The National Assembly of Senegal (unicameral Parliament) approved a controversial bill that toughens penalties against homosexual relations and increases current sentences, which range from one to five years in prison, to between five and ten years.
The rule, debated in Parliament at the request of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, was approved late on Wednesday by 135 votes in favor, with three abstentions and no vote against.
The legislative project, which must now be promulgated by the Senegalese president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, establishes that anyone who has committed an “act against nature” will be punished with a prison sentence of “five to ten years.”
“This law is, above all, cultural. No one has the right to impose their own values on others (…). While in the West polygamy is prohibited, in Senegal we have the right to prohibit acts against nature.”declared before the Chamber the Minister of the Interior, Bamba Cissé, representing the Senegalese Government.
The parliamentary session, which lasted about ten hours, was marked, precisely, by the absence of the Minister of Justice, Yacine Fall, who was replaced by Cissé to defend the proposal.
The new text modifies article 319 of the Penal Code, which already criminalized relationships between people of the same sex.
Increase in fines
Likewise, it increases the fines — which could reach 10 million CFA francs (more than 15,000 euros), compared to the current 1.5 million (about 2,300 euros); and persecutes those guilty of “approving” homosexual relationships.
The reform occurs in a context of growing social and media pressure around homosexuality in this Muslim-majority country, where the issue continues to be highly sensitive.
In recent weeks, several arrests for alleged homosexuality – including those of well-known figures on social networks and in the entertainment world – have revived public debate.
In this context, The reform has been one of the main political flags of Prime Minister Sonko, who took office in April 2024 and had insisted on multiple occasions on his willingness to toughen sanctions.
In fact, at the end of February, when presenting the bill before the National Assembly, Sonko denounced alleged obstacles, both internal and external, that, according to him, would have prevented similar advances in the past, including pressure from “organized interest groups.”
Faced with this situation, he appealed to popular legitimacy and urged unity around the Government. “We believe in God and we are with the Senegalese people,” he declared.
“If everyone is against us, but the people support us, then we will be invincible,” the prime minister settled.
Local human rights organizations had warned about an increasingly hostile environment, characterized by campaigns on social networks and demands to toughen current legislation.
Of the more than sixty countries that criminalize relations between people of the same sex in the world, thirty are in Africa, where the majority of laws of this type are inherited from the colonial period.
