Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 02:42 pm
Lawmakers in Gabon’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday voted to decriminalise homosexuality, becoming one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa to reverse a law that punishes sexual relations between people of the same sex.
Forty-eight members of parliament backed the proposed initiative by the government to revise an article of the 2019 law that criminalised homosexuality. Twenty-four voted against, while 25 others abstained.
“Forty-eight lawmakers have shaken an entire nation and its customs and traditions,” one member of parliament who voted against the revision, told Reuters.
Same-sex marriage is still not allowed in the central African state, where homosexuality is still broadly seen as a taboo.
Gabon is one of 73 countries or jurisdictions worldwide that criminalises sex between men, and sex between women, with punishments of up to six months imprisonment and a fine of 5 million FCFA, according to London-based rights group Human Dignity Trust.
(Agencies)
A group called Progressive Forces in South Africa has launched a petition against MissUniverse Nigeria Chidimma Adetshina, with the aim…
Mauritius on Saturday overruled its decision to prohibit social media until the election onNovember 10th which was caused by a…
The UAE’s Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed AlNahyan was in Addis Ababa…
Gilbert Machokoto, a former teacher, said that setting up a business in the late 1980s, shortlyafter Zimbabwe's independence, was ‘like…
Following elections in which the party that had ruled the diamond-rich nation for almost 60years suffered a historic setback. Botswana's…
A lightning strike at a refugee camp in Uganda kills 14 people including children with 34 othershospitalized. The incident happened…
This website uses cookies.