ESSAY: Treaty obligations vs. reality: African States, SOGIESC criminalization, and failure to protect human dignity,

By Melanie Nathan, Nov 29, 2025.

All of the countries under review — including Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Guinea-Conakry, Cameroon, Tanzania, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria are parties to the core universal and regional human-rights treaties which together enshrine the fundamental human dignity, equality and protection against discrimination, violence, and arbitrary deprivation of freedom of all persons.

For example, each is a State Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which obliges States to guarantee civil and political rights to everyone without discrimination and includes protections for privacy, liberty, equality before the law, and non-discrimination on the basis of “other status.” Similarly, through ratification of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), they commit to securing civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and to enforcing these rights through appropriate domestic legislation.

Yet, despite these treaty obligations and the periodic scrutiny through the UN Human Rights Council via the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), most of these States continue to criminalizes same-sex intimacy, deny legal recognition to sexual minorities, and tolerate or perpetrate violence, harassment and impunity against LGBTQ+ individuals, in stark contradiction to their obligations under international and regional human-rights law. The UPR exists precisely to expose such contradictions and generate recommendations to bring domestic laws and practices into compliance. The result is catastrophic and presents a human rights crisis and emergency in dire need of exposure and solution.

In many African States, penal-code provisions criminalizing “unnatural acts,” “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” or “gross indecency” are routinely invoked to target same-sex couples. These laws criminalize consensual relationships between adults, and sanctions often include imprisonment. Enforcement of these laws commonly involves arbitrary arrests, forced examinations, extortion, police and vigilante violence — while state authorities fail to protect victims, investigate abuses, or prosecute perpetrators. The result is systemic impunity, widespread fear, social exclusion, and severe deprivation of civil and human rights for LGBTQ+ persons.

For instance, in Ghana, although the government in the past accepted certain recommendations regarding violence against LGBT people in its UPR, civil-society documentation reveals that those recommendations remain unimplemented: “high levels of violence perpetuated against LGBTI people by state and non-state actors” persist. In other States such as Uganda, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Tanzania, criminalization remains entrenched; legal penalties are complemented by societal taboos, public stigmatization, and state-sanctioned impunity. The existence of such laws and their enforcement not only violate the right to privacy and non-discrimination — core tenets of the ICCPR and ACHPR — but also the broader principle of human dignity that underlies all human-rights instruments.

The continued criminalization of same-sex intimacy, the toleration (or orchestration) of violence, and failure to investigate or protect victims amount to structural breaches of international obligations. These breaches are particularly acute in the context of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycles: States under review repeatedly receive recommendations to decriminalize consensual same-sex relations, protect sexual minorities, and ensure non-discrimination and access to justice; yet the vast majority of these States either reject such recommendations, “note” them without commitment, or make empty assurances , while real-world violence and denial of rights continue unabated.

In short, there is a profound disjunction between the formal treaty commitments made by these African States and the lived reality of LGBTQ+ persons under their jurisdiction. The contradiction underscores a systemic failure: despite their accession to the ICCPR, ICESCR and the African Charter, and periodic UPR scrutiny, they continue to uphold domestic laws and practices that criminalize and persecute sexual minorities , thereby violating the universal values of human dignity, equality, and human rights they committed to uphold.

The result of this widespread criminalization and state-sponsored (or state-tolerated) persecution is now visible in growing waves of forced migration , LGBTQI+ individuals across these African countries are being driven to flee for their very survival. With few safe pathways, many cross borders only to find themselves in hostile or indifferent countries, often lacking any viable protection. Yet, despite being, or in most cases should be, recognized as refugees under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (and/or the regional OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa), these States continue to criminalize same-sex relations and then refuse registration or recognition of LGBTQI+ asylum-seekers, a refusal that stands in stark contradiction to their international obligations. What has resulted is a human-rights catastrophe: mass displacement, failed protection environments, refoulment, lengthy detentions without representation in squalid conditions, lack of durable solutions, and a never-ending cycle of trauma and insecurity. Even more alarming, the periodic reviews under the UN Human Rights Council, via the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) rarely address this collective exodus or the regional scope of the crisis, leaving systemic persecution and forced migration unchallenged. This collective abdication by States first through criminalization, then through the unavailability of asylum or resettlement,  underscores a grim reality: structural failure to uphold fundamental human-rights and refugee protection obligations. The international community must stop pretending that this crisis is accidental or isolated. Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Guinea, Cameroon, Tanzania, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria are collectively engineering a regional human-rights catastrophe through their criminalization of LGBTQI+ people, their refusal to uphold binding treaties, their failure to protect their own citizens from violence, and their systematic rejection of UPR recommendations grounded in the most basic principles of human dignity. These states cannot plead ignorance while simultaneously forcing thousands to flee across borders with no safety, no legal recognition, and no access to asylum—then denying that these very individuals qualify for protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, to which they are themselves bound. The resulting crisis is not organic; it is intentionally fueled by state-sanctioned demonization of LGBTQI+ people, producing failed protection environments, hostile host countries, and the near-total absence of durable solutions as mass displacement accelerates.

Civil society cannot repair what governments deliberately destroy. And for too long the world has tiptoed around concerns about “cultural sensitivity” or fears of appearing to “re-colonize.” The truth is unavoidable: these governments are weaponizing colonial-era Penal Codes introduced by European empires, and are simultaneously emboldened by the neo-colonial influence of U.S.-based evangelical networks that export anti-LGBTQI+ ideology, only to introduce harsher anti-LGBT laws and punitive measures. The task before the global community is not to avoid the question of colonialism, but to confront it honestly and remedy the harms it produced, including the imported laws and contemporary foreign interventions that continue to endanger lives.

The UN Independent Expert on SOGIESC, together with the broader human-rights system, must call out these states by name, demand compliance, initiate urgent investigations, and treat this not as a matter of cultural diplomacy but as what it is: a coordinated, region-wide assault on human rights with devastating consequences for those forced to flee. Without direct accountability, public exposure, and sustained international pressure, these governments will continue to violate their obligations with impunity—because up until now, the world has allowed them to.

------- Example from a 10 Country By Country Perspective: (this does not mean that the other infringing countries are any better) SEE PDF FOR FULL ESSAY COPYRIGHT MELANIE NATHAN, 2025.

Treaty obligations vs. reality- African States, SOGIESC criminalization, and failure to pr

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