 2022 coups in the West African nation.
In August, the country’s media watchdog decided to ban “television channels promoting homosexuality”.
Homosexuality was not banned in Burkina Faso before the military takeovers. It is illegal in around 30 African countries, and some of them like Ghana and Uganda have recently toughened anti-gay laws.
These have earned sweeping condemnation from rights groups and Western countries, including the United States, as well as the European Union and United Nations, which have warned that aid flows to these countries could be threatened if they are not repealed.
A Ugandan law adopted in May contains provisions making “aggravated homosexuality” a capital offence and imposes penalties for consensual same-sex relations of up to life in prison.
