Ghana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected two bids to overturn a contested piece of legislation severely curtailing LGBTQ rights which was adopted by MPs earlier this year.
Lawmakers approved the Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill in February, drawing international condemnation despite gaining wide public support in the conservative west African country.
The proposed legislation stipulates jail terms of six months to three years for engaging in LGBTQ sex.
The bill only enters into law after being ratified by the outgoing president Nana Akufo-Addo, who has not yet announced his decision.
Akufo-Addo, who officially steps down on January 7 after two terms in office, had said he would first await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the bill’s constitutionality.
“It will be premature for this court to exercise its interpretive and enforcement jurisdiction to intervene. Consequently, the action fails,” judge Avril Lovelace-Johnson, head of the court’s seven-member panel said, reading its judgement.
“Until there is presidential assent to the bill, there is no act of which the Supreme Court will use its supervisory jurisdiction to overturn,” she added.
The court’s ruling followed cases filed by Ghanaian broadcaster Richard Dela-Sky, who challenged the constitutionality of the bill, and university researcher Amanda Odoi.
The bill sparked criticism from several countries, including the United States, as well as concern from Ghana’s finance ministry, which warned of a risk of losing billions of dollars in World Bank funding.
