Ghana Excludes Stakeholders from Public Hearings for anti-Homosexuality Bill

By Melanie Nathan, May 22, 2026.

Rightify Ghana has Raised Serious Concerns Over Exclusionary Public Hearing Process on Ghana’s 'Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025' (Anti-LGBTQ Bill) and African Human Rights Coalition, which provided an opposition submission on behalf of Ghanaian asylum seekers and refugees, to Ghana's Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, stands in solidarity with these concerns:

Accra, Ghana — 22 May 2026

Rightify Ghana expresses deep concern regarding statements made by Speaker of Parliament indicating that the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs has concluded public hearings and stakeholder engagements on the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, popularly known as the anti-LGBTQ bill, and has been directed to urgently present its report before Parliament for consideration and passage.

The Speaker’s announcement raises serious concerns regarding the transparency, inclusivity, fairness, and democratic legitimacy of the committee’s hearing process.

While the committee officially commenced hearings on April 23, 2026, following a postponement from the earlier scheduled April 8 date, many civil society organisations, human rights groups, professional bodies, advocates, and affected individuals who submitted written memoranda and detailed proposed amendment documents were neither acknowledged nor invited to participate in oral hearings before the committee.

Rightify Ghana submitted both a written memorandum and separate proposed amendment recommendations to the committee. However, the organisation did not receive any invitation to appear before the committee to present its concerns, despite the significant implications of the bill for constitutional rights, public health, democratic governance, civic participation, and the safety and wellbeing of LGBTQI+ persons and their families.

This represents a troubling departure from the process adopted under the 8th Parliament during consideration of the earlier version of the bill. Under the previous parliamentary process, a broader range of stakeholders, including civil society organisations, affected communities, professional associations, and independent experts, were invited to participate through public hearings, private engagements, and virtual sessions. While that process was itself not without concerns, it nonetheless provided comparatively wider opportunities for participation and democratic engagement.

In contrast, the current process under the 9th Parliament appears significantly more restrictive and exclusionary.

Reports from participants who attended the recent hearings indicate that many stakeholders who were invited were given little or no meaningful opportunity to address the committee. According to multiple accounts, only a limited number of participants were permitted to speak, while several invited organisations and individuals reportedly received no opportunity to make oral submissions at all.

Instead, the proceedings appear to have disproportionately centred the voices of the bill’s sponsors, including and , who were afforded extensive opportunities to defend and promote the bill before the committee. Some state institutions, including the (CHRAJ), were also granted opportunities to address the committee.

However, the apparent exclusion or marginalisation of many civil society organisations, constitutional experts, public health actors, feminist groups, LGBTQI+ organisations, human rights defenders, and affected communities fundamentally undermines the principles of participatory democracy, accountability, transparency, and inclusive lawmaking.

The current approach creates the strong impression that the hearing process was treated largely as a procedural formality rather than a genuine effort to solicit broad-based stakeholder input on legislation with profound constitutional, legal, social, and human rights implications.

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill contains provisions that raise serious concerns regarding freedom of expression, association, privacy, equality, non-discrimination, media freedom, academic freedom, access to healthcare, and the rights of civil society organisations and human rights defenders. The bill also poses serious threats to public health interventions, particularly HIV prevention and access to services for key populations.

Given the far-reaching implications of the proposed legislation, Parliament has a constitutional and democratic responsibility to ensure that all affected stakeholders are meaningfully heard and that legislative processes remain transparent, fair, participatory, and rights-respecting.

therefore calls on the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and the to:

- Publicly disclose the full list of organisations and individuals that submitted memoranda to the committee;

- Clarify the criteria used in selecting persons and organisations invited to appear before the committee;

- Ensure that excluded civil society organisations and affected stakeholders are given adequate opportunities to participate before any report is laid before Parliament;

- Guarantee a transparent, inclusive, and democratic legislative process consistent with Ghana’s constitutional principles and international human rights obligations.

A democratic Parliament must not only hear voices that support legislation, but must also protect space for dissenting opinions, minority perspectives, and independent civil society participation.

The credibility and legitimacy of Ghana’s legislative process depends on it.

Signed

Accra, Ghana In addition to the above - African Human Rights Coalition drtaws the attention of United States supporters of Reparation who are attending the Global Conference in Ghana in June - allegedly including members of the United States, The Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP. Please read our open letter to which we still have not received any response, despite being sent to individual members: HERE Here is our Submission to Parliament: HERE *** Some Noteworthy Excerpts ***  "Human sexuality is not an act, nor merely a behavior that a person chooses or performs. It is an aspect of identity—part of who a person is. The language of the proposed legislation itself implicitly recognizes this. By criminalizing those who “hold out” as LGBTQ, the bill acknowledges that identity exists beyond any particular act. "

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Over many years, through the work of the African Human Rights Coalition, I have documented the experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and gender-nonconforming Ghanaians who are forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in other countries. Their stories are not abstract policy discussions. They are testimonies of people whose lives are already profoundly shaped by Ghana’s existing criminal laws and by the social climate those laws produce. The repeated proposal of harsher legislation—such as the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill (FVB)—has itself intensified hostility, emboldened persecution, and deepened fear within communities. Should this law be enacted, those harms will not merely continue; they will be formally reinforced and significantly exacerbated.

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To declare that such diversity is “un-African” is therefore not merely a cultural claim—=, it is effectively to declare that a part of humanity itself does not belong within the culture. The practical consequence of that assertion is that a segment of Ghana’s own citizens, its sons, daughters, students, teachers, artists, and professionals—are treated as outsiders within their own society.

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Those who flee do not disappear. They reappear in asylum systems across the world, where they rebuild their lives in new societies. In the process, Ghana loses its own citizens, while other nations gain their talent, labor, creativity, and futures.

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The global asylum system offers protection only to a fraction of those who are forced to flee. Refugee resettlement programs are limited, asylum procedures are lengthy and uncertain, and many individuals spend years in legal and humanitarian limbo before their claims are resolved. In practice, legislation that forces people to flee often pushes them not toward safety, but toward dangerous and unpredictable journeys in search of it.

In this way, laws that criminalize identity do not simply affect life within national borders. They contribute directly to patterns of international displacement, placing already vulnerable individuals into migration pathways that are fraught with risk and uncertainty.

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There is another path available, one that preserves faith, culture, and sovereignty while avoiding the displacement of citizens. It is a path grounded in the recognition that sexual orientation, like many aspects of human identity, exists across all societies and throughout history. The presence of such diversity does not weaken a nation. What weakens a nation is when some of its citizens must flee simply to live safely.