On September 6 a year has passed since the Supreme Court of India made the historic decision to decriminalise same-sex relations, causing reverberations across the world, and symbolising the global trend towards decriminalisation.
Maria Sjödin, Deputy Director of OutRight Action International, comments:
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which made sexual behaviour «against the order of nature» illegal and punishable by imprisonment, served as a model for similar laws across the British Colonial Empire. As such, it’s fall marked a significant step forward in the recognition and promotion of the human rights of LGBTIQ people not only in India, but around the world.
Indeed, several countries have followed suit. In the year since India repealed its ban on same-sex relations, Angola, Botswana and Bhutan have done the same. A commission appointed by the President has recommended decriminalisation in Tunisia. Moreover, legal challenges have been mounted in Singapore and across the the Caribbean, where over half of the countries still criminalise same-sex relations. In July court proceedings challenging so-called «buggery» and «gross indecency» laws were filed in St Vincent and the Grenadines and in Dominica. A petition filed last year with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights challenging the «buggery» laws of Barbados – which has one of the strictest such laws prescribing life imprisonment – has also moved forward and been communicated to the island nation giving it three months to respond. If favourable, the commission’s opinion and subsequent actions have the potential to have a ripple effect across the entire region.
However, despite the momentum towards decriminalisation, 68 countries around the world still criminalise same-sex relations, a handful of which prescribe the death penalty.
More frighteningly still, a movement against decriminalisation has emerged. In May Kenya’s High Court refused to decriminalise same-sex relations, claiming that decriminalisation would contradict Kenya’s constitutional values and indirectly open the door to same-sex marriage. Moreover, some countries, such as Egypt and Indonesia, which have not had laws criminalising same-sex relations in the past, have taken steps to introduce such bans.
Maria Sjödin, Deputy Director of OutRight Action International, comments:
It is shocking that long outdated, predominantly colonial-era laws criminalising same-sex relations still exist in a third of the countries in the world. The prevalence of these laws, and the move towards criminalisation of consensual same-sex acts in countries which have never had such bans in the past, is a frightening reminder of the continuing perception of LGBTIQ people as immoral, unnatural and even threatening to societies. This should serve as a call to action to everyone, because inequality, stigmatisation, harassment of LGBTIQ people does not only affect LGBTIQ communities – it affects every single one of us who somehow does not fit the arbitrarily assigned perceptions of what constitutes the norm.
